Feminicidio, Transnational Human Rights Advocacy and Transnational Legal Activism

• In Event: 035 - Section on Global and Transnational Sociology Paper Session. Negotiating Universal Standards and Norms in Local Contexts

Abstract

In this paper, I focus on the stories of two grassroots activists from Chihuahua City, Mexico, and their transition from having no knowledge about human rights to becoming important transnational advocates and legal activists as part of the Ni Una Más campaign to combat the misogynous murders of women, known as feminicidios, and their impunity. The aim of this paper is to illustrate the need to go beyond vernacularization as a framework to understand how international law matters in local contexts and to acknowledge the agency of grassroots actors in the international mobilization of law. The paper incorporates interview data with grassroots activists from Chihuahua City and materials documenting these activists’ advocacy and involvement in transnational legal activism. The paper shows that through their simultaneous involvement in transnational legal activism and transnational advocacy, grassroots actors became human rights defenders and active participants in extending the meaning of women’s human rights to understand the responsibility of the Mexican state for gendered violence in Chihuahua as feminicidio.

Author

• Paulina Garcia del Moral, University of Toronto