Gendering Justice, Subverting Impunity: Strategic Litigation and Feminist Activism against Feminicide in Mexico

• In Event: Gender and Human Rights: Social Movements, Feminism, and Global Transformations

Abstract

In this paper, I examine the role of strategic litigation as a social movement strategy to subvert impunity in the context of feminist activism against feminicide in Mexico. I argue that the strategic litigation of these cases in domestic and supranational legal arenas represents not just a fight for justice in these cases of extreme gender-based violence, but also efforts to gender justice itself both at the domestic and supranational levels. In other words, the litigation of these cases is about pushing for the integration of a feminist gender and human rights perspective to expand understandings of what counts as gender-based violence, who counts as its victims, as well as the responsibility of the state when it comes to acting with due diligence to prevent, effectively investigate, punish and remedy this violence. The adoption of a feminist gender and human rights perspective to adjudicate cases of feminicide by supranational or domestic courts has not been something that defensoras can take for granted. On the contrary, the adoption of this perspective whether at the supranational or domestic levels has been part and parcel of feminist efforts to both rearticulate and reaffirm international norms on women’s human rights and to gender these legal-political arenas. This is what makes it a transgressive social movement strategy.

Author

• Paulina Garcia del Moral, University of Guelph