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When and why do states implement international women's rights norms? This text examines states' responses to violence against women (VAW) in Africa and their implementation of the international women's justice norm. Despite the presence of laws on various forms of VAW in most African countries, most victims face barriers to accessing justice through the criminal justice system. This problem is particularly acute in post-conflict countries. International organizations such as the United Nations and women's rights advocates have, therefore, promoted the international women's justice norm, which emphasizes the establishment of specialized mechanisms within the criminal justice sector to address VAW. With a focus on the response of the police to rape and intimate partner violence in post-conflict Côte d'Ivoire and Liberia, this book theorizes the UN's and women's movements' influence.

When and why do states implement international women's rights norms? This text examines states' responses to violence against women (VAW) in Africa and their implementation of the international women's justice norm. Despite the presence of laws on various forms of VAW in most African countries, most victims face barriers to accessing justice through the criminal justice system. This problem is particularly acute in post-conflict countries. International organizations such as the United Nations and women's rights advocates have, therefore, promoted the international women's justice norm, which emphasizes the establishment of specialized mechanisms within the criminal justice sector to address VAW. With a focus on the response of the police to rape and intimate partner violence in post-conflict Côte d'Ivoire and Liberia, this book theorizes the UN's and women's movements' influence.

AbstractThe question of whether social movements can catalyze change has preoccupied researchers but an understanding ofhowsuch change can be created is equally important. Specifically, there has been little investigation of how women's movements engage in the process ofimplementationof women's rights laws. We use a case study of Ghana's Domestic Violence Coalition to examine the challenges that movements face in the policy implementation process. The Domestic Violence Coalition, a collective of women's rights organizations, was instrumental to the passage of Ghana's Domestic Violence Act in 2007. Our study investigates the coalition's subsequent attempts to influence the act's implementation. Drawing from the social movement literature, we apply an analytical framework consisting of three internal factors (strategies, movement infrastructure, and framing) and two external factors (political context and support of allies) that have mediated the coalition's impact on implementation. We find that changes in movement infrastructure are most significant in explaining the coalition's relative ineffectiveness, as these changes adversely affect its ability to employ effective strategies and take advantage of a conducive political context and the presence of allies. This article advances the literature on rights advocacy by women's movements by analyzing the challenge of translating success in policy adoption to implementation and explaining why women's movements may have less impact on implementation processes.