Domestic violence and human rights: Local challenges to a universal framework

Abstract

Over the past 15-20 years there has been a dramatic increase in transnational social movements including the movement to eradicate violence against women. This paper examines the development of the transnational women's movement and the prioritizing of violence against women (VAW) as a universal women's agenda using the United Nations (U.N.) human rights conferences as a focal point. As one form of VAW, domestic violence (DV) has been placed into the human rights context by many organizations globally. The implications and possible limitations of universalizing a framework for DV are explored using salient examples from various areas of the world. It is suggested that the framing of DV as a human rights violation is relevant to social work in light of social work's role in the critical analysis of framing of social problems and the emergent movement in the United States for social work to become more internationally-focused.