ANTHROPOLOGICAL CONTRIBUTIONS TO INTERNATIONAL LEGAL APPROACHES TO VIOLENCE AGAINST INDIGENOUS WOMEN

Abstract

Since the early 1990s, the law and development paradigm of “violence against women” (VAW) has framed gender-based violence against girls and women, especially intimate partner violence, as a grave violation of women’s fundamental human rights and a major public health problem demanding concerted state action.1 Although women of all ages, social classes, races, religions, and ethnicities suffer gender-based violence, international law recognizes that VAWaffecting indigenous women is compounded by historical and ongoing racial discrimination.2 This essay signals the contributions of indigenous women and allied anthropologists in Latin America who draw on decolonial, intersectional, and locally-grounded feminist perspectives to consider the challenges of addressing gender-based VAW. Working in collaboration with different women’s collectives and organizational processes, anthropologists have conceptualized and documented the specific, myriad forms of violence affecting indigenous women. In their efforts to understand the origins, nature, and effects of violence, and to envisage possible remedies, they privilege indigenous women’s voices, standpoints, and demands for collective self-determination. In this way they have contributed to international legal debates on VAW by highlighting the shortcomings and limitations of universal constructs of women and gender violence.