ABSTRACT
Introduction: gender-based violence and the Global South city Although gender-based violence (GBV), and more specifically violence against women (VAW), was absent from the Millennium Development Agenda, it is now acknowledged as one of world’s greatest contemporary challenges. This is reflected, inter alia, in the specific inclusion of ‘freedom from violence against women and girls’ in the proposed fifth Sustainable Development Goal on gender equality (see Chapter 1, this volume). Moreover, in the context of GBV and VAW constituting a ‘new dominant global agenda’ (Moser and McIlwaine, 2014:337), cities in the Global South are a significant priority (McIlwaine, 2013; Moser, 2012). Rates of urban violence are escalating everywhere, especially in developing regions, as part of wider processes of increasing poverty, inequality, drug use, access to firearms and other weaponry, and political and civil conflict. Within this scenario the prevalence of GBV has risen concomitantly (Moser, 2004; Winton, 2004).
