ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a broad overview of the unequal global distribution of criminal violence. It argues that the distinctive shape and form that violence takes in the Global South has been structured by the coloniality of power and its mutual constitution with the coloniality of gender. The chapter highlights the fact that criminal violence has replaced armed conflict as the main cause of death in the Global South. It provides a necessarily selective overview of responses to the prevention and reduction of criminal violence in the Global South. Feminist theory and research has reproduced structures of marginality and centrality between what Raewyn Connell calls the metropole and the periphery—the Global North and Global South. Globalisation has opened up new trade markets in the Global South increasing women's access to paid work and economic independence. The illegal drug and arms trade between the US and Mexico use the same trade route through the maquiladoras.
