ABSTRACT
This chapter centres on state actions and examines what governments do to protect women from gender-based violence through legislative actions and administrative strategies. We argue that Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua enacted feminicide laws in response to pressures from domestic women’s groups and from the international community to align with gender mainstreaming efforts such as those of the United Nations’ Fourth Conference on Women in Beijing (1994). The Central American case shows that feminicide laws and administrative actions (e.g. specialised courts and police) are ineffective in combating gender-based violence when these actions are taken in the context of broader structural inequalities that disfavour women. We argue, therefore, that these countries passed these laws and implemented administrative actions mainly to satisfy international agencies, as laws were flawed, and administrative efforts remained deeply underfunded. In addition, women’s grassroots organisations have pressured their governments from within while aligning with foreign NGOs to fund their activities to advance Central American women’s protection from violence.
