ABSTRACT

Gender-based violence (GBV) is not a new form of insecurity, yet it has long been ignored or marginalized within International Relations. Scholars working in the two major paradigms of International Relations, realism and liberalism, have not considered GBV as a serious security threat (see Quie’s chapter herein). For instance, The Real World Order: Zones of Peace, Zones of Turmoil (Singer and Wildavsky 1996) exemplifies the ways that IR has neglected alternative security threats such as gender-based violence. Singer and Wildavsky argue that the post-Cold War world is comprised of two distinct geographic areas. War is unlikely in the “zones of peace,” characterized by democracy, wealth, and security (Western Europe, the United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand). The rest of the world comprises “zones of turmoil,” wherein one finds most of the world’s violence and instability. The authors contend that this violence will not spread to the zones of peace.