ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how the exclusion of many violations of women's human rights from the work of international institutions and nongovernmental organizations has been maintained by demarcations of public and private life and by international law defining state responsibility for violations by private persons. Acts of violence against women committed by agents of the state thus directly engage state responsibility. Women's human rights advocates have argued that, under general human rights law, state responsibility for domestic violence can be established where the state fails to enact and enforce criminal penalties against such violence. Activists in a number of countries have stressed the need to evaluate the effectiveness of criminal justice approaches in deterring violence in the family within particular national legal and social systems, and their impact on women's needs for economic and social support. An analysis of women's structural inequality should be substituted for the current "mainstream" preoccupation with the public/private distinction.
