ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the international context for later country-specific discussions of the ways in which transnational factors have helped to shape the politics of gender equality policy-making and implementation in the Global South. It examines the politics that have underpinned the emergence, cascading, and diffusion of the global norm against violence against women (VAW) and domestic violence. The chapter explains that transnational and regional women's movements and the United Nations played key roles in the emergence of the global norm. women's movements were also instrumental in the drafting and emergence of international and regional treaties on women's rights and VAW such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and the Maputo Protocol. Such agreements, in conjunction with continued domestic and transnational lobbying by women's organizations, led to the cascading of the global norm on VAW.
