‘Bridging the Divide’: An Interview with Professor Rashida Manjoo, UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women

摘要

Violence against women has been a topic engaging feminist legal scholars for a long time, with a renewed feminist advocacy emerging to highlight sexual violence experienced by women during the armed conflicts in the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda in the early 1990s. One of the most important legal developments to emerge from this has been the creation of the office of the Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, its Causes and Consequences (UN Special Rapporteur), as part of a series of developments at the UN level that finally accorded explicit recognition to violence against women as a human rights concern. In May 2015, Dr. Daniela Nadj interviewed UN Special Rapporteur, Professor Rashida Manjoo, during her visit to give the annual lecture at the Criminal Justice Centre, Queen Mary, University of London. The interview, an edited version of which is presented here, addressed broad themes including the meaning of liberation for women, especially in a post-conflict setting, the pervasive socio-economic inequality faced by women as an enduring obstacle to equality around the world, the normativity gap on violence against women, academic activism, and the politics of legal information.