Reframing Institutional Responsibility for Gender-Based Violence Against Women: Feminist Legal Theory, International Law and Due Diligence

Feminist legal theory exposes how laws and institutions have historically reproduced patriarchal power and gender-based violence. Within international law, the principle of due diligence has become a key framework for redefining state responsibility, requiring not only the punishment of individual perpetrators but also the prevention and redress of structural forms of harm. Through a feminist and intersectional lens, due diligence moves beyond formal compliance to demand institutional accountability grounded in situated knowledge. This perspective envisions justice as a transformative process that compels states to confront the cultural and epistemic hierarchies sustaining violence and to reconstruct legal practices toward genuine gender-sensitive governance.