When States delegate legal authority to traditional, customary or religious systems they bestow on them a range of powers which are not always subject to rights standards and norms nor to state oversight. These systems, usually known as parallel or plural systems, can have jurisdiction over marriages, family law issues, dispute resolution and informal systems of community justice. These issues are often at the heart of women’s experiences of male violence.

How does thinking about connections between torture (and it’s legal regulation) strengthen our work against violence against women?

Join the International Feminist Legal Network (IFLN) discussion on legislative measures around technology facilitated violence against women

In all jurisdictions the police are expected to play a key frontline role in protecting women from male violence and investigating crimes with a view to prosecuting perpetrators of violence against women. Yet there is growing evidence that significant numbers of police officers are abusers themselves - both in their offical roles and in their off-duty lives.

How can individual police officers be held to account where the system requires their own police colleagues to investigate them? What efforts if any have been made to challenge the systems that have enabled police abusers to abuse their power? What has litigation achieved?

Despite international rights provisions, psychological violence currently has a limited profile in legal discourse, both conceptually and in practice. What do we mean by the term? How does it help towards ending violence against women? How has it been litigated and what challenges / success have come from this work?

Join us to discuss these, and related, issues.