How can cultural norms affect women's access to justice for gender-based violence? Women's rights abuses and impunity in Guatemala

While some indigenous cultural norms and practices concerning gender roles in society can empower indigenous women in pursuing their rights and equality, the utmost majority is still based on and shaped by dominant patriarchal interests. Harmful gender stereotypes, traditions and discriminatory assumptions often serve as well-established tools for compromising women's rights policies, blurring the lines of what conduct can be considered violence against women, and undermining the victims' credibility in judicial processes. As such, women's efforts to access justice are often met with impunity with many victims being further exposed to re-victimization or prosecution by the justice system.
The international community is increasingly aware that cultural norms are used as excuses to legitimate violence against women. Articles 3 and 5(a) of the CEDAW for instance specifically call for modification of stereotypical cultural patterns, such as blaming victims for provoking the perpetrator ("crimes of passion"), discriminating against women considered sexually active outside of marriage, or subordinating women's interests to family reputation.
The progressive approach is also apparent in local approaches to violence against women in Guatemala. The Guatemalan government was amongst the first to implement a range of legislation and alternative justice mechanisms to promote women's rights and combat gender-based violence. These include the 2008 Law against Femicide and other Forms of Violence against Women, and the specialised women's advisory office, SEPREM. Based on the 2008 Femicide Law, Guatemala also introduced revolutionary 24-hour women's courts. With several offices opened across the rural regions of Guatemala, women's courts deal with various offences involving violence against women, including instances of sexual and domestic violence. While providing victims with the assistance of judiciary, prosecutors and doctors specifically trained to handle sensitive cases, the courts also aim to encourage women to defend their rights and to empower other indigenous women to stand against the impunity for gender-based violence in Guatemala.
However, the continued relationship between the exercise of human rights law and the pervasive nature of local stereotypical attitudes, as well as machista cultural norms, keeps hampering efforts to effectively address and prevent gender-based violence in the country. Problems include continued application of the established discriminatory policies rather than laws based on human rights treaties, intimidation of victims, witnesses and court personnel, funding cuts and efforts to undermine the special procedures of women's courts. As a consequence, many victims are denied justice even in facilities specially designed for them.
While the relationship between criminal justice and cultural norms is an established theme in scholarship, there is not enough adequate research on the sociocultural approaches to women's rights as being subordinate to laws that advance men, and on the consequences of this for victims' access to justice alongside the possibility of their re-victimization. What is more, the literature predominantly examines the situation in general domestic courts and often neglects the existence of alternative justice mechanisms such as specialised women's courts. This further signifies gap in literature around the role of indigenous communities' cultural norms in the proceedings of these mechanisms.
The proposed project will therefore analyse the effects of indigenous cultural norms on policing and judicial institutions using feminist theoretical approaches to crime and justice, and application of qualitative empirical research methodology. By exploring the intersections of international and regional human rights law with domestic criminal procedures, it will make an original contribution to current knowledge on the role of culture in justice mechanisms addressing gender-based violence.