Seeking Structural Transformation beyond Individual Repair

This chapter takes as its starting point the tension between structural critique and legal engagement that has long characterised feminist interventions in the human rights field. It examines how feminist activists and scholars have reshaped the international human rights framework to account for structural harms, arguing that “women&s;s human rights” has evolved into a reparative legal category: one that challenges the individualist core of human rights discourse by insisting on the recognition of systemic conditions that produce vulnerability and inequality. The chapter traces feminist interventions that re-signified the language of rights, demonstrating how grassroots mobilisations and scholarly debates expanded its scope. It then turns to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to analyse how landmark decisions on violence against women reflect, and help institutionalise, this reparative legal framing. In so doing, the chapter shows how feminist legal strategies opened pathways for reimagining reparation and responsibility in structural terms, advancing a vision of human rights capable of addressing not only individual injuries but also the broader regimes that sustain them.