DUE DILIGENCE IN POLICIES FOR THE PREVENTION AND REPAIR OF GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE IN CATALONIA

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyze the standard of due diligence and its jurisprudential developments to assess how it has impacted Catalan legislation and the public policy tools organizing prevention and integral reparation of gender-based violence. There are two interests: a) in investigating the potential of a concept that materializes rights building guarantees of effective and free from discrimination access; and b) in reflecting on the relation between due diligence with the recognition of institutional violence as a specific area of gender-based violence, as well as the reconceptualization of the idea of comprehensive reparation, part of the guarantees of non-re-victimization and non-repetition. This whole framework has contributed to define, from the Catalan public policies for the eradication of gender-based violence, a new model of understanding and intervention. This analysis requires, finally, a particular attention to the limitations and resistances that due diligence and the model of centrality in the rights and needs that women, girls, children and adolescents find in public administrations. Consequently, a final reflection on the place of citizenship and feminisms from outside the institutions is opened, the need for permanent tension so that commitments made by public authorities do not remain as mere declarations of intent.