Gender Violence in Peace and War: States of Complicity offers an analysis of the role of the state, its mechanisms, and its structures in perpetuating, legitimizing, and facilitating gender violence worldwide. This book documents the nature, extent, and progress made in relation to gender-based violence since the advancements in women’s rights that had their zenith in the 1990s, and focuses specifically on state participation in and interventions on gender violence. The authors ask: How is gender violence perpetrated and facilitated by the state to be understood as a worldwide phenomenon? What are the connections and effects of sexism, nationalism, and militarism (as structural and ideological elements of the state) in the victimization of women? In what ways does the state’s political agenda not adequately respond to and protect women’s rights? What possible interventions exist when the state itself is an agent of gender violence?