Despite the persistence of violence inside and around prisons, and the dubious adequacy of criminal law to respond to victim–survivors, international human rights (IHR) discourse increasingly promotes the mobilisation of the state’s penal apparatus to respond to human rights violations, including violence against women (VAW). Using an anticolonial feminist approach, this article scrutinises the ontological and epistemological commitments underlying ‘human rights penality,’ by analysing features of the Western-colonial register vis-a-vis more relational worldviews. Separateness, abstraction, and transcendence broadly underpin the exclusion of embodied experience, context, and material reality from the juridical field. In the second part, through discourse analysis of Inter-American and European case law, the author shows the deployment of human rights penality, the displacement of experience, and the disregard of context in IHR discourse. VAW is construed as a procedural and penal matter: it is the absence of a penal process that courts regard as failure to protect women, rather than the state’s inability/unwillingness to address structural subordination. Moreover, the ‘virtues’ attributed to the penal system justify its expansion, which facilitates the continuity of penal violence and debilitates alternative approaches to justice. Finally, the author posits penal abolition as an anticolonial praxis, pointing at examples of anti-carceral feminist work.

尽管监狱内部和周围的暴力行为持续存在，而且刑法是否足以应对受害者幸存者值得怀疑，但国际人权话语越来越多地促进国家刑事机构的动员，以应对侵犯人权的行为，包括暴力侵害妇女行为妇女（VAW）。本文采用反殖民女权主义的方法，通过分析西方殖民主义登记册相对于更相关的世界观的特征，审视“人权惩罚”背后的本体论和认识论承诺。分离性、抽象性和超越性广泛地支撑着将具体经验、背景和物质现实排除在司法领域之外。第二部分通过对美洲和欧洲判例法的话语分析，作者展示了《国际卫生条例》论述中人权惩罚的部署、经验的错位以及对背景的忽视。暴力侵害妇女行为被解释为程序性和刑事性问题：法院将缺乏刑事程序视为未能保护妇女，而不是国家无能/不愿意解决结构性从属问题。此外，刑罚制度的“美德”证明了其扩张的合理性，这促进了刑事暴力的持续性，并削弱了其他司法途径。最后，作者将废除刑罚视为一种反殖民实践，并列举了反监狱女权主义工作的例子。法院认为缺乏刑事程序未能保护妇女，而不是国家无能/不愿意解决结构性从属问题。此外，刑罚制度的“美德”证明了其扩张的合理性，这促进了刑事暴力的持续性，并削弱了其他司法途径。最后，作者将废除刑罚视为一种反殖民实践，并列举了反监狱女权主义工作的例子。法院认为缺乏刑事程序未能保护妇女，而不是国家无能/不愿意解决结构性从属问题。此外，刑罚制度的“美德”证明了其扩张的合理性，这促进了刑事暴力的持续性，并削弱了其他司法途径。最后，作者将废除刑罚视为一种反殖民实践，并列举了反监狱女权主义工作的例子。