Bridging the Protection Gap: Rethinking the ‘Three Pillars’ to Eliminate Sexual and Gender-Based Violence in ASEAN

This chapter situates the growing academic and policy interest in advancing international normative frameworks namely the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) and Women, Peace, and Security (wps) in asean within broader feminist critiques of the ‘protection gap’ that results from the ‘siloing’ of international security and peace agendas. It builds on recent works that suggest a rethinking of asean as constituted by three distinct community pillars (political-security, economic, and socio-cultural) for fully addressing human security and development in the region. Using the asean Regional Plan for Action (rpa) of the 2013 Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women (evaw), which covers a ten-year period (2016-2025), this chapter makes a case for how the rpa can serve as a critical vector for broadening the significance of R2P and wps in the region to address sexual and gender-based violence as occurring both in crisis situations and ‘everyday life’.