Introduction

In the wake of these significant international developments and their implications for local practice, articles featured in this special issue represent new frameworks for understanding the complex intersections between international human rights rhetoric and African lives.\n The authors share Liberian narratives, complaints, and efforts to regulate social norms and behavior in regard to gender-based violence in the presence of an ongoing international human rights discourse. The authors expose the process, multiple discourses, and dialectics of power involved in "the problem of gender-based violence" and illustrate how the view of this crime changes shape as it moves between Liberians, governmental ministries, and nongovernmental organizations responsible for implementing global mandates.