(Excerpts of the paper presented in Nepal Law Campus @ 2011 for class discussion purpose.)
Women's human rights are described as entitlements and freedoms claimed for women and girls of all ages in the society so that they could live a dignified life as a human being in the society.
The term "women's human rights" is seen as the product of an international movement to improve the status of women. In the 1980s and 1990s, women's movements around the world formed networks and coalitions to give greater visibility both to the problems that women face every day and to the centrality of women's experiences in economic, social, political and environmental issues. In the evolution of what is becoming a global women's movement, the term "women's human rights" has served as a locus for praxis, that is, for the development of political strategies shaped by the interaction between analytical insights and concrete political practices. Further, the critical tools, the concerted activism, and the broad-based international networks that have grown up around movements for women's human rights have become a vehicle for women to develop the political skills necessary for the twenty-first century.
The idea of women's human rights declares simply that as human beings women have human rights. The incorporation of women's perspectives and lives into human rights standards and practice forces recognition of the dismal failure of countries worldwide to accord women the human dignity and respect that they deserve-simply as human beings. Moreover, a woman's human rights framework provides a concrete ground to define, analyze, and articulate their experiences of violence, degradation, and marginality along with a positive hope for change.
At the same time, the universality of human rights means that human rights apply to every single person by virtue of their humanity; this also means that human rights apply to everyone equally, for everyone is equal in simply being human. In many ways, this universality theme may seem patently obvious, but its egalitarian premise has a radical edge. By invoking the universality of human rights, women have demanded that their very humanity be acknowledged. That acknowledgement and the concomitant recognition of women as bearers of human rights-mandates the incorporation of women and gender perspectives into all of the ideas and institutions that are already committed to the promotion and protection of human rights. The idea that human rights are universal also challenges the contention that the human rights of women can be limited by culturally specific definitions of what count as human rights and of women's role in society. The idea of human rights as inalienable means that it is impossible for anyone to abdicate her human rights, even if she wanted to, since every person is accorded those rights by virtue of being human.
. . .
Timeline of international women’s rights agreements
The history of women’s human rights, at the global level, can be presented as below:
1946 – the UN Commission on the Status of Women established with mandate to set standards of women’s rights, encourage governments to bring their laws into line with international conventions and to encourage global awareness of women’s rights
1948 – adoption of Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which forms the basis for action for promoting equal rights and freedoms
1975 – first International Women’s Year, first global United Nations’ Women’s Conference held in Mexico City and beginning of the UN Decade for Women
1979 – adoption of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the only international treaty on women’s human rights
1993 – adoption of the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women; women successfully promote the message that women’s rights are human rights at the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna
1994 – women secure another major step forward for women’s and girl’s right to control their own lives and bodies at International Conference on Population & Development in Cairo
1995 – women mobilise again at the World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen to ensure that the problems they face are central to the global agenda; women achieve massive success both in terms of results and turn-out, at the Beijing Fourth World Conference on Women, resulting in global Platform for Action for women’s equality, empowerment and justice
2000 – UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security adopted
2005 – women defend their gains at the ten year review of implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action and successfully defeat a proposal led by the U.S government for an anti-abortion amendment to the declaration
2008 – UN Security Council Resolution 1820 adopted, recognizing that sexual violence can be categorized as a war crime, crime against humanity, and act of genocide and demanding protection and prevention measures from parties of armed conflict; protection from violence in refugee and displaced person camps; and affirming the need for women’s full participation in peace-building processes.
2009 – the UN commits to completely overhauling the systems and structures through which it supports women’s rights
2010 - 15-year review of the Beijing Platform for Action
2011 – UN Women, the new UN agency focusing on women and bringing together the previously fragmented ‘gender machinery’ starts work on 1st January.
Conclusion:
It is observed that during the whole of the nineteenth century, women had no political rights though there had been some movement in other areas to advance the rights of women. Gradually, laws were passed in which women could divorce husbands, women were allowed to keep money they had earned and finally, women got an equal footing with men in political, economic, social and cultural life. However, the gap between governments’ commitments and the reality of women’s lives, particularly those of women in the South, has not reduced and, if anything has widened in some parts of the world. This is largely due to the backlash against women’s human rights that is taking place on every continent and in many different forms today, including:
• religious or cultural fundamentalisms of different kinds
• power of ultra-conservative forces within governments and their influence on foreign and domestic policies
• backlashes in the media, judiciary, public opinion
• an increase in violence, conflict and war
The fundamental principles of human rights that accord to each and every person the entitlement to human dignity give women a vocabulary for describing both violations and impediments to the exercise of their human rights. The large body of international covenants, agreements and commitments about human rights gives women political leverage and a tenable point of reference. And finally, the idea of women's human rights enables women to define and articulate the specificity of the experiences in their lives at the same time that it provides a vocabulary for women to share the experiences of other women around the world and work collaboratively for change. Now, the world is opting to look a new dimension on women's human rights through the work of UN Women.
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