Constituting Terms for International Change: Reflecting on Strategies for Women's Rights Author(s): Kamari Clarke Source: Proceedings of the Annual Meeting (American Society of International Law (original) (raw)
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This paper explores current contestations of women’s rights and the implications thereof for international legislation. While contestation over women’s rights is a far from new phenomenon, over the past two decades opposition to gender equality has become better organized at the transnational level, mobilizing a dispersed set of state and non-state actors, and is becoming more successful in halting the progress of women’s rights. I argue that the position of oppositional actors vis-à-vis women rights activism appears to be strengthened by two recent political developments: democratic backsliding and the closure of civic space. Some preliminary findings show how these interrelated developments lead to an erosion of women’s rights at the national level. Governments use low key tactics to dismantle institutional and implementation arrangements and sideline women’s organisations. Next, I explore the implications of these developments for gender equality norms at the national and international level. The active strategy of counter norming adopted by conservative and religious state and non-state actors, designed to circumvent and also undermine Western norms, is increasingly successful. In addition to this, the threatened position of domestic actors monitoring compliance of international treaties, makes the chances of backsliding on international commitments much higher.
How do international women’s rights norms become effective in domestic contexts?
2006
Introduction 1. How to combine International Relations and feminist theories-epistemological considerations 1.1 Paradigms and epistemological debates in IR theorizing 1.2 The "radical reinterpretation of tradition" as source of feminist theory building 2. Theoretical pe rspectives on CEDAW: International regimes, global norm diffusion, and feminist transnationalism 2.1 International rule-formation and national adherence: Constructivist approaches in regime theory and research on domestic compliance 2.1.1 What is an international regime? 2.1.2 Human Rights regimes: The special case 2.1.3 Perspectives on regimes 2.1.3.1 Stages of regime building and operation 2.1.3.2 Intersubjective interpretations and learning processes 2.1.3.3 Regimes within the broader context of international society 2.1.3.4 Regimes constructing an intersubjective web of meaning 2.1.3.5 International treaties as concrete mechanisms of "we-ness" 2.1.4 Constructivist regime theory under scrutiny-final critical remarks 2.2 Human rights and global norm diffusion: the concepts of transnational networks and advocacy coalitions 2.2.1 Concepts of global norms and the process of their diffusion 2.2.2 Domestic dynamics reacting to global norms 2.2.3 Who brings domestic and international norms together? The power of transnational activism 2.3 Transnational discourses and practices on gender equality-feminist interpretations of international cooperation and global norms 2.3.1 International Cooperation under Feminist Eyes 2.3.2 Transnational feminism in theory and practice 2.3.3 Concrete Features of Transnational Feminist Networks 2.3.4 Global norms seen from "bottom up"-a transnational feminist perspective 2.4 Summary of theoretical discussion 3. CEDAW as a network structure-applied research methods 3.1 The "web of meaning" around CEDAW traced in multilevel analysis 3.2 Document analysis, expert interviews, and participant observation-description of applied research methods 3.2.1 Document analysis: the interpretation of written texts within broader discourses 3.2.2 Expert interviews: exclusive knowledge, competent assessment 3.2.3 Participant observation: detailed description, new questions, access to experts 3.3 Applied Methods in Summary 4. The formation of CEDAW: Intergovernmental negotiations within the multilateral context of the United Nations 4.1 The UN Context 4.1.1 Organizational structures: the tension between multilateralism and intergovernmentalism 4.1.2 Women's issues and multilateral agenda setting 4.1.2.1 Early consciousness-raising regarding the "woman question" 4.1.2.2 From legal status to socioeconomic rights for women 4.1.2.3 Transforming the "woman question"-consequences of the United Nations Decade for Women 4.1.3 The development of human rights standards: a gender-blind project? 4.1.3.1 The discursive gender-bias of human rights 4.1.3.2 The operational gender-bias in the UN human rights system 4.2 The emergence of CEDAW: linking "women" and "rights" 4.2.1 Starting the debate: The drafting process of the Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women 4.
Editors' Introduction* Gender Justice, Development, and Rights
The 1990s were a landmark in the international human rights movement and saw many positive changes in women's rights as well as in human rights more broadly. This collection of theoretical and empirical studies reflects on these gains, and on the significance accorded in international policy to issues of rights and democracy in the post-Cold War era. It engages with some of the most pressing and contested of contemporary issues—neo-liberal policies, democracy and multiculturalism—and in so doing invites debate on the nature of liberalism itself in an epoch that has seen its global ascendancy. These issues are addressed here through two optics which cast contemporary liberalism in a distinctive light. First, it applies a " gender lens " to the analysis of political and policy processes and by deploying the insights gained from feminist theory, this volume provides a gendered account of the ways in which liberal rights, and ideas of democracy and justice have been absorbed into the political agendas of women's movements and states. Second, the case studies contribute a cross-cultural dimension to the analysis of modern forms of rule by examining the ways in which liberalism—the dominant value system in the modern world—both exists in, and is resisted in diverse cultural settings. The twelve chapters—whether theoretical and general, or case studies of particular countries—reflect on a key moment in international policy-making. The collapse of authoritarian regimes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, in Latin America and other parts of the world, gave issues of rights and democracy a major impulse, and simultaneously revitalised debates over development policy. The cluster of UN summits held in the 1990s provided NGOs with a public forum and stimulated debate, both domestic and international, over policy. In these various policy arenas, women's movements and their representatives were active participants. The decade saw the growing size and influence of an international women's movement, one linked through regional and international networks and able to collaborate on issues of policy and agenda setting. At the same time, the return to civilian rule in many previously authoritarian states presented women's movements with an opportunity to press for political and legal reform at the national level. By the end of the decade all but a handful of the world's states had signed up to the proposals for gender equity contained in the Beijing Platform for Action, and to the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), one of the most significant bodies of international law pertaining to women. 1 Five years later in 1995 in the mid-term review summits, many governments claimed to have put in place policies that were achieving positive results. Quota systems had 1 PAGE 37 1The authors are grateful to Yusuf Bangura and three anonymous referees of OUP for their comments on an earlier draft. The United States however has not signed up to CEDAW. See Tripp (this volume).
Human rights instruments have enabled women's movements to access a normative and analytic framework for fighting discrimination, and rights discourses have been deployed to legitimise women's demands for social and economic rights, political representation and well-being. Maxine Molyneux spoke to Deniz Kandiyoti about the new trends and threats to women's rights and UN frameworks. Deniz Kandiyoti: As we enter 2013, we are assailed daily by news of violence against women, as well as sharp popular reactions against these incidents. Yet the climate for a level headed discussion of gender equality and women's rights seems more unfavourable than ever at the international, regional and national levels. Shall we start with what is happening at the international level? Maxine Molyneux: Yes, there are certainly some very worrying trends. We are at some distance from the high period of liberal internationalism in terms of human rights and democracy. The spirit of optimism that accompanied both the successive waves of democratisation in various parts of the world, and the gains made by the international women's movement during the Beijing process, had drained away by the latter half of the 1990s, and even more so after 9/11 when women's rights were caught up in the so-called 'war on terror'. While almost all governments have signed up to UN frameworks on women's rights, and there have been many positive changes as a result, there has also been growing resistance to rights agendas and diminishing trans-national activism in support of women's rights. One indication of this was the passing without notice of the Beijing Plus Ten (B+10) events in March 2005 in marked contrast to the Fourth World Women's Conference in 1995 held in Beijing which was attended by more than 30,000 participants. No full-scale international conference could be contemplated for B+10 for fear of risking the gains won in Beijing and strenuously defended in the Beijing Plus Five negotiations in 2000. B+10 was confined to an intergovernmental meeting where the mood was defensive, and the main achievement – an important one-was to reaffirm the broad consensus encoded in the Platform for Action approved ten years earlier. And there are now concerns about holding a 5th Women's World Conference in case those gains are overturned. What explains these changes? Two things are significant here: one is that there has been a critical reassessment of the Beijing process itself, with doubts variously expressed as to its representivity, the content of its proposals, and the universalist pretensions of the overall project. All these questions can be and should be debated, but ultimately there may be no agreement on core values. The strongest critiques of international rights frameworks coming from within the relative safety of the Western liberal democracies are joined by positions allied with varieties of anti-imperialist, religious and/or conservative positions and these are less interested in discussion than in rejecting the very premise of universal rights. So where these ideas have influence, they have helped to weaken commitment and have divided activists. The second important factor is one far less widely analysed and discussed in these debates over human rights-namely the growing influence of illiberal, religious and conservative forces worldwide. In recent decades these became increasingly effective in the battleground over women's rights and at the very moment when women's movements were losing their vitality, purpose and leadership. It is striking that in contrast to the outpouring of critiques of feminism, trans-national women's movements and advocacy, there has been so little commentary on, or analysis of, the trans-nationalization of conservative forces and their international alliances, often but not always religious in character, mobilizing against women's rights.
Global Discourse, 2018
This article weaves together insights from political science, human rights scholarship, feminist legal theory, and other critical perspectives to explore the limits of global legalism as a primary mechanism for promoting women's rights. Specifically, it examines international human rights law governing women's rights to consider the limitations of law as a mechanism for improving the status of women globally. Although its development has been prolific, formal international human rights law is characterized by a significant gap between aspirational rhetoric and the reality of limited implementation and enforcement. This gap between rhetoric and reality demonstrates the limitations of a universalistic legal framework as a mechanism for promoting significant gains for women's equality and rights. The article investigates the limitations of international human rights law as a tool for promoting women's rights through a close examination of human rights treaty systems, sp...
International Human Rights of Women, 2019
“Women’s Rights as Human Rights: Toward a Re-Vision of Human Rights,” by Charlotte Bunch (published in Human Rights Quarterly in 1990), is considered a classic text in the field of women’s human rights. In it, Bunch set out her arguments about the importance of connecting women’s rights to human rights in theory and practice and what prevented recognition of women’s rights as human rights. This chapter revisits Bunch’s 1990 article to explore continuity and change in how gender and women’s human rights are viewed 25 years after the UN World Conference on Human Rights (Vienna 1993) declared that “the human rights of women … are an inalienable, integral and indivisible part of universal human rights’. The chapter is organized around the responses given by Bunch to a series of questions about the continued relevance of the ideas developed in ‘Women’s Rights as Human Rights” regarding, for example, the current status of human rights as a global ethical and political vision compared to 1990; the nature of the excuses given for inaction on the human rights of women, then and now; and the extent to which the international human rights community has fulfilled its promise in 1993 to prioritize the human rights of women, especially by addressing gender-based violence.
International Human Rights of Women,, 2019
This chapter reviews the many achievements of the last 25 years − expressed in the proliferation of laws, norms, and mechanisms − to advance the human rights of women and LGBTQI people and considers in five subsections what is required to achieve their implementation. First, it appraises the major achievement of ending the invisibility of myriad forms of gender-based violence (GBV) and expanding the contexts in which GBV is understood as a complex violation of human rights and, in some situations, a war crime and crime against humanity. Second, it traces a growing consensus that implementation of the human rights of women is inextricable from putting into practice recognition of the indivisibility of human rights. Third, it considers fresh discussions of the supposed binary of “universal human rights” versus and “culture,” concluding that the construct denies the gender harms perpetuated by patriarchal cultures across “the West” and distracts attention from the imperative that human rights implementation must be context-specific in every part of the world. Fourth, it is argued, any twenty-first-century agenda for the human rights of women must proceed from a critical, intersectional perspective – one that recognizes that different women and LGBTQI people experience gender-based disadvantage or oppression differently. Moreover, the concepts of intersectionality and vulnerability deployed in this endeavor must focus on the state and non-state actions required to create conditions that ameliorate vulnerability, and under which differently situated women can access and enjoy their human rights. Finally, implementation of commitments to the human rights of women must address root causes – that is, seek to transform the institutions and structural conditions that perpetuate the disadvantages and unequal power relations that foster vulnerability to abuses of human rights in the first place.