Human Rights are Women's Right
Mona H. AL-rahe
INTRODUCTION
Eren Keskin is a lawyer and a human rights activist in Turkey.Because she has defended alleged members of the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK), the Kurdish armed group in conflict with the government, she has been repeatedly harassed. The harassment includes death threat" We are measuring your coffin'' went one telephone message- being shot at, physical assault by a police officer and arbitrary detention and ill-treatment to prevent her doing her job. Eren Keskin also faces a sentence of two years' imprisonment for 'separatist propaganda' because she sent a message to the Belgian parliament about the conflict in southeastern Turkey.
Agathe Uwilingiyimana was one of the first reported victims of the mass slaughter in Rwanda in April 1994. She was the country's Prime Minister. She was killed by members of the Presidential Guard while sheltering in the United Nations Development Programme) UNDP) compound in Kigali, Rwanda's capital city. Her killing and that of other government ministers appears to have been planned well in advance by the military.
Angelica Mendoza de Ascarza, aged 70, has recently emerged from two years in hiding in Peru. She is the president of the National Association of Relatives of the Kidnapped, Detained and Disappeared, of whom there are several thousand in Peru. In September 1992 Angelica Mendoza's name appeared on a list of alleged supporters of the armed opposition, which was presented to the press by Peru's President Alberto Fujimori. A warrant was issued for her arrest; she went into hiding and began the fight to clear her name. In mid-1993 Peru's higher court ruled that there was no evidence to back the accusation against her. This ruling was upheld in September 1994; in the meantime Angelica Mendoza lived in fear of her life.
Aung San Suu Kyi has been under house arrest in Myanmar for almost six years because she dared to oppose the government. The party she co-founded in 1988, the National League for Democracy, won a landslide victory in the May 1990 elections when she was already in detention. The military government refused to recognize the results and arrested most of the party's leaders. She has never been tried. Her name and detention became internationally known in1991 when she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
In February 1994 Dr Homa Darabi went to one of the busiest streets in Tehran, Iran's capital city, tore off her headscarf and chador, poured petrol over her body and then set herself on fire. As the flames engulfed her she shouted: 'Down with tyranny, long live freedom, long live Iran.' Professor of Child Psychiatry at Tehran's National University, she had been persistently harassed by the security forces for failing to follow the strict Islamic dress code, culminating in her dismissal in December 1991. A talented and widely respected professional was thus forced into a life of inactivity. She chose to die instead and to make her death a protest for justice and freedom.
A mother lies dead, her hands stretched towards her child, in the Gama refugee camp, on the border betw6lln Zaire und Rwanda. As many as ulle million people were massacred in Rwanda following /he death of Presjdenl Habyarimana in April 1994. By August mare than a million people had fled the country- © JennyMatthews
These five women, from the five regions of the world, are or were exemplary women of the 1990s. They symbolize the millions of women for whom this decade has meant terror, deprivation and the imperative of fighting for justice, but whose stories have been largely hidden from history. Today, what unites women international- transcending class, race, culture, religion, nationality and ethnic origin, is their vulnerability to the denial and violation of their fundamental human rights, and their dedicated efforts to claim those rights.
Women are the invisible victims of the 1990s, the faceless masses filling the backgrounds on the canvases of terror and hardship. Most of the casualties of war are women and children; most of the world's refugees and displaced people are women and children; most of the world's poor are women and children. Most of these women are struggling to care for and protect most of these children. Human rights violations against women are rampant partly because they remain largely hidden.
The great failure of the world's community of governments is not just that they have been unable to guarantee women their social, economic and cultural rights women's right to peace, development and equality is the theme of the forthcoming UN World Conference on Women it is that they have been unable to prevent and in some cases have sanctioned the violation of women's civil and political rights: the rights not to be tortured, killed, made to"disappear', arbitrarily detained or imprisoned. Certain violations, such as rape by government agents, are primarily directed at women.
The particular tragedies of women within the larger horrors of Bosnia-Herzegovina since 1992 and Rwanda in 1994 have been a powerful reminder of how vulnerable women and their families are when war breaks out. They have also demonstrated that the deliberate violation of the human rights of women is a central component of military strategy in all parts of the world. Governments, who in December 1993 adopted the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women, are responsible for appalling levels of violence against women.
Responsibility for abuses against women goes beyond governments. The growth of nationalist, secessionist and ethnic conflicts which threaten all regions of the world with violence and bloodshed has seen armed opposition groups adopt similar methods of repression and terror in pursuit of their goals. Women have been killed, raped, ill-treated or taken hostage by armed opposition groups in all regions of the world.
Women are in double jeopardy. Discriminated against as women, they are also as likely as men, if not more so, to become victims of human rights violations. Few countries treat their women as well as their men. Despite moves to introduce equality for women on the legislative and political front, discrimination on grounds of gender remains an international reality. An Inter-Parliamentary Union Survey of 96 national parliaments, published in 1991, found that just 11 per cent of their members were women. While women are under-represented in national and international decision-making structures, they are over-represented among the victims of rights abuse.
Discrimination is a deadly disease. More women and girl-children die each day from various forms of gender-based discrimination and violence than from any other type of human rights abuse. Every year, according to the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), more than a million infant girls die because they are born female. Every year, because of discrimination, millions of women are mutilated, battered to death, burned alive, stripped of their legal rights, and bought and sold in an unacknowledged but international trade in slaves for domestic or sexual purposes. Because of their gender women are at risk of a range of violent abuses by private organizations and individuals.
Universal and indivisible
The UN Declaration prohibiting violence against women calls for the universal application to women of the rights and principles with regard to equality, security, liberty, integrity and dignity of all human persons'. All governments are morally obliged to uphold this Declaration. They are also legally bound by international human rights treaties not to violate the fundamental human rights of their citizens. Many governments breach these treaties with impunity, some even reject the basic principle that human rights standards are universal standards which apply at all times in all situations and contexts.
The universality of human rights is being undermined by governments who argue that human rights must be subject to the interests of national security, economic strategy and local traditions. When it comes to women's human rights, many governments take a particularly restrictive view.
The issue of a government's 'right' to interpret human rights according to its own philosophy or circumstances has emerged in the preparatory process for the Fourth UN World Conference on Women, to be held in the Chinese capital Beijing in September .1995The first of a series of regional preparatory meetings for the conference took place in Jakarta, Indonesia, in June 1994. The Jakarta Declaration, although it upholds the universality and indivisibility of women's human rights, supports 'the national competence of all countries to formulate, adopt and implement their respective policies on the advancement of women, mindful of their cultures, values and traditions, as well as their social, economic and political conditions'.
This qualification is a powerful signal to the international human rights movement that asserting the universality of human rights may pose a formidable challenge in the run-up to the UN World Conference on Women. Anyone in doubt over whether the priorities of a particular government should take precedence over the collective will of the international community should ask themselves one simple question: what does the victim think? Would the woman who is raped and murdered in Indonesia for standing up for workers' rights consider this is a justifiable price to pay for a nation's 'right' to interpret human rights according to local economic conditions? Does the woman who is flogged in Sudan for wearing trousers feel that this is a culturally acceptable punishment? Individual governments do not have the authority to define what constitutes a fundamental human right or who may enjoy that right.
Women's rights are human rights and human rights are not only universal, they are also indivisible. A woman who is arbitrarily detained, tortured, killed, made to 'disappear' or jailed after an unfair trial has no chance of exercising her social, economic and cultural rights. Women who work to promote development, equality and other internationally recognized rights, in many countries, often face such grave threats to their civil and political rights that claiming their social, economic and cultural rights is impossible. Without respect for women's fundamental human rights, the themes of the UN World Conference on Women women's rights to peace, equality and development are unattainable.
A woman forced to flee her home in the East Rand township of Thokoza, South Africa, in Augusl 1993. Women and their dependent children make up most of the world's refugees and displaced people. Many of those forced to flee from war and conflicl have become displaced; they are effectively refugees in their own countries. ©Ken Oosterbroektrhe
A Guatemalan girl in the El Porvenir Refugee Camp in Chiapas, Mexico. By the beginning of 1994 the UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimated that the tolal number of refugees worldwide was almost 20 miJljon. Many of /he countries where large refugee populations sought protection are among the world's poorest, © HowardJ. Davies
Challenges for human rights activists
The occasion of the UN Conference on Women offers both a focal point for campaigning on women's human rights in general and an opportunity to press governments attending the conference to guarantee that women's human rights are placed at the very heart of that meeting and the actions it takes. It is the task of the international human rights movement to ensure that all the human rights of women civil and political, as well as social, economic and cultural are upheld.
We want governments not simply to give their assent to the need to protect and promote women's human rights in yet another piece of paper. If it is to achieve anything, the conference must be more than just another occasion for fine rhetoric and conviviality. It must be a genuine catalyst for action and the swift delivery of real protection.
One of the most important goals in the campaign for women's human rights is to win concrete support for the principle that human rights are universal and indivisible. The international human rights movement faces other challenges. It must ensure that its message human rights are women's right is available to all, and crucially to women who have not enjoyed the right to education. Rates of illiteracy are far higher among women than men. It must ensure that women's human rights are respected and advanced within its own ranks and integrated in its research and its campaigns. Above all, the international human rights movement must develop preventive techniques and actions which could help stop violations of women's human rights.
Most of the advances which women have made towards claiming their rights have been the result of grass-roots campaigning, usually by independent women's rights organizations. If it is serious about preventing human rights violations against women, the international human rights movement must work in partnership with these organizations, and contribute to the worldwide campaign for women's human rights from its own area of expertise.
Violence against women
The UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women defines 'violence against women' as encompassing, in addition to violence perpetrated by the state, physical, sexual and psychological violence in the family, including battering, sexual abuse of female children in the household, dowry-related violence, marital rape, female genital mutilation and other traditional practices harmful to women, non-spousal violence and violence related to exploitation; physical, sexual and psychological violence occurring within the general community, including rape, sexual abuse, sexual harassment and intimidation at work, in educational institutions and elsewhere, trafficking in women and forced prostitution.
A peasant woman of the Dai ethnic minority in Yunnan province, China, sentenced to death for drug.trafficking. She is being allowed to see her husband for the last time. She sits with her baby san on her knee, peeling him un orange, while her husband looks on from behind the police line. She was shot shortly afterwards. There is no evidence that the death penalty is a deterrent to drug-trafficking. There is plenty of evidence that most of those arrested, sentenced to death and executed for drug.trafficking are minor actors in the drug trude. © Next, Hong Kong
The extent and severity of such practices must be recognized if we are fully to address the context in which human rights violations against women occur.
Domestic violence, for example, is an international problem. In most of the world's countries domestic violence is the cause of most violent attacks on women. In many countries it remains the main source of violence against women, even when prohibited by law. In several countries, men have the right to beat their wives, in many they may do so without fear of punishment. In countless other countries, domestic violence is not treated seriously. The problem of domestic violence crosses borders, cultures and classes.
Domestic violence in the context of dowry disputes is a particularly serious problem in India, especially in the north of the country. Dowry deaths are also reported among immigrant communities outside India, in the United Kingdom, for example. The legislation dealing with the protection of women's rights in India is extensive. However, there is a huge gap between women's rights in law and women's practical experience. Official statistics make shocking reading. In 1992 the number of reported 'dowry deaths' was 4,785; in 1993 some 5,000 women were reported to have died as a result of disputes involving dowries.
As a result of female genital mutilation, an estimated 110 million women suffer serious, even life-threatening, injuries throughout their adult lives. Female genital mutilation is a traditional practice which many of these women underwent as teenagers or children, some even as infants. The scale of the practice is enormous; around two million girls are mutilated every year (see Appendix).
Female genital mutilation occurs in some 20 countries in Africa, parts of Asia and the Middle East, and in immigrant communities in other regions, for example, Europe. For many years now, African women have been in the forefront of the campaign to eradicate female genital mutilation. Participants from 20 African countries, as well as representatives of international organizations, attending a 1984 seminar in Dakar on 'Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children' recommended that the practice be abolished and that 'in order to change existing attitudes and practice, strong education programmes should be developed and carried out on a constant basis'.
Thousands of women and girl-children have fallen victim to the trade in sexual and domestic slaves. This international industry exists with the knowledge and sometimes acquiescence of governments in whose countries it takes place. Reports of trafficking in women and girl-children have come from a number of countries, including Brazil, Myanmar (Burma), Sudan and Thailand. In China, trafficking in women as brides or as slave labour in the rural areas has been reported in recent years. During 1993, according to the Chinese Ministry of Public Security, police handled 15,000 cases of the sale of women or children.
In numerous countries, it is activists against the many abuses encompassed by the Declaration who have been threatened, imprisoned, tortured, made to 'disappear' and killed by agents of the same governments who in Geneva, New York or Vienna agree fine-sounding prohibitions of such actions. Governments must be held to their obligations if this international standard is not to become one more double standard.
Campaigning for women's human rights
This report is one of Amnesty International's contributions to worldwide campaigning for women's human rights, which in 1995 will have its focal point at the UN World Conference on Women. The report highlights many aspects of the work which must be done if we are indeed to have 'Equality by the Year 2000" the UN's objective. The report focuses on the vulnerability of women when war breaks out, and the role women have played in promoting human rights and campaigning for the victims of violations. It also examines situations in which women are at particular risk of human rights abuse.
Amnesty International's goal is to contribute to the observance throughout the world of the human rights set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). In pursuing this goal Amnesty International works to promote in general all the human rights enshrined in the UDHR and other international standards, through human rights education programs and campaigning for ratification of human rights treaties. At a minimum, the UDHR obliges governments to eradicate practices which are abusive and discriminatory of women. Few governments have taken this fundamental duty seriously.
Amnesty International's specific mandate for action is to oppose a set of grave violations of the rights to freedom of expression and freedom from discrimination, and of the right to physical and mental integrity. In particular, Amnesty International opposes arbitrary detention on political grounds, believing that no one should be imprisoned as a prisoner of conscience and that no political prisoner should be imprisoned without a prompt and fair trial. Amnesty International also takes action to oppose torture, the death penalty, extrajudicial executions and other forms of arbitrary killing, and 'disappearances'. This report documents the global extent and often systematic perpetration of these violations against women.
Amnesty International believes that governments are not only obliged not to violate women's human rights; they are obliged to promote and protect those rights. We campaign for governments to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights as well as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).
Workers on strike at the PT Sumito, Sidaorjo East Jllva, in 1993. Factory workers suffer terrible exploitation in Indonesia where women take home on overage half the male wQge .Despite heQvy restrictions on the right to strike and organize, Indonesia hQS seen a rising tide of industrial unrest in recent years.
Amnesty International acknowledges the extent and gravity of abuses against women such as domestic violence, genital mutilation, forced prostitution and other violent acts committed by private individuals and organizations. Amnesty International also acknowledges the important work by individuals and other organizations against such abuses. However, Amnesty International's mandate for action is directed at governments and armed political groups, not private individuals and organizations and therefore does not include such abuses.
We also urge governments who are seriously committed to ending discrimination and violence against women (in both the public and private spheres), to adopt and fund comprehensive policies for widespread education and consciousness-raising about all women's human rights issues. When governments knowingly tolerate abuses such as domestic violence, female genital mutilation or trafficking in sexual slaves, as several do, the gap between what is public and what is private narrows.
A way forward
In adopting the 1993 Declaration prohibiting violence against women, the UN General Assembly welcomed 'the role that women's movements have played in drawing increasing attention to the nature, severity and magnitude of the problem of violence against women'.
The past two decades have seen women's organizations spring up around the world. Some work for their 'disappeared' relatives; some are community activists, fighting for basic rights such as freedom from want; some are lawyers seeking justice for the unrepresented; some campaign against torture, some against domestic violence, some for equal treatment at work or for land rights and access to credit.
This wave of courage, creativity and commitment has all too often met a wall of government indifference and sometimes government repression of the cruellest kind. Few governments recognize the work of women's human rights organizations as a legitimate exercise of fundamental civil and political rights.
In 1993 the UN unequivocally stated that women's rights were human rights. The Declaration of the UN World Conference on Human Rights held in Vienna in June 1993 states: 'The human rights of women and of the girl-child are an inalienable, integral and indivisible part of universal human rights.' With the encouragement of the Conference the UN Commission on Human Rights appointed, in March 1994 a UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women. A few months after the conference, in December 1993, the UN adopted the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women.
Yet the UN resolution to hold this conference, the first on human rights in 25 years, had made no mention of women, or of gender-based abuses. What made the difference, and forced women's human rights on to the agenda in Vienna, was the collective action of women in the years and months leading up to the conference. As one activist put it: 'The Conference [on Human Rights] was part of a continuing process to improve women's rights, which is precisely why women targeted it as an important place to be present and to be heard. And we were.
Women's voices can be heard all over the world: demanding justice, protesting against discrimination, claiming rights, mourning dead husbands and comforting raped daughters. The job of the human rights movement is to make governments listen and ensure that they take action to protect and promote women's human rights.
