“Human rights are not women’s rights” Discuss.

Although most of the International conventions provide human rights section for both men and women, in the real world women’s human rights are constantly being violated. Women have the right to political and religious freedom of expression, freedom from torture or slavery, access to education, access to heath provision and the civil privileges of citizens. Though these are their inherent rights, they are being denied. As Kerr argued, so pervasive and systemic are the human rights abuses against women that they are regarded as part of the natural order. (Kerr, 1993, 3) At the start, the essay will try to examine the definition of human rights particularly civil and political rights according to different international conventions. In addition, the extent of violation of human rights against women globally as well as locally will be looked at. Pakistan and Kuwait – these two developing countries will be used as case study. The main arguments the essay will try to put forward is that current human rights conventions are not providing enough security to the women to enjoy their human rights by explaining the weaknesses of the International organisations, in addition with that, some of the third world governments are also perpetuating the constant violation of women’s civil and political rights in their countries. In order to strengthen the argument on governments’ roles in developing countries, the essay will examine in details the violation of civil and political rights in Pakistan and Kuwait.

There are universally agreed human rights laws and conventions such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which promise rights and freedoms to all people. The declaration on Human Rights has created a hierarchy of rights, putting a priority on civil and political rights. These are assumed to be easily defined by law, recognized by consensus internationally and monitored by the UN Human Rights Commission. In addition, human rights declarations are universally recognized as contracts between the state and its peoples. (Kerr, 1993, 4-5) Therefore, it is vital to provide the definition of civil and political rights in terms of universally recognised conventions. Civil rights are those legal protections granted to citizens under the jurisdiction of the civil law of a state. Civil rights may include the right to vote, right to property, right to bear arms, right to free speech, right to privacy, right to associate, etc. (http://www.wordiq.com) According to Universal Declaration of Human Rights, these rights include protection from slavery and torture (article 4 & 5), access to legal procedures (article 6-12), allowing mobility (article 13-15) etc. (www.dsca.mil/diils/013f%20Universal%20Human%20Rights.ppt)

In terms of political rights, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) is an important international treaty that upholds the importance of women's involvement in the political machinery of State Parties. The United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women reports that as of September 30, 2003, 174 countries or 90 percent of the members of the United Nations have become party to the Convention. Articles 2 to 4 of the CEDAW, call on State Parties to actively pursue the elimination of discrimination in women's political participation through legal and temporary special measures. Article 7 of the CEDAW instructs State Parties to "take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women in the political and public life of the country.” It ensures women, "on equal terms with men, the right: (a) To vote in all elections and public referendum and to be eligible for election to all publicly elected bodies; (b) To participate in the formulation of government policy and the implementation thereof and to hold public office and perform all public functions at all levels of government; and, (c) To participate in non-governmental organisations and associations concerned with the public and political life of the country.(http://www.whrnet.org)

In terms of civil and political rights, the state of women in the world is still inconsistent in comparison to men. The assessment made by the United Nations Development Program for the Beijing Plus Five verifies that women are still greatly under-represented in political and bureaucratic posts around the world. The UNDP reported that women "are nowhere near half of the decision-making structures. The threshold of 30 percent advocated by the UNDP Human Development Report, as a prelude to the 50 percent is still a dream for most women" (UNDP, 1999). The Inter-Parliamentary Union's monitor pegs at 15.2 percent the total number of women in parliaments. (http://www.whrnet.org/)

Moreover, the basic facts are not in dispute: worldwide today women represent only one in seven parliamentarians, one in ten cabinet ministers, and, at the apex of power, one in twenty Heads of State or Government (IPU2000a, UN 2000). Projections based on the current pace of global change indicate that women will achieve parity in parliaments a century from now. (www.ksg.harvard.edu)

As it can be seen women around the world in particular, developing world are more or less deprived from their civil and political rights, this essay will try to concentrate on developing world by providing emphasis on Pakistan and Kuwait. Before going through different country experience of human rights, some of the reasons of continuous violations of women’s rights will be looked at. In doing so, weaknesses of the international conventions will be discussed.

Theoretically, women have never been excluded from the UN's concept of human rights. The 1945 UN Charter recognizes the equal rights of men and women and this principle has been maintained in the UN's formulations of human rights ever since. However, several factors have prevented women from enjoying the promises made to them. Human rights are often described as the rights that everyone has equally by virtue of their humanity. This assumes that all humanity shares a common experience and common needs. It therefore excludes women's needs for specific rights, or the specific application of human rights. The conventions have failed to take account of their biological difference and the discrimination they may face in their society. (http://web.amnesty.org) For example, women in Pakistan are facing discriminatory behaviour by government officials such as police, and various social actors such as their family members, most of the time male members, their tribal leaders, etc. They are being tortured in different ways such as rape, flogging, and cutting out ears and noses and so on. Women are more likely to receive harsh punishments for the same offences done by men. One of the prominent human rights lawyer Asma Jahangir argues that, most of the time all this discriminatory acts are overlooked by the government of Pakistan. (http://www.irinnews.org) It seems that it has been also overlooked by the international conventions as its definition of human rights lacks the part assuring rights based on biological difference.

Conventions have also failed to some extent in providing women with sufficient opportunities to participate in civil and political activities. As Charlesworth (1995) points out that woman as a group have in many respects been excluded in the discourses of the three generations of human rights. The first generation of rights lays emphasis on civil and political rights. These rights most of the time protect men not women. As women are treated differently in their private arena, it is more likely that they are also treated discriminatorily in public arena. In particular, in developing countries, the political participation of women is very low. They are not encouraged to actively contribute to various civil and political areas. Sometimes laws are made to deny women their basic human rights such as civil and political rights. (( Pillai & Wang, 1999, p.1-5)
For example, women in Kuwait are not allowed to vote in elections. Kuwait's 1962 constitution grants equal rights to men and women, but an election law of the same year allows only men over 21 to exercise political rights. Although Kuwait has ratified the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), the Government made reservations to both treaties noting that the treaties are inconsistent with Article 1 of its voting law, which denies women suffrage. In March 2000, the United Nations Human Rights Committee, which reviews implementation by governments of their obligations under the ICCPR, urged the government of Kuwait to take all the necessary steps to ensure to women the right to vote and to be elected on equal footing with men, in accordance with articles 25 and 26 of the Covenant." However, very little progress has been made which shows the weaknesses of international conventions in handling the problem with seriousness. (http://www.equalitynow.org)

Another factor that has impeded the full integration of women's human rights into international human rights law is the premise that the law should mediate between the "governing" and the "governed". However, the "governing" traditionally occupy the public sphere of society -- the political, legal, social, economic, military, security and police institutions -- which is populated largely by men, while women are traditionally enclosed within the private sphere of the home and the family. (http://web.amnesty.org) Doctrines of privacy and protection of the family, in international as well as national law, have reinforced this public/private demarcation. The demarcation means that resources traditionally needed by women in their role as child-bearers and organizers of the household are accessible primarily in the public sphere which is mostly dominated by men, while women's activities are centred on the private sphere of the home and family. Charlesworth (1995) argues that human rights are inherently biased against women. This is due to the fact that human rights are defined, targeted and implemented for those who participate in the public spheres of the society and the economy. The discrimination and mistreatment that women suffer in the private sphere, at the family level, are not considered appropriate for intervention by human rights groups and activists. The lower status of women within family is a primary cause of widespread public apathy toward granting equal rights for women and men.
( Pillai & Wang, 1999, p.3-6)

The UN bodies’ organisational structure is another cause of not regarding women’s rights as human rights. The UN bodies responsible for human rights and for women, particularly the Commission on Human Rights and the Commission on the Status of Women, have for most of their existence failed to address adequately the human rights of women. Since their establishment in 1946 and 1947 respectively, they have worked separately, each in isolation from the other, evolving different practices and priorities. They are both accountable to the same UN hierarchy, yet that hierarchy has done little to integrate their work. It is clear that if the UN's work on women's human rights is to be effective, its human rights institutions must address women's issues, and its women's institutions must address human rights issues. (http://web.amnesty.org)

As one human rights instrument, the United Nations Conventions on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), is explicitly intended to secure rights for women. Adopted in 1979 by the UN General Assembly, it specifically acknowledges the extensive discrimination against women that continues to exist. Despite the value and merit of the CEDAW convention and its ratification by 174 governments (up to 2003), it has received little active support. State parties have lodged 80 substantive reservations to it – the highest number for any international convention. Meanwhile, unlike its affiliate, the Human Rights Committee, the CEDAW monitoring committee lacks the staff and money required to complete its work and the authority to investigate individual or group claims violations. (Kerr, 1993)

Although some of the international treaties and standards are specific to women, such as the Women's Convention, the Optional Protocol to the Women's Convention, and the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women (CEDAW), each of the human rights treaties and the whole framework of human rights apply to, and are essential, for the realisation of women's human rights. Because of their historical subordination, many laws, policies and practices constrain women's lives and hinder their full participation in public life. (http://web.amnesty.org) Thus women often face abuses not only at the hands of state officials but at the hands of individuals known to them as employers, partners, husbands, family members or neighbours. Therefore, applying international human rights law without understanding the responsibility of the state for the abuses by these private actors simply robs women of protection and of remedies for the majority of abuses against them. It has been argued that human rights law in not silent on these abuses. It clearly points to a positive responsibility on the part of the state. However, this responsibility has too often been overlooked and too often misunderstood or simply not enforced.

Moreover, though UDHR (Universal Declaration of Human Rights) has supported the universality and indivisibility of all human rights for everyone; it has failed to address the problem of ‘traditional’ and ‘cultural’ justification of violation of women’s rights. (http://web.amnesty.org) All human rights should be enjoyed by all people, at all times, and no one set of rights should be enjoyed at the expense of others. This view has been reaffirmed countless times by the international community, including at the UN conferences in Vienna and Beijing. Yet arguments are still being raised to challenge this core principle of human rights. Detractors claim that where local traditions or values are at odds with internationally accepted human rights, local traditions should take precedence. This view fails to recognize that cultural practices are sometimes both the context of human rights violations and the justification for them. Moreover, what is frequently termed "culture" or "tradition" often shapes and circumscribes women's lives in a way that subordinates women and discriminates against them. The rejection of the universality of all human rights can thus become a justification for systematically denying women's civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights -- in the name of cultural values premised on unequal power relations between men and women. (http://web.amnesty.org)

As the essay has discussed the various weaknesses of the international conventions in regarding women’s rights as human rights, now governments’ roles in violation of women’s rights will be looked at in details.

Women in Third world courtiers are more removed from the state in all its manifestations that are Western women. This is because as Rai (1996) has argued, the state in the Third world is unable to provide the kind of safety network that the western liberal state does with its welfare provision. Third world states can be categorized as ‘weak’ states; women in these states do not become aware of many areas of state legislation and action. The dissemination of information about new legislation is extremely varied and patchy. (Rai & Lievesley, 1996, p.16-17) However, though some of them might be aware of their rights, still the rights can be violated by political parties. For example, though women in Pakistan unlike women in Kuwait are entitled to vote, their roles as political actors are violated to a great extent. Women’s groups in Pakistan are protesting against their harassment and discrimination as voters and election candidates, after a decision by political parties to bar them from contesting. In several parts of the deeply conservative North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and southern Punjab's tribal areas, political leaders continue to lobby successfully to prevent women from contesting elections or casting their votes. In the latest incident, five political parties joined hands in NWFP to keep women out of the forthcoming local body elections. Mainstream political parties, including the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Awami National Party (ANP) and the fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), has tried to blocked women's participation in the election. (http://www.oneworld.net)

Women show a very low rate of political participation statistically in Pakistan. In the 1993 general elections only four of the 217 seats in the National Assembly were won by women, including Benazir Bhutto, the only female prime minister, and her mother, Nusrat Bhutto. Two of the 87 seats in the Senate were won by women and one woman obtained a seat in the Punjab and one in the North West Frontier Province provincial assemblies. (http://www.amnesty.org)

Though most of the governments have ratified the UN convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, they are not undertaking any practical measures seriously. Thus ignoring women’s rights as human rights they are increasing women’s sufferings. Pakistan ratified the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in March 1996. (http://www.amnesty.org) Yet there is no sign that the authorities in Pakistan are taking serious measures to safeguard and protect the human rights of women. No steps have been taken to end explicit discrimination in law against women. Women continue to suffer arbitrary detention, often resulting in rape, which police and other security personnel commit with virtual impunity.

Moreover, illiteracy and exclusionary social practices further exacerbate the isolation from the processes of the state. Women in Pakistan have a very low literacy rate as women’s education deemed to be unnecessary in most of the rural parts of Pakistan. For example, in terms of illiteracy, 61.2% of Pakistani people are illiterate. 50.0% male illiteracy and 75.6% female illiteracy clearly shows women’s lack of education in Pakistan. (http://www.usd.edu) Pakistan government’s lack of seriousness in providing women with basic rights can be noticed here as the major factor responsible for the low rate of literacy in the country is generally described as the low allocation in the GNP for literacy promotion. (http://www.pakistanlink.com)

On the other hand, among the Gulf States and also in developing world, Kuwait has one of the highest female literacy rates and Kuwaiti women play an active and important role in the nation's economic life. Total literacy rate in Kuwait is 77.50% and Female/Male Ratio is 1.57 males for every Female. (http://www.kuwait-info.org) Yet Kuwait remains only one of two nations in the world where women have not gained the right to vote or stand for political office. In May 1999, the Emir of Kuwait, Sheikh Jaber Al Ahmned Al Sabah, issued a royal decree granting women complete political rights by the year 2003, after over 30 years of Kuwaiti women demanding suffrage. The decree was issued largely in response to the key role that women played in the national resistance movement during the Iraqi invasion in 1990-91. However, when the issue of women's suffrage has been brought to a vote in the all-male Kuwaiti parliament later that year, it was rejected by a narrow margin of 32-30 vote. (http://www.vitalvoices.org) Despite high literacy rate and active involvement in the national economic activity Kuwaiti women are denied of their political rights. One reason has been put forward by Ahmed Al-Baghdadi, head of the Political Science Department at Kuwait University who argues that opposition to women's political rights is basically a function of tribal, rather than religious considerations as in Kuwait tribal traditions are still a dominant part of the society. (http://weekly.ahram.org.eg)

Moreover, some governments try to overlook the violations of human rights of women due to pressure of patriarchal society. According to Rai, governments’ lack of political will to disturb traditional family values is one of the manifestations of the ‘weak’ patriarchal state. (Rai & Lievesley, 1996, 17) For example, Pakistani women faces lot of human rights violation by their partners, fathers, brothers, various state actors such as police, government officials and so on. As it is a highly patriarchal society, women are facing violation of their rights in their private and public life each and everyday. However, government is turning a blind eye as the ruling politicians and elites do not want to disturb the so called traditions and cultures which are deeply rooted in this patriarchal society.

Further, the lack of infrastructural power of the state means that its laws are altogether ignored in many parts of the country. So even though for example, the Indian women have constitutional rights of inheritance, divorce and maintenance, for example, the enforcement of these rights is at best patchy. (Rai & Lievesley, 1996) It can be seen in Pakistan where women are entitled to civil and political rights , yet most of the rural women are not aware of their rights due to lack of education and barriers in accessing necessary information.

Governments in the third world are also in the process of neglecting their relation with women, due to the fact that usually men act as representative of women in public arena .
As Georgina Ashworth (1993) notes, women are consequently ignored as their relationship with the state remains mediated by men, be they husbands, fathers, brothers or sons ‘who at the same time acquire their authority over women from the state or traditional political community.’ Most governments feel no responsibility for women as their citizens, but take every opportunity to exploit their labour. (Kerr, 1993)

So it contributes in violating women’s rights as human rights as women are not given the opportunity to deal directly with the state in order to acquire their rights. As a mediator, men are free to exploit women’s inability to access their rights directly.

Another factor that has contributed in the violation of women’s right is the double standard of USA in handling its policies regarding the international conventions. Although The United States is acting as world leader in the promotion of women's rights, particularly in giving meaning to the principle of the equality of women and men, it has not ratified the authoritative document that sets comprehensive standards on women's equality, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). Although as of November 1999, 165 countries had ratified this Convention, the U.S. remains in the company of countries like Iran and the Sudan, etc. (http://www.amnestyusa.org) Without the United States as a party to the treaty, however, repressive governments can easily discount the treaty’s provisions.

In order to regard women’s rights as human rights, a substantial number of organisations and International human rights organisations are trying to put stress on women’s rights. Recommendation such as integrating a gender-sensitive perspective into the analysis and application of existing human rights standards and machinery has been suggested by Amnesty International and organisations. This will help to recognize the reality of women's lives, and the human rights violations to which they are subjected, to become visible. These are necessary steps towards the implementation of outstanding commitments. Moreover, slogans such as ‘Women’s rights are human rights’ are being used to emphasis on women’s rights which has been ignored for a long time. It has been also recommended that donors should contribute substantially to the eradication of discrimination again women of their human rights and fundamental freedoms.( Kerr, 1993) In addition , the developing governments should also try to overcome its weakness in providing women their basic rights i.e. Civil and political rights so that women as a half of the population can contribute to the state activities and at the same time enjoy its equality in terms of right with men.