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From the very beginning of history, people are experiencing a violation of human rights. It was the natural tendency that the weak are oppressed by the powerful. Culture, custom, tradition, or religion helps the power to dominate over the weak. The weak are oppressed because of their race, ethnicity, creed, color, age, or religion. Another very crucial human right corruption is gender discrimination. It is embedded in our society. These gender biases and prejudices are transmitted from one era to the next in both the public and private spheres that have been traditionally dominated by men.
There are conflicts between individual and collective rights. Western democracies allow some individual human rights such as freedom of speech, the right to vote, and possession of the private property but in communist countries or authorities’ government does not permit individual rights. It emphasizes collective right. (Shut and Surley 2001). So the practices and protection of human rights depend largely upon the type of political system in place and the willingness of the people to support that political system. Qur’an and sharia law emphasizes the collective right for the betterment of the majority portion of society. So they apparently avoid some individual human rights. Women have become the victim of this because they are not recognized as equal in the eyes of their male counterparts. So, a woman is not able to obtain some collective right such as – freedom for expression, personal appearance in some Middle East countries like Iran. Establishing international human rights is not possible cultural claim or religious difference and because of gender equality can protect women from violence.
In the past period, the brute force of rulers fixes the structure of societies. Then the vanquished were enslaved, human rights were degraded.
Human rights began to be realized in developing western democracies, which are trying to establish an image of human rights. The image will help others to obtain international aid, FDI, etc. But the USA is a violator of human rights compliance and enforcement. “The United States, double standards approach to undermines credibility and weakness the human rights” and it has been observed in Iraq and Afghanistan (Koh, 2003). Though it is considered that western democracies are the greatest respecters and protectors of individual rights. Some individual human rights are not considered compatible with collective rights, for example, the issues of abortion.
Making state law can eliminate the conflict between individual and collective rights. But if biased social, cultural political-religious perspectives shape the laws, policies, or norms, it will not fruitful.
In this case, a concrete definition of human rights is required considering cultural, political, and religious perspectives or without considering them. Because human rights definition varies with the cultural, religious differences – that is the definition of human rights is not the same for every person. In universal human rights, in theory, and practice that human rights consist of different elements and principles based upon the societies and individuals in question, their political traditions, and their place in society (Dornelly, 2002). The United Nations defines a human right as the right to life, liberty, and security of person, the right to recognition, and the right to not be subjected to torture or to cruel inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
There is a gap between human rights theory, which serves as the basis of international human rights law, and practice. The gap can be overcome by improving the realization o human rights around the world (Andreopoulous).
Sometimes the ruling elite controls the collective right of the people on the basis of their own biases and interests, which distort the relationship between individual and collective rights. They ignore human right that is not accustoming with their interest. Sometimes the states or governments, which are considered as the protector of human rights, violate human rights by joining the crime of genocide such as Somalia and Rwanda for the sake of sovereignty (Forsyth 2006).
Education is the main thing that can establish human rights in the world and gender issues must be incorporated, public information and awareness programs are considered as a prevention mechanism against intervention human rights abuses (Merry 2006).
To establish the human rights standard for global, the success of governments, NGOs, the media, grassroots efforts are required. The disagreement between domestic and international parties can be avoided by fulfillment of the requirement (Shute & Surley, 2001). Fascism, communism, and religious fundamentalism are the main implement of human rights that allow the elite to design human rights in their own way. Education can be the best defense against such movements. When education will be available to more people the incompatibility with individual and collective rights will be minimized.
All nations should be consensus on human rights language so that the interpretations of human rights in many nations, especially in underdeveloped or developing, Asian and Islamic countries, will no differ from the interpretation of western countries because of cultural and religious factors. Human rights views don’t develop in Asia like western countries because Asian cultures are quite different from western culture. For this reason, the Asian value debate occurs. The traditional Asian values don’t permit human rights most of the time (Mahbubanin 1998).
Asian debate became popular in the 1990s and it is considered that the Asian debate come to its academic end during the Asian financial crisis. Asian values are a strong set up by the proponents because they are able to understand the people that democracy and human rights were not necessary ingredients to economic stability and success. Another thing is that Asian critics advocate on behalf of Asians to debate that western culture is responsible for rising crime rates, drug abuse, and divorce rates.
The main target of the government of Asian countries is to maintain or retain political power. For this reason, they want to continue this type of value. Think about communist China, all the individual rights are nip in the bird. Only collective rights are considered to promote social harmony. Much autocratic government is established in Asia by using Asian values or sentiment. Asian value can be defined as a unique value system separated from western values. It is also called a unique set of cultural signposts.
To prevent feminist policies the international NGO and some other organizations are trying to arrange different international conferences. In these conferences, the women raised their voices for ensuring their freedom. In the 1995 Beijing Conference, it was found that some local and international agencies declared a positive reaction on behalf of the women. Another thing is that the significant factor affecting international politics on women in the 1990s was the high degree of feminist organization. The conferences were become necessary because of some significant trends, like 1) when the feminists began to mainstream the issues of women’s privacy and 2) when some significant factors affecting the international issues regarding women and so on. In such kind of uncomfortable situation, the fourth World Conference on Women (FWCW) and the parallel NGO forum were in overwhelming success in terms of numbers and representation. More than 30, 000 women attended that forum (Seagar, 1997, 13).
Two American suffragists Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Caddy Stanton called a meeting in 1887, of the international council of women which haled in Washington DC in 1888. This meeting was recognized as the “universal sisterhood” of women and they established a slogan that “the position of women anywhere affects the position of women everywhere”, they also expressed theirs hoped that this meeting will provide new and more fruitful methods for securing their rights. They also emphasized women’s suffrage. The result of this meeting is the International Congress of Women (Fraser, 1987).
The U.S. feminist Elizabeth Caddy Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and Carrie Chapman Catt formed the International Women’s Suffrage Alliance (IWSA) in 1904 with the objectives to secure women’s right to vote. After forming the United Nations women’s groups worked to ensure that the United Nations would include women’s representatives and issues affecting women and children. This influence is going on still now as organizations such as ISIS (Women’s International Cross-Culture Exchange), DAWN (Development Alternatives for Women for a New Era), and IWRAW (International Women’s Rights Action Watch).
As we know that the United Nations plays a vital role in the human rights approach to women’s equality. It is established in 1945 with a view of maintaining international peace and security, developing international laws, and correcting international economic, social, and humanitarian problems. It is a large, complex, and political organization with many specialized agencies such as the World Bank, World Health Organization, and the United Nations Children’s fund. The United Nations also provides assistance to its member governments. It has many commissions among them commission on human rights is one. The United Nations’ contribution to global feminism is debatable. Though article no. 8 of the United Nations charter makes it clear that women are not to be excluded in any way from participation in the United Nations organization. But in practice, there are no implications of this article. Only a few positions are occupied by women and most of them are held in low-level positions. It is ironic that women’s rights are not typically considered given the fact that the United Nations makes such an effort to accommodate the interests of various ideological and regional groups (Charlesworth et al. 1991). But there is evidence that the United Nations has developed a system of human rights that has largely excluded the rights of women.
UN organization has also been suffered some problems such as sexual harassment. These types of the incident first come out in the mid-1990s when a case is filed by a female clerical worker. Another remarkable thing is that it is a male-dominated organization. Because many member nations prevent increasing the status of women. The Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) is one of the first UN bodies, established in 1946. This commission observes the situation of women’s rights and acts for the betterment of women’s rights.
UN has taken some activities all over the world to enhance women’s rights, such as they declared 1975 as international women’s year and 1975 to 1985 as the decade for Women. By this time three World women’s conferences are held (1975-Mexico City; 1980-Copenhagen, Denmark; 1985-Nairobi, Kenya). The fourth conference was held in 1995 in Beijing, China.
The concept of human rights and gender equality has gained pace. Now a day’s lot of meetings and conferences are being held all over the world to discuss the fulfillment of human rights and violation of rights.
But, there are some critiques that act as impediments to establishing human rights and annihilating gender discrimination from the world. The critiques are Legitimacy critique, coherence critique, and cultural critique. Legitimacy critique argues that human rights can not be given before establishing relevant laws. According to Karl Marx, “Rights can not really precede (rather than follow) the institution of the state.” Pre-legal moral claims can hardly result in any justifiable rights in courts and other institutions of enforcement. This necessity of establishing the legitimacy of rights prevents people to have some rights, such as the ‘right to respect’ in which legalization and attempted enforcement would be problematic.
The coherence critique argues that rights can be sensibly formulated only in combinations with correlated duties which indicate that a person’s right to something must incorporate another agent’s duty to provide the first person with that something. Human rights without exact agents and their duties can only be considered as loose talk. Thus, the coherence critique creates some problems in establishing universal human rights.
The third critique is a cultural critique which is not a legal and institutional form. It views human rights as being in the domain of social ethics. According to this view, the moral authority of human rights is conditional on the nature of acceptable ethics. But often these ethics are not universal which prevents the establishment of human rights universality. Suppose some culture or ethics may not regard might as valuable. Human rights require universality, but there are no such universal values to establish the rights universally.
Another hindrance in establishing human rights and gender equality comes from the concept of relativism. Relativism is the view, which argues that there is no universal validity in any concept. One concept, which is valid and right in one context, maybe invalid and wrong in another context. This relativism denies the concept of universal human rights based on natural laws. Relativism is based on individual subjectivity and so there is no identical and universal sense of truth, values, and any other concept or thoughts. The concept of relativism can better be expressed by the concept of culture which gives rise to the concept of cultural relativism. Cultural relativism argues that each individual’s normative sense is based on culture. The values and norms of an individual are valid within the context of his or her culture, which ultimately says that there is no universal value.
Cultural relativist claims that the provision for international human rights should not be applied. The elite group who represents the group as a whole makes such types of claims. Sometimes they do not represent a group’s culture exactly as it is rather than in a way they like it to be.
These tendencies often lead to the destruction of cultural norms and values and imposition. This tendency of violating the cultural values of a group by the elite often destroy the cultural identity of women and deny the women’s right to be educated and to express opinion independently. If the elites are fundamentalist governments, they often use the culture and religion to suppress the women and to impose something disputable and unacceptable according to their will; so, though cultural relativism advocates for each individual culture it may result in the destruction of some individuals’ cultural identity which is a great impediment for human rights.
Another impediment against human rights comes from anthropology while defining cultural identities and entities. In the process of assessing a cultural identity, men are often given privileges. Anthropology, define the entity of a cultural group on the basis of a common sense of identity and values possessed by a group of men living in proximity. Males of a group epitomize all the members of the groups where the sense of identity and values of the women of those groups is not emphasized.
The oversimplified view of cultural identity does not include interaction and intersection among different cultures. In fact, every individual has more than one cultural home. In this regard, cultural relativism is unable to identify an individual’s exact cultures and rights. The oversimplified process of assessing the cultural identity of a group does not include or consider the existence of culturally identifiable subgroups within those groups. The absence of cultural development and change and lack of interaction with other cultures provides a scope for the elite to suppress the people.
The elite rejects, on the basis of cultural relativism, the cultural change to gain higher control over the culture and dominate over the people of that culture.
Many religious reservations of different religions hinder the improvement of gender equality and human rights effort. Though there is a Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEAFDAW), many Muslim states use their Islamic laws to create a reservation, qualifying their own laws, which rejects some central provision of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEAFDAW), but after these reservations are not made due to true religious belief.
Whenever any Muslim government intends to uphold different discriminatory features of Islamic laws, they take the help of religious factors and religious beliefs. The government’s decisions are often influenced by different fundamentalist groups who think that Islam calls for subjugating women. The different Islamic government is also influenced by traditional Islamic morality and its intention to attract the attention of rich donor countries like Saudi-Arabia.
Different Islamic countries seem to be reluctant about revising and changing some of the traditional Islamic laws which go against the interest of women and abrogate the reservations they enter against the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEAFDAW).
In Muslim countries, women are very often deprived of exercising their power to play a decisive role in defining national policies affecting women. Islamic laws implemented in different countries vary dramatically in the case of their treatment of women. In acted laws of some Muslim countries are even conflicting but, the Muslim countries are not modifying the law rather using the Islamic laws as their weapon to gain political dominance. Muslim countries have been discounting or degrading the feminist.
The Muslims, who want separation of the state and religion, cannot denounce their religious laws because of fear about their safety. As the government along with different fundamentalist groups is working against the abrogation of reservations, they enter to Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEAFDAW).
Fear of violence created by different fundamentalists often influences by the decision taken by a different government. For example, Morocco made Islamic reservations that were later explained as an anti-fundamentalist prophylactic. Kuwait also confronted attacks from fundamentalists while they try to give women their right of voting. In March 1998 an all-male parliamentary committee unanimously rejected a draft bill regarding Kuwaiti women’s long struggle to obtain the vote. This rejection was based on religious rolling by the fatwa department of the Islamic Affairs Ministry.
Women are being deprived of many privileges and their rights are being violated by the imposition of different suppressive factors on them. This argument can better be clarified by the explanation of some cases. This case has been founded in the village of north kpalime, Togo. The fact was found from a story like —Kassindja, who was a 52 years old Muslim religious leader, teacher, and school inspector of his area, has 15 children and 4 wives. He has 8 girls and 3 already have been married. Kassindja has 4 wives, two in kpalime, one in Lome, and 4 in kounssountou. Adidjatou was married when her age was 15. Adidjatou said, “If you are a virgin, the man will pay more dowry and your family will be honored by the husband. I was glad because I was a virgin” (Celia, n.d.)
Amnesty International also found some decimation among the women, children, and others who are from Arabic or African countries. They raise their voice in the international forum and try to challenge the facts that are going on in those areas. “In Africa, today’s women’s voices are being raised against genital mutilation still practice on babies, little girls, and women. These voices belong to a few women who, from the Arabic north to the wholly Hori and across to western Africa, remain closely attached to their identity and heritage but are prepared to challenge it when traditional practice endanger their lives and their health.” (Amnesty International Publications; ‘‘it’s about time; human rights are women’s rights”)
References
Donnely, J. 2002. Universal Human Rights in Theory &Practice, Cornell University Press, New York.
Koh, Horald. 2003, On American Exceptionalism. Stanford Law Review. 55. Pp. 1475-1527.
Merry, S.E. 2006. Human Rights and Gender Violence: Translating International Lawinto Local Justice, University of Chicago Press, IL.
Shute, S. And Surly, S. 2001. On Human Rights, Basic Books, New York.
Celia W. Dugger: A story: A refugee Escapes from Togo, Body Intact but Family Torn.
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