Negotiating the politics of gender and rights: Some reflections on the status of women's human rights at 'Beijing plus ten'

Global Society

Volumn 19, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 227-245

  Steans, Jill ^a   Ahmadi, Vafa ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM   (United Kingdom)

^b UNIVERSITY OF SURREY   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

GENDER RELATIONS; INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENT; NEGOTIATION PROCESS; WOMENS STATUS;

EID: 22344446059     PISSN: 13600826     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13600820500135353     Document Type: Review

References (68)

1. Tinker and J. Jaquette, "UN Decade for Women: Its Impact and Legacy", World Development, Vol. 5, No. 3 (1987), pp. 419-442.
2. The Forward Looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women negotiated at the Nairobi women's conference in 1985 was a significant document in that it addressed the problem of violence against women (in the family) and also shifted the emphasis from promotion of gender-specific actions or targets within development programmes to a strategy of mainstreaming - incorporating gender concerns into others areas of the UN's work. See N. Cagatay, C. Grown and A. Santiago, "The Nairobi Women's Conference: Toward a Global Feminism?", Feminist Studies, Vol. 12, No. 2 (1986), pp. 401-412.
3. The 12 critical areas are: women and poverty; education and training of women; women and health; violence against women; women and armed conflict; women and the economy; women in power and decision making; institutional mechanisms for the advancement of women; human rights of women; women and the media; women and the environment; and the girl-child.
4. D. Bush and D. Herman, Globalizing Family Values: The Christian Right in International Politics (London: University of Minnosota Press, 2003).
5. I b i d.
6. Our thanks to one of the anonymous reviewers for his/her comments on this aspect of our argument. We are similarly grateful to the participants at a workshop convened by the British International Studies Gender and International Relations Working Group at the University of Surrey in May 2004, for feedback on an earlier draft of this article.
7. C. Bunch, "Transforming Human Rights from a Feminist Perspective", in J. Peters and A. Wolper (eds.), Women's Rights Human Rights. International Feminist Perspectives (London: Routledge, 1995), pp. 11-17;
8. S. Engle Merry, "Legal Pluralism and Transnational Culture: the KA HOOKOLOKOLONUI KANAKA MAOLI TRIBUNAL, HAWAII", in R. Wilson (ed.), Human Rights, Culture and Context: Anthropological Perspectives (London: Pluto Press, 1997).
9. Bunch, op. cit., pp. 11-17.
10. See C. Mohanty, "Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourse", Feminist Review, Vol. 30 (1988), pp. 61-88.
11. S. Lawson, "The Culture of Politics", in R. Maidment and C. MacKerras (eds.), Culture and Society in Asia-Pacific (London: Routledge, 1998), p. 234.
12. It is possible to argue then that international human rights law is not tied to peculiar Western values. Rights traditions or something very like them have existed for hundreds of years in many diverse societies. Peoples from various parts of the world had an input into the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the formulation of subsequent treaties and conventions dealing with human rights. Transnational judicial processes increasingly have an impact on specific societies across the world.
13. Lawson, op. cit., p. 234.
14. B. Ackerly, "Women's Rights Activists as Cross-Cultural Theorists", International Feminist Journal of Politics, Vol. 3, No. 3 (2001), pp. 311-346.
15. See C. Bunch, op. cit., pp. 11-12;
16. C. Bunch and S. Fried, "Beijing '95: Moving Women's Human Rights from Margin to Centre", Signs, Vol. 22, No. 3 (1996), pp. 200-204.
17. I b i d.
18. Ackerly, op. cit., p. 330.
19. I bid., p. 330.
20. C. Corrin, "International Interventions - gendered impacts and consequences in Kosovo and Afghanistan", paper presented at the 28th Annual Conference of the British International Studies Association, University of Birmingham, 15-17 December 2003.
21. See J. Joachim, 'Shaping the Human Rights Agenda: The Case of Violence Against Women', in M. Meyer and E. Prugl (eds.), Gender Politics in Global Governance (Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999).
22. I b i d.
23. DAW, "An Optional Protocol to CEDAW" (1999), available: .
24. Joachim argues that while Mexico and Copenhagen could be viewed as political fiascos that did more harm than good, at Nairobi women's groups were able to mobilise as a consensual constituency and gain more knowledge of the UN system and how it worked. Women who chaired committees were also much more skilful at keeping the focus on women's issues and pushing participants in negotiations towards consensus (Joachim, op. cit.).
25. Dissenting voices also managed to make themselves heard in the accompanying NGO Forum, although there were the well-documented problems caused by the location of the Forum.
26. Governments were not always enthusiastic about including NGOs in the final stages of the drafting of the document. Furthermore, government delegations made strategic choices about who to consult, tending to favour groups that possessed certain technical capabilities useful in the implementation process. Meyer and Prugl (eds.), op. cit.
27. C. Chinkin, "Gender Inequality and International Human Rights Law", in A. Hurrell and N. Woods (eds.), Inequality, Globalisation and World Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 95-101.
28. C. Bulbeck, Re-Orienting Western Feminisms. Women's Diversity in a Postcolonial World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
29. C. Bunch and S. Fried, "Beijing '95: Moving Women's Human Rights from Margin to Center", Signs, Vol. 22, No. 3 (1996), pp. 200-204;
30. E. Ngan-Ling Chow, "Making Waves, Moving Mountains: Reflections on Beijing '95 and Beyond", Signs, Vol. 22, No. 3 (1996) pp. 186-189;
31. M. Dutt, "Some Reflections on U.S. Women of Color and the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women and NGO Forum in Beijing, China", Feminist Studies, Vol. 22, No. 3, Fall (1996), p. 528;
32. R. Maran, "After the Beijing Women's Conference: What Will be Done?", Social Justice, Vol. 23, No. 1 (1996), pp. 364-365.
33. Chow, op. cit., p. 187;
34. M. E. Galey, "The Significance of the UN World Women's Conferences", in J. Auth (ed.), To Beijing and Beyond. Pittsburgh and the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1998), pp. 26-28.
35. In an attempt to address the possible ghettoisation of women's human rights, since 1985 the Chair of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women has been invited to meetings of the principal human rights bodies. A. Afsharipour, "Empowering Ourselves: The Role of Women's NGOs in the Enforcement of the Women's Conventions", Columbia Law Review, Vol. 99, No. 1 (1999), pp. 129-172.
36. Since 1998, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has applied a mandate that specifically deals with gender mainstreaming; the Division on the Advancement of Women (DAW) - with UNIFEM and the Womenwatch project - established a series of online working teams on each of the critical areas of concern of the BPA to report on good and bad implementation practices. DAW, "Preliminary Analysis of the Beijing +5 Outcome Document" June, 2000), available: .
37. DAW, "Preliminary Analysis of the Beijing +5 Outcome Document", op. cit..
38. Inter-Action Commission on the Advancement of Women, "NGOs Score Victory at Beijing Women's Conference", available: , p. 3.
39. C. Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1987).
40. Bunch, op. cit.
41. UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women, Article 1, available: .
42. C. Chinkin, op. cit., pp. 95-106.
43. UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence Against Women, op. cit., p. 2.
44. Joachim, op. cit.
45. United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) "Women 2000: Gender Equality, Development and Peace for the Twenty-first Century", New York, 5-9 June 2000 (UN Department of Public Information. DPI/2035/ N), p. 1.
46. The Statutes of the Ad Hoc International Criminal Tribunals of the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda and of the International Criminal Court have integrated strategies to address and prosecute gender-based violations of human rights. R. R. Copelon, "Gendered War Crimes: Reconceptualising Rape in Time of War", in Peters and Wolper, op. cit., pp. 197-214.
47. The OCHR and UNHCR have now produced guidelines on preventing and responding to sexual violence against refugees. S. Wali, "Human Rights for Refugee and Displaced Women", in Peters and Wolper, op cit., pp. 335-344.
48. See: .
49. UNGASS, "Women 2000", op. cit.
50. Spawning a number of developments, including at the International Organization for Migration, the UNFPA, the Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the UN Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime, and even the World Bank.
51. Initially the Convention was slow to obtain signatories and gained a certain notoriety because of the number of reservations entered by those states that did sign up. However, by September 1995 many governments worldwide had enacted CEDAW and by May 2001 it had become the second most widely subscribed to international human rights treaty in existence. See DAW (2001) "State Parties to the CEDAW", available: .
52. S. Kawewe and R. Dibie, "United Nations and the Problem of Women and Children Abuse in Third World Nations", Social Justice, Vol. 26, No. 2 (1999), pp. 78-98.
53. Buss and Herman, op. cit.
54. T. Poole, "UN Women's Conference Watered Down, But Still a Cause for Hope and Pride", The Independent (16 September 1995).
55. These conferences were the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development (1992), the World Conference on Human Rights (1993), the International Conference on Population and Development in Development (Cairo, 1994) and the World Social Summit (Copenhagen, 1995).
56. S. Mufson, "UN Women's Meeting Settles Key Disputes", Washington Post (14 September 1995), p. 15.
57. UNGASS (2000) Fact Sheet No. 12; Report A/54/264 (New York: UN Department of Public Information - Also found at www.isiswomen.org/ womennet/lists/apwomen2000/archive), p. 7.
58. S. T. Siefken, "Towards Gender Equality. Beijing +5", UN Chronicle, Vol. 37, No. 2 (2000), p. 71.
59. G. Urquhart, "Homophobia: winning and losing", The Guardian, (16 February 2000), p. 7;
60. S. Mufson, "UN Women's Meeting Settles Key Disputes", Washington Post (14 September 1995), p. 15.
61. Amnesty International, "Women's Rights Are Human Rights. Commitments Made by Governments in the Beijing Declaration and the Platform for Action", available: , pp. 1, 19-22;
62. .
63. A further reason that the US has never been able to come to terms with the Women's Convention is because it would require the US to adopt a constitutional principle upholding equality for women, something that the US is unwilling to do. In this respect, the US has become effectively 'allied' to conservative Muslim countries that have likewise rejected the Women's Convention. This might perhaps explain the lack of concrete progress even under Democratic administrations. S. Okin, Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999).
64. The US Administration has recently stated that CEDAW should now be placed on a list of treaties deemed 'desirable' and that CEDAW should finally be approved, but conservative opponents are employing delaying tactics to frustrate this measure. "George W. Bush's War on Women: A Chronology", available: .
65. Bush condemned the repression of women's rights in Afghanistan in order to mobilise support (especially among US women electors) for the 'War on Terror'. "George W. Bush's War on Women: A Chronology", op. cit.
66. "George W. Bush's War on Women: A Chronology", op. cit.
67. Conservative backers of the Bush Administration continue to mount a challenge to the Roe versus Wade amendment. In November 2003, the Bush Administration forced through a contentious ban on late abortions in the US, an issue that became a new battle ground between the religious Right and American liberals. The US also imposed a ban on aid to international groups that promote abortion or offer abortion counselling. "George W. Bush's War on Women: A Chronology", op. cit.
68. UNGASS, "Women 2000", op. cit., p. 1.