Rights Inside Out: The Case of the Women's Human Rights Campaign

Leiden Journal of International Law

Volumn 15, Issue 2, 2002, Pages 285-305

  Riles, Annelise ^a  

^a YALE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

academics; activism; human rights; networks; women's rights

Indexed keywords

EID: 85011480393     PISSN: 09221565     EISSN: 14789698     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0922156502000146     Document Type: Article

References (70)

1. H.R. Clinton, Statement at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing, China (5 September 1995), at gopher://gopher.undp.org/00/unconfs/women/conf/gov/ 950905175653 (emphasis added).
2. Cf. A. Riles, The Network Inside Out (2000).
3. See, e.g., C. Bogert, Women in China: ‘We Turned this Around’, Newsweek, 18 September 1995, at 50; BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, Hillary Clinton's “improper” speech contained “nonsensical and preposterous arguments,” Monday, 18 September 1995, Part 3, Asia-Pacific, UN Fourth World Conference on Women; EE/D2411/S2. (Zhongguo Tongxun She news agency, Hong Kong, in Chinese, 16 September 1995).
4. See, e.g., C. Bunch, Organizing for Women's Human Rights Globally, in J. Kerr (Ed.), Ours by Right: Women's Rights as Human Rights 141 (1993).
5. See Y. Dezalay & B. Garth, The Internationalization of Palace Wars: Lawyers, Economists and the Contest to Transform Latin American States (2002).
6. See C. Bunch & S. Frost, Human Rights, in C. Kramarae & D. Spender (Eds.), Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women: Global Women's Issues and Knowledge 1078 (2000); R. Cook, Women's International Human Rights Law: The Way Forward, in R. Cook (Ed.), Human Rights of Women: National and International Perspectives 3 (1994).
7. Of course ‘first generation’ human rights only appear as a stable, settled category from the point of view of the campaign to expand the category. As described in the final section of this article, the category becomes real only through an engagement with the ‘outside.’ For a discussion of the conflicts over the status of first generation human rights at the UN, the terms of which structurally mirror the material presented in this essay, see F.D. Gaer, Reality Check: Human Rights NGOs Confront Governments at the UN, in T.G. Weiss & L. Gordenker (Eds.), NGOs, the UN, and Global Governance 51 (1996).
8. See J. Connors, NGOs and the Human Rights of Women at the United Nations, in P. Willetts (Ed.), The Conscience of the World: The Influence of Non-Governmental Organizations in the UN System 147, at 154 (1996). See M.E. Galey, Women Find a Place, in A. Winslow (Ed.), Women, Politics and the United Nations 11 (1995) for a discussion of the history of the Commission on the Status of Women and of the NGOs that participated in its activities.
9. See Connors, id.
10. E. Reichert, Women's Rights are Human Rights: Platform for Action, 413 Int'l Soc. Work 371 (1998).
11. See A.S. Fraser, The UN Decade for Women: Documents and Dialogue (1987); see also M.E. Keck & K. Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics, at 177 (1998) (quoting activist Charlotte Bunch as explaining that violence as a human rights issue was selected largely to overcome North-South divisions in the global women's movement).
12. As described further later, the campaign defined its goal as to insure that women's rights became an accepted part of the mainstream human rights agenda.
13. Cf. E.H. Boyle & S.E. Preves, Sovereign Autonomy Versus Universal Human Rights: The Bases for National Anti-Female-Genital Excision Laws (1998) (unpublished manuscript); Keck & Sikkink, As described further later, the campaign defined its goal as to insure that women's rights became an accepted part of the mainstream human rights agenda. note 12; see also Human Rights Watch, Human Rights Watch World Report 1999: Women's Human Rights (1999), available at www.hrw.org (noting that “one concrete example of this rhetorical success is the inclusion of rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, and enforced sterilization as war crimes and crimes against humanity” in the 1998 Treaty of Rome for the creation of an International Criminal Court new world criminal court).
14. See, e.g., Bunch & Frost, Sovereign Autonomy Versus Universal Human Rights: The Bases for National Anti-Female-Genital Excision Laws note 7. See also United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing Declaration, in Report on the Fourth World Conference on Women, UN Doc. A/Conf.177/20 (17 October 1995) (explicitly referring to women's human rights several times (e.g., paras. 8 and 9) and also directly asserting that “Women's rights are human rights” (para. 14)). See D. Otto, Rethinking the ‘Universality’ of Human Rights Law, 29 Colum. Human Rts. L. Rev. 1, at 128 (1997), for a more recent critique of the limitations of the ‘women's rights as human rights’ strategy. Dianne Otto points out there is no discussion of ‘rights’ at all in the sections of the Beijing Platform for Action devoted to poverty and economic structures, and that this suggests that the campaign has succeeded more in including women in the existing human rights framework than in transforming or expanding the category of human rights itself.
15. See, e.g., D. Haraway, Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science (1992).
16. See, e.g., M. Herzfeld, The Social Production of Indifference: Exploring the Symbolic Roots of Western Bureaucracy (1992).
17. See, e.g., A. Mol, Missing Links, Making Links: The Performance of Some Atheroscleroses, in M. Berg & A. Mol (Eds.), Differences in Medicine: Unraveling Practices, Techniques, and Bodies 144 (1998).
18. See, e.g., T.S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1996); P. Bourdieu, Homo Academicus (1988); M. Strathern, Partial Connections (1991); B. Reading, The University in Ruins (1996).
19. See, e.g., D. Brenneis, New Lexicon, Old Language: Negotiating the ‘Global’ at the National Science Foundation, in G. Marcus (Ed.), Critical Anthropology Now: Unexpected Contexts, Shifting Constituencies, Changing Agendas 123 (1999); G. Born, Rationalizing Culture: IRCAM, Boulez, and the Institutionalization of the Musical Avant-Garde (1995); G.E. Marcus & F.R. Myers, The Traffic in Art and Culture: An Introduction, in G.E. Marcus & F.R. Myers (Eds.), The Traffic in Culture: Refiguring Art and Anthropology 1 (1995); B. Latour, Drawing Things Together, in M. Lynch & S. Woolgar (Eds.), Representation in Scientific Practice 19 (1990); P. Rabinow, French Modern: Norms and Forms of the Social Environment (1989); Y. Dezalay & B. Garth, Dealing in Virtue: International Commercial Arbitration and the Construction of a Transnational Legal Order (1996); J. Radway, A Feeling for Books: The Book-of-the-Month Club, Literary Taste, and Middle-Class Desire (1997); Riles, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions note 2.
20. See A. Riles, The Transnational Appeal of Formalism: The Case of Japan's Netting Law, at http://www.SSRN.com.
21. See, e.g., D. Kennedy, Spring Break, 63 Tex. L. Rev. 1377 (1985).
22. See, e.g., B. Adams, The UN, World Conferences and Women's Rights, in J. Kerr (Ed.), Ours by Right: Women's Rights as Human Rights 115, at 117 (1993).
23. See, e.g., Cook, World Conferences and Women's Rights note 7, at 31.
24. See, e.g., N. Thomas, Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture, and Colonialism in the Pacific (1991).
25. See K. Knop, Why Rethinking the Sovereign State is Important for Women's International Human Rights Law, in Cook, Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture, and Colonialism in the Pacific note 7, at 153.
26. See, e.g., A. Rao, The Politics of Gender and Culture in International Human Rights Discourse, in J. Peters & A. Wolper (Eds.), Women's Rights, Human Rights: International Feminist Perspectives 167 (1995).
27. See, e.g., Bunch & Frost, The Politics of Gender and Culture in International Human Rights Discourse note 7.
28. See E. Friedman, Women's Human Rights: The Emergence of a Movement, in Peters & Wolper, The Politics of Gender and Culture in International Human Rights Discourse note 28, at 18.
29. See A. Riles, Infinity Within the Brackets, 25 Am. Ethnologist 378 (1998); Riles, Women's Human Rights: The Emergence of a Movement note 2.
30. See, e.g., R.M. Unger, The Critical Legal Studies Movement (1983).
31. See, e.g., M.A. Glendon, Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse (1991).
32. Clinton, Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse note 1.
33. See, e.g., Keck & Sikkink, Clinton note 12, at 184.
34. One exception is the International YWCA which is based in Geneva.
35. Cf. Riles, One exception is the International YWCA which is based in Geneva. note 2.
36. See Cook, One exception is the International YWCA which is based in Geneva. note 7; R. Cook, State Accountability Under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, in Cook, One exception is the International YWCA which is based in Geneva. note 7, at 228; cf. M. Rishmawi, The Developing Approaches of the International Commission of Jurists to Women's Human Rights, in Cook, id., at 340; J. Fitzpatrick, The Use of International Human Rights Norms to Combat Violence Against Women, in Cook, id., at 532.
37. For example, a key UN document for the Beijing Conference-the Secretary-General's mandated report on “existing technical and financial programmes in favor of women”-was prepared by an academic “consultant” described in the report as an “expert in gender and organizational behaviour.” The Report is peppered with political science terminology and citations. See United Nations Economic and Social Council, Commission on the Status of Women, Preparations for the Fourth World Conference on Women: Actions for Equality, Development and Peace: Technical Assistance and Women: From Mainstreaming Towards Institutional Accountability, UN Doc. E/CN.6/1995/6 (19 December 1994).
38. Consider, for example, the way the following conclusion to a recent review article on anthropology and human rights takes academics to task for their “relativism” on human rights questions: Over the last 45 years, the world, the discipline of anthropology, and the human rights framework have changed. […] Anthropologists since 1947 have moved from criticizing universal human rights […] and are now expanding the scope, filling in the content, and participating in organizations for the enforcement of these rights. The mid-century anthropologists struggled with questions of cultural relativism mostly as a debate over cultural values […], but changing world conditions, the clear violations of human decency and dignity on the part of non-Western political leadership under the banner of cultural relativism, as well as the expansion of the human rights concept-to incorporate people's rights, a range of socioeconomic rights, the rights of indigenous peoples, and the rights to development (as defined by Third and Fourth World peoples)-have all changed the human rights problematique and correspondingly anthropologists’ responses to it. See E. Messer, Anthropology and Human Rights, 22 Ann. Rev. Anthropology 221, at 240 (1993).
39. The most celebrated of these is C. Bunch, Women's Right's as Human Rights: Toward a Revision of Human Rights, 12 Hum. Rts. Q. 486 (1990).
40. C. Bunch, S. Frost & N. Reilly, Making the Global Local: International Networking for Women's Human Rights, in K.D. Askin & D.M. Koenig (Eds.), Women and International Human Rights Law, Vol. 1, 91, at 95 (1999).
41. See Keck & Sikkink, Making the Global Local: International Networking for Women's Human Rights note 12.
42. Bunch, Frost & Reilly, Making the Global Local: International Networking for Women's Human Rights note 42, at 97. (“Some women were concerned that the focus on gender-based violence in Vienna detracted attention from other types of human rights issues, especially abuses associated with the actions of non-state actors like international financial institutions and transnational corporations.”)
43. See J. Leo, A Near Hijacking at the UN, 119 US News & World Rep. 32 (1995); D.E. Buss, Robes, Relics, and Rights: The Vatican and the Beijing Conference on Women, 7 Soc. & Legal Stud. 339 (1998). Human Rights Caucus, Women's Human Rights: A Neglected Part of the Agenda for the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women (1995), lists as its contact members Charlotte Bunch, Alice Miller of the International Human Rights Law Group and Regan Ralph of Human Rights Watch's Women's Rights Project, laments that “Governments seem to have forgotten that less than two years ago they declared that ‘women's rights are human rights.'”
44. H. Charlesworth, General Introduction, in K.D. Askin & D.M. Koenig (Eds.), Women and International Human Rights Law xix, at xx-xxi (1999), (citing feminist theorist Rosi Braidotti's claim that feminists must “relinquish the dream of a common language”).
45. Cf. A. Riles, Note: Aspiration and Control: International Legal Rhetoric and the Essentialization of Culture, 106 Harv. L. Rev. 723 (1993); K. Engle, International Human Rights and Feminism: When Discourses Meet, 13 Mich. J. Int'l L. 517 (1992).
46. See, e.g., C. Romany, State Responsibility Goes Private: A Feminist Critique of the Public/Private Distinction in International Human Rights Law, in Cook, Note: Aspiration and Control: International Legal Rhetoric and the Essentialization of Culture note 7, at 85.
47. See, e.g., H. Charlesworth, What are ‘Women's International Human Rights?’, in Cook, State Responsibility Goes Private: A Feminist Critique of the Public/Private Distinction in International Human Rights Law note 7, at 58.
48. Given anthropologists’ claims on the reflexive turn to discourse and representation in lawyer's imaginations, see, e.g., J. Clifford & G. Marcus, Writing Culture (1986), it is interesting that this highly ambivalent focus on human rights as discourse and representation proliferates in the legal literature far more than in the anthropological one. Anthropologists traditionally have served more as foot soldiers for human rights than as its ethnographic observers. See, e.g., American Anthropological Association Executive Board, Statement on Human Rights Submitted to the Commission on Human Rights, United Nations, 49 Am. Anthropologist 1 (1947); American Anthropological Association, Proposed Declaration on Anthropology and Human Rights, in W.E. Davis, American Anthropological Association Memorandum, 23 April 1999.
49. H. Charlesworth, C. Chinkin & S. Wright, Feminist Approaches to International Law, 85 AJIL 613 (1991).
50. Charlesworth, Id. note 48, at xxii.
51. Charlesworth, Chinkin & Wright, Id. note 53, at 638.
52. Engle, Id. note 49.
53. See A. Riles, [Deadlines], in A. Riles (Ed.), Documents: Artifacts of Modern Knowledge (forthcoming).
54. Bunch, Documents: Artifacts of Modern Knowledge note 5, at 141.
55. See Bunch & Frost, Documents: Artifacts of Modern Knowledge note 7. This article was written together with an academic who served as a ‘consultant’ to the CGWL.
56. Bunch, Frost & Reilly, This article was written together with an academic who served as a ‘consultant’ to the CGWL. note 42, at 103.
57. Cf. Mol, This article was written together with an academic who served as a ‘consultant’ to the CGWL. note 18.
58. Bunch, Frost & Reilly, This article was written together with an academic who served as a ‘consultant’ to the CGWL. note 42, at 104.
59. Cf. M. Strathern, The Relation: Issues in Complexity and Scale, 6 Prickly Pear Pamphlet (1995).
60. Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development, Statement for the 39th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women, 15 March-4 April 1995.
61. The innovation of the term ‘gender’ over ‘sex’ was precisely to draw attention to the sociality constructed relations between men and women rather than the innate qualities of men or women. Cf. Strathern, Asia Pacific Forum on Women note 69.
62. See E. Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (1985).
63. See Engle, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World note 49, at 519 (“Women's rights discourse is generally positioned at the periphery of human rights discourse, both challenging and defending the dominant human rights model as it attempts to fit causes into that model.”).
64. See I. Baszanger, Pain Physicians: All Alike, All Different, in Berg & Mol, “Women's rights discourse is generally positioned at the periphery of human rights discourse, both challenging and defending the dominant human rights model as it attempts to fit causes into that model.” note 18, at 119.
65. See, e.g., Keck & Sikkink, Id. note 12.
66. See, e.g., Engle, Id. note 49.
67. See, e.g., E.H. Boyle & J. Meyer, Modern Law as a Secularized and Global Model: Implications for the Sociology of Law, in Y. Dezalay & B. Garth (Eds.), Global Prescriptions: The Production, Exportation, and Importation of a New Legal Orthodoxy (2002) (to be published).
68. See, e.g., B.R. Ganilau, The Road to Beijing, S'Pacifically Speaking: Newsletter of the PNGOCG, May 1995.
69. Interestingly, the phrase of ‘legal rights’ had far more appeal with activists in Fiji than ‘human rights’ and was often used in the very contexts the global women's organizations hoped to deploy the notion of human rights such as violence against women and married women's citizenship rights. Women's groups also sought to associate these issues with the more gender-neutral theme of ‘development.’ See, e.g., I.P. Jalal, Law for Pacific Women: A Legal Rights Handbook (1998); Cf. Fiji Women's Rights Movement, Putting an End to the Crisis, Balance, November-December 1995; Fiji Women's Rights Movement, Drafting Bill on Domestic Violence, Balance, May-June 1995; L. Prakash, Crime Against Women, Balance, December 1994.
70. See Riles, Interestingly, the phrase of ‘legal rights’ had far more appeal with activists in Fiji than ‘human rights’ and was often used in the very contexts the global women's organizations hoped to deploy the notion of human rights such as violence against women and married women's citizenship rights. note 2.