RIGHTS: Making Int’l Human Rights Law Truly Gender-Neutral

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Aug 28 1999 (IPS) - A study commissioned by the World Organisation Against Torture (known by its Spanish acronym OMCT) found that many women suffer violence and are deprived of their human rights and basic freedoms simply because of their gender.

“Although international human rights law…is supposed to be gender-neutral, it generally reflects a male perspective and has an unequal impact on women,” says “Violence Against Women: A Report”, drafted by Anne-Laurence Lacroix and Carin Benninger- Budel.

The structure and content of international human rights law reflect a “gendered system where women’s experiences with violence, repression and abuse have been factored out of the international legal process,” the report states.

The OMCT had originally ruled out the idea of setting up a programme in favour of female victims of human rights violations, said Eric Sottas, director of the Geneva-based organisation.

That decision was based on the consideration that a special programme in favour of women could lead to the risk of justifying discrimination due to a view of women as the “weaker, more dependent and more vulnerable sex,” and thus deserving of special protection, he added.

However, the rights abuses transmitted to the OMCT Secretariat on a daily basis by the SOS-Torture network led the OMCT to reconsider its decision.

The report points out that although torture of political opponents fails to distinguish between men and women, there are other forms of torture also committed by agents of the state which specifically target women.

During the war in the former Yugoslavia, female Muslim prisoners were raped, and thus subjected to additional suffering due to humiliation and rejection by their families and communities.

Sottas also mentioned “sanctions” against “indecently dressed” young women and girls, handed down by courts aiming to impose respect for Islamic law and the Koran.

And while a number of laws have been passed to ban female genital mutilation, authorities of some countries have been so lax in enforcing the legislation that the question is raised as to whether that is due to passivity, incompetence or complicity, added Sottas.

In their review of the main international human rights conventions, Lacroix and Benninger-Budel reach the conclusion that none has fully incorporated a gender perspective.

Among the main human rights instruments in effect today, only the Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted in 1989, consistently uses both female and masculine pronouns in its provisions, explicitly stating that the rights apply to girls as well as boys.

The study by Lacroix and Benninger-Budel, which assesses the performance of entities created by the various human rights conventions to oversee compliance by signatory states, says the Committee Against Torture “has done little to incorporate a gender-perspective into its work.”

Torture of female detainees often takes on particular forms based on gender, which merit special study, the authors maintain, stressing that women need special protection against particular risks.

Rape of female detainees can form part of a deliberate government policy of repression, or can be simply a consequence of indifference and the failure to take preventive measures.

The study asserts that the Committee Against Torture, part of the United Nations system, has failed to dedicate sufficient attention to gender-based forms of torture and mistreatment by public authorities, such as rape of female detainees.

It also states that the Committee failed to address torture from a gender perspective, or the question of state responsibility in adopting measures to prevent acts by private individuals.

The researchers say that one of the main reasons for the neglect of women’s issues by the main human rights conventions is the “normative structure of international law, with its dichotomy between public and private spheres.”

While civil and political rights draw most of the attention of the human rights community, many of the violations suffered by women are tied to their disadvantages on the economic, social and cultural fronts, the authors argue.

In consequence, the scant attention focussing on economic, social and cultural rights has stood in the way of women’s progress, underlines the study, distributed in Geneva on the occasion of the current sessions of the UN Subcommission on Human Rights.

Lacroix and Benninger-Budel also lamented the low level of participation by women in the commissions in charge of overseeing application of human rights conventions.

While seven women sit on the 10-member Commission on the Rights of the Child, only three sit on the 18-member Human Rights Committee, and only two on the 18-member commissions on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

Meanwhile, all of the members of the Committee Against Torture are men, say the authors, who point out that three years ago, the Human Rights Committee – the highest UN human rights body – recommended that gender integration be taken into account when it came to nominating and electing candidates.

The researchers propose a two-pronged strategy to redress such shortcomings: a specific women’s mechanism to focus on particular women’s issues, and a gender focus to be incorporated by all international entities and conventions.