scholarly journals GENDER AND THE “FAITH” IN LAW: EQUALITY, SECULARISM, AND THE RISE OF THE HINDU NATION

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 407-431
Author(s):  
Ratna Kapur
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
Gender Norms ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
Muslim Minority ◽  
Indian Nation ◽  
Judicial Reasoning ◽  
Indian Supreme Court

AbstractThis article analyzes how concepts of gender, gender equality, and secularism have been addressed by the higher judiciary in India in cases dealing with matters of religion. The discussion focuses on three landmark decisions of the Indian Supreme Court on gender equality. The cases involve challenges to discriminatory religious practices that target women in the Muslim-minority and Hindu-majority communities. In each case, gender equality is taken up in relation to religion in ways that produce several outcomes for women that are problematic rather than ones that are unequivocally progressive or transformative. The judicial reasoning in each case resonates with the Hindu Right's approach to gender, gender equality, and secularism. Each concept is used to advance the Hindu Right's majoritarian and ideological agenda, which seeks to establish India as a virile “Hindu” nation. Ironically, interventions by progressive groups, including feminist and human rights advocates opposed to the Hindu Right's makeover of the Indian nation, have not proved to be disruptive of gender norms; nor have they pushed back the tides of Hindu (male) majoritarianism that are increasingly determining the terms of engagement on issues of gender and faith in law.

scholarly journals Engines of Patriarchy: Ethical Artificial Intelligence in Times of Illiberal Backlash Politics

2021 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 329-342
Author(s):  
Hendrik Schopmans ◽  
Jelena Cupać
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Technological Change ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Gender Norms ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
Ai Ethics ◽  
Human Rights Norms ◽  
Rules And Standards

AbstractIn recent years, concerns over the risks posed by artificial intelligence (AI) have mounted. In response, international organizations (IOs) have begun to translate the emerging consensus on the need for ethical AI into concrete international rules and standards. While the path toward effective AI governance faces many challenges, this essay shifts attention to an obstacle that has received little attention so far: the growing illiberal backlash in IOs. Prompted by Poland's recent rejection of a European position on AI due to the document's mention of “gender equality,” we argue that Poland followed a strategy that illiberal actors now regularly employ in IOs. To combat gender norms and women's rights across issue areas, illiberal contesters first identify the progressive language in international documents and then threaten to veto those documents—unless such language is watered down or removed. This spoiling strategy, we argue, may not only lead to the compromising of fundamental human rights norms but may also prevent much needed rules for AI from being adopted altogether. Against this background, we urge scholars and practitioners concerned with AI ethics to pay closer attention to illiberal backlash politics. IOs are emerging as spaces where progressive AI rules and standards are increasingly contested—and where they need to be defended to safeguard fundamental rights in an age of rapid technological change.

scholarly journals An Exemption for Sincere Believers: The Challenge of Alberta v. Hutterian Brethren of Wilson Colony

2011 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 719-750
Author(s):  
Sara Weinrib
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
Supreme Court Of Canada ◽  
General Application ◽  
Canadian Charter ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Strict Reading

In Alberta v. Hutterian Brethren of Wilson Colony, the Supreme Court of Canada reconfigured its approach to section 1 of the Canadian Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms by holding that the final step of the R. v. Oakes test—the requirement of proportionality between a measure’s salutary and deleterious effects—provided the critical framework for its analysis. The author suggests that the Court’s emphasis on the last step of the Oakes test was not the most appropriate response to the specific minimal impairment argument Alberta presented. Alberta argued that the reason it could not safely offer an exemption from its licence photo requirement to Hutterites who objected to photos on religious grounds was because Syndicat Northcrest v. Amselem restricted government inquiries into the sincerity of religious beliefs. Ontario intervened in support of Alberta’s concerns. Although the Court did not address this minimal impairment argument, the author argues that it reflects an unnecessarily strict reading of how Amselem’s guidelines would apply in this context. In support, the author presents an exemption that would have cohered with Amselem and achieved Alberta’s safety objectives. The author then argues more broadly that the provinces’ concerns in Hutterian Brethren demonstrate the critical role the minimal impairment step of the Oakes test plays in generating solutions to clashes between laws of general application and minority religious practices. The Court’s new emphasis on the proportionate effects test, in contrast, may unfortunately discourage both parties from formulating potentially innovative alternatives.

scholarly journals Pertinence of a General Prohibition of the Burqa and Niqab in Spain: A Human Rights Perspective

2017 ◽  
pp. 209
Author(s):  
David Fernández Rojo
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Public Order ◽  
Minimum Requirements ◽  
Local Law ◽  
Full Face ◽  
The Right

<p>The debate on whether to prohibit the <em>burqa </em>and <em>niqab </em>in Spain has been reopened after the recent decision of the Spanish Supreme Court on 14 February 2013. The Spanish Supreme Court held that a municipality could not pass a local law prohibiting the right to wear the full-face veil in public spaces. This article analyzes a conceptual and theoretical framework to establish that the full-face veil qualifies as an external manifestation of the right to religious freedom. Moreover, the pertinence of a <em>burqa</em>-ban in all Spanish public spaces is analyzed and a general prohibition is not found to be a suitable, necessary, and proportional measure to achieve gender equality, public order or «respect for the minimum requirements of life in society».</p><p><strong>Published online</strong>: 11 December 2017</p>

Equality and the right to education: let’s talk about sex education

2018 ◽  
pp. 111-128
Author(s):  
Meghan Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Health Education ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
Sex Education ◽  
Gender Norms ◽  
The State ◽  
Fundamental Rights ◽  
Right To Life ◽  
Right To Education ◽  
The Right

This chapter addresses the challenges girls face in accessing human rights-based sex education. Sex education sharply brings into focus the discriminatory gender norms that influence and undermine a girl's right to education and the accountability challenges that are becoming increasingly pervasive throughout all of education. The Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the prominent legal instrument on women's rights, offers new ways of conceptualising and addressing these challenges. There are specific obligations referring to sex education in the treaty and most importantly there is a positive obligation on the state to provide sex education to fulfil the fundamental rights of girls and women. Indeed, sex education is a necessary measure to ensure girls and women's right to life, health, education, gender equality, and freedom from violence.

Gendering the EU's Western Balkan Enlargement

2022 ◽  
pp. 153-170
Author(s):  
Sinem Bal
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Gender Equality ◽  
Market Economy ◽  
Gender Norms ◽  
Normative Power ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Labour Market Participation ◽  
Balkan Countries ◽  
Fair Market

The EU's extra-territorial, value-driven practices are often conceptualized as normative power. However, the diffusion of norms is strongly contested in terms of human rights. This is particularly true of gender equality, which the EU uses as a conditionality tool to promote human rights, consolidate democracy, and develop a well-functioning fair market economy in other countries. Using a feminist lens and drawing on the literature and official documents, this chapter questions the balance between these three aims and the extent that Europe's normative power can mainstream gender norms in Western Balkan countries. Backsliding of equality patterns and the EU's exclusive concern on producing instruments to encourage women's labour market participation indicate that it promotes more market-engaged gender equality norms instead of creating normative change in socially constructed roles in Western Balkan countries.

Toward a Progressive Realisation of Socio-economic Rights in Ghana: A Socio-legal Analysis

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-113
Author(s):  
Nana Tawiah Okyir
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
State Policy ◽  
National Development ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Judicial Activism ◽  
Economic Rights ◽  
The Supreme Court

This article argues for the strengthening and entrenchment of socio-economic rights provisions in Ghana's jurisprudence. The purpose of this entrenchment is to engender judicial activism in promoting more creative pathways for enforcing socio-economic rights in Ghana. The article traces the development of socio-economic rights in Ghana's jurisprudence, especially the influence of the requirements of the international rights movement, particularly of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). The article delves into the constitutional history of Ghana and its impact on the evolution of rights in the country. Of particular historical emphasis is the emergence of socio-economic rights under the Directive Principles of State Policy in the 1979 Constitution. However, the significance of the socio-economic rights only became profound with the return to democratic rule under the 1992 Constitution, again under a distinct chapter on Directive Principles of State Policy. However, unlike its counterpart, the chapter on the Fundamental Human Rights and Freedoms, which is directly enforceable, the Directive Principles of State Policy were not. It took the Supreme Court of Ghana a series of landmark decisions until finally, in 2008, it arrived at a presumption of justiciability in respect of all of the provisions in the 1992 Constitution. It is evident that prior to this, the Supreme Court was not willing to apply the same standards of adjudication and enforcement as it ordinarily applies in respect of rights under the chapter on Fundamental Human Rights and Freedoms. Having surmounted the non-justiciability hurdle, what is left is for the courts to begin to vigorously pursue an agenda that puts socio-economic rights at the centre of Ghana's rights adjudication framework. The article draws on comparative experiences from India and South Africa to showcase the extent of judicial creativity in rights adjudication. In India, the courts have been able to work around provisions restricting the enforcement of Directive Principles by often connecting them to Fundamental Freedoms. In South Africa, there is no hierarchy between civil and political rights on the one hand and socio-economic rights on the other; for that reason, the courts give equal ventilation to both sets of rights. The article further analyses these examples in the light of ongoing constitutional reforms in Ghana. It argues that these reforms fall short of the activism required to propel socio-economic rights adjudication to the forefront in Ghana's jurisprudence. In this regard, the article proposes social movements as a viable tool for socio-economic rights advocacy by recounting its success in previous controversial issues in Ghana. The article also connects this to other important building blocks like building socio-economic rights into a national development blueprint. Overall, the article calls for an imaginative socio-economic rights enforcement approach that is predicated on legislation, judicial activism, social movements and a national development blueprint aimed at delivering a qualitative life for the Ghanaian.

Interview with Omar Shakir

2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 127-137
Author(s):  
Noura Erakat
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Committee Member ◽  
Editorial Committee ◽  
Rutgers University ◽  
Human Rights Advocacy ◽  
University Professor ◽  
The Government ◽  
Israeli Supreme Court

In late November 2019, the Israeli Supreme Court upheld the Ministry of Interior's order to deport Human Rights Watch (HRW) director for Israel and Palestine, Omar Shakir. The court based its decision on a 2017 amendment to Israel's 1952 Entry into Israel Law enabling the government to refuse entry to foreigners who allegedly advocate for the boycott of Israel. The same law was invoked to deny entry to U.S. congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar in the summer of 2019. The campaign against Shakir began almost immediately after he was hired by HRW in 2016, and the court's decision marked the culmination of a multi-year battle against the deportation order. In this interview, JPS Editorial Committee member, Rutgers University professor, and author Noura Erakat discusses the details of his case with Shakir in an exchange that also examines the implications of the case for human rights advocacy, in general, and for Palestinians, in particular. The interview was edited for length and clarity.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document