Wartime sexual violence: women’s human rights and questions of masculinity

2007 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
MIRANDA ALISON
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Male Victims ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Women’S Human Rights ◽  
Women And Girls ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Women's Human Rights ◽  
Human Rights Discourse ◽  
Further Development

This article examines wartime sexual violence, one of the most recurring wartime human rights abuses. It asserts that our theorisations need further development, particularly in regard to the way that masculinities and the intersections with constructions of ethnicity feature in wartime sexual violence. The article also argues that although women and girls are the predominant victims of sexual violence and men and boys the predominant agents, we must also be able to account for the presence of male victims and female agents. This, however, engenders a problem; much of the women’s human rights discourse and existing international mechanisms for addressing wartime sexual violence tend to reify the male-perpetrator/female-victim paradigm. This is a problem which feminist human rights theorists and activists need to address.

scholarly journals Human Rights: Setting the Stage for Protecting Refugee Women

Refuge ◽  
1998 ◽  
pp. 31-36
Author(s):  
Maryanna Schmuki
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Women Refugees ◽  
Refugee Women ◽  
Human Rights Regime ◽  
The Social ◽  
Women’S Human Rights ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Women's Human Rights ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

This paper explores the social construction of women refugees from the perspective of the human rights regime with an eye to revealing whether the voices of refugee women are reflected. To this end the paper examines the development of women refugees as a category within human rights discourse and how this category has been bolstered by the concept of women's human rights within the last decade.

Stories States Tell: Identity, Narrative, and Human Rights in the Balkans

Slavic Review ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 72 (2) ◽  
pp. 306-326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jelena Subotić
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International System ◽  
Western Balkans ◽  
State Behavior ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Discourse Practices ◽  
Political Choices ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

Jelena Subotić explores how the states of the Balkans construct their “autobiographies“—stories about themselves—and how these stories influence their contemporary political choices. By understanding where states’ narratives about themselves—stories of their past, their historical purpose, their role in the international system—come from, we can more fully explain contemporary state behavior that to outsiders may seem irrational, self-defeating, or simply, inexplicable. Subotić specifically addresses ways in which states of the western Balkans have built their state narratives around the issue of human rights. She explores, first, how a particular narrative of state and national identity produced—or made locally comprehensible—massive human rights abuses. She then analyzes why contemporary identity narratives make postconflict human rights policies very difficult to institutionalize. The article focuses specifically on the human rights discourse, practices, and debates in Serbia and Croatia.

A Genealogy of the Centrality of Sexual Violence to Gender and Conflict

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Engle
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Women’S Human Rights ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
Women's Human Rights ◽  
Neoliberal Restructuring

This chapter explores the two dominant understandings of sexual violence in conflict: that it is the predominant and paradigmatic concern at the nexus of gender and conflict, and that it is a tactic of war that is fueled by impunity. The chapter deconstructs the United Nations’ approaches to sexual violence in conflict and the increasingly penal response to sexual violence. It then tracks the roots of dominant understandings related to sexual violence to the women’s human rights movements of the early 1990s. The chapter concludes with critiques of sexual violence portrayals and the assumption that peace occurs in the absence of sexual violence. It also critiques the carceral response to sexual violence, which has problematically allied feminists with the police and neoliberal restructuring.

Beauvoir, Ontology, and Women's Human Rights

Hypatia ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 145-162
Author(s):  
Gail E. Linsenbard
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Moral Action ◽  
Simone De Beauvoir ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Women’S Human Rights ◽  
Universal Human Rights ◽  
Women's Human Rights

Simone de Beauvoir offers an important contribution to discourse on universal human rights. Her descriptive ontology of persons as free, interdependent, and situated in a world that offers resistance brings the discussion of human rights to a new level that also converges with some African perspectives. I claim that Beauvoir is able to defend universal human rights and, moreover, justify moral action against human rights abuses by showing the existential priority of ontological freedom.

Housing as a Basic Human Right: A Reflection on South Africa

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mziwandile Sobantu ◽  
Nqobile Zulu ◽  
Ntandoyenkosi Maphosa
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Development ◽  
Urban Poor ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Human Right ◽  
Economic Rights ◽  
Development Agenda ◽  
Rights Discourse ◽  
Human Rights Discourse

This paper reflects on human rights in the post-apartheid South Africa housing context from a social development lens. The Constitution guarantees access to adequate housing as a basic human right, a prerequisite for the optimum development of individuals, families and communities. Without the other related socio-economic rights, the provision of access to housing is limited in its service delivery. We argue that housing rights are inseparable from the broader human rights discourse and social development endeavours underway in the country. While government has made much progress through the Reconstruction and Development Programme, the reality of informal settlements and backyard shacks continues to undermine the human rights prospects of the urban poor. Forced evictions undermine some poor citizens’ human rights leading courts to play an active role in enforcing housing and human rights through establishing a jurisprudence that invariably advances a social development agenda. The authors argue that the post-1994 government needs to galvanise the citizenship of the urban poor through development-oriented housing delivery.

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