Gender and human rights

2020 ◽  
pp. 155-166
Author(s):  
Birgit Schippers
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Gender Diversity ◽  
Cultural Relativism ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Gender Minorities ◽  
Diverse World ◽  
International Human ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Lgbt Populations

Chapter 12 addresses international human rights provisions in relation to gender. It critically assesses some of the major debates about rights for women in a culturally diverse world, such as universality versus cultural relativism, how gender has been approached within different international human rights mechanisms, such as the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and how this has influenced the development of social policy and rights for women. It challenges the notion that gender rights should be limited to a two-sex dichotomy arguing that gender diversity as reflected in LGBT populations should be reflected in human rights provisions by the development of inclusive sexual and gender identity (SOGI) rights approaches to human rights and an engagement with the needs and entitlements of sexual and gender minorities.

scholarly journals Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Rights Lost in Translation?

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 122-145
Author(s):  
Malte Breiding Hansen
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Sexual Orientation ◽  
Gender Identity ◽  
Member State ◽  
Culturally Diverse ◽  
Sexual And Gender Minorities ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Gender Minorities ◽  
International Human ◽  
And Gender

Since 2003, the United Nations international human rights framework has moved notably toward increased international human rights recognition for sexual and gender minorities. Most recently, 2016 saw the adoption of an Independent Expert on violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Motivated by the nevertheless continued refusal by predominantly African and Middle Eastern countries to recognize any such human rights application, as well as postcolonial critiques of counterproductive moral imperialism and homonationalist strategies by proponent member States, this article asks how dynamics of member State disputes in the UN debates on SOGI-based rights may point to restraints and possibilities for achieving global human rights recognition for culturally diverse sexual and gender minorities. The article demonstrates how interand intradiscursive rules of formation in UN member State debates predicated on either universal or culturally relative readings of international human rights law reproduce normative polarization and obstruct national implementation of human rights protection for sexual and gender minorities. The article therefore finds universality truth claims to restrain transformative change, as well as represent a possibility for achieving human rights recognition through “perverse,” reiterations of the parameters of the universal, wielded from an open-ended multiplicity of sexual and gender minority expressions and articulations. A radical politics of top-down and bottom-up cultural translation is suggested as a possible strategy for human rights recognition for culturally diverse sexual and gender minorities.

18. Human Rights

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Freeman
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cultural Relativism ◽  
Cultural Imperialism ◽  
World War ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Human Rights Regime ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
International Human

This chapter examines the concept of human rights, which derives primarily from the Charter of the United Nations adopted in 1945 immediately after World War II. It first provides a brief account of the history of the concept of human rights before describing the international human rights regime. It then considers two persistent problems that arise in applying the concept of human rights to the developing world: the relations between the claim that the concept is universally valid and the realities of cultural diversity around the world; and the relations between human rights and development. In particular, it explores cultural imperialism and cultural relativism, the human rights implications of the rise of political Islam and the so-called war on terror(ism), and globalization. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the new political economy of human rights.

scholarly journals Criminalization and International Human Rights

2018 ◽  
Vol 112 ◽  
pp. 83-84
Author(s):  
Alice M. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Sexual And Reproductive Health ◽  
Hiv Transmission ◽  
Gender Based Violence ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Human Rights Advocacy ◽  
International Human ◽  
Gender Based ◽  
And Gender

Human rights advocacy today engages with criminal law at international and national levels with a new and rather conflicted posture. It is reorienting from an approach that primarily treated human rights as a shield from (unjust) prosecutorial and carceral power, and toward one calling for criminal penalties and vigorous prosecutions as a remedy for harms. The human rights abuses for which state prosecution is invoked today include not only past and present state violations, such as torture, but crimes by non-state actors, such as sexual and gender-based violence. At the same time, paradoxically, many rights groups are calling for the review and reduction of criminal regulation of a range of sexual and reproductive health practices, including abortion, consensual sexual conduct outside of marriage (same sex, heterosexual, and sex for money), and HIV transmission.

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