Women's Human Rights: From Slogan to Global Agenda

By Charlotte Bunch

WeNews guest author

Sunday, March 11, 2012

"The Unfinished Revolution: Voices From the Global Fight for Women's Rights" tells the origins of the struggle to secure basic rights for women and girls. The following is an essay adapted from the chapter, "How Women's Rights Became Recognized as Human Rights."

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This approach helped to galvanize a heightened commitment by the United Nations, some governments and many human rights organizations to the objective of "gender integration" within their work. Among the most significant steps were the inclusion of gender-based persecution and sexual violence in the 1998 Rome Statute which created the International Criminal Court, and the UN Security Council's adoption in 2000 of Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security, which addressed violence against women in armed conflict and the role of women in peacekeeping.

Major, even revolutionary, advances have been made in awareness, recognition, and standard setting around women's rights as human rights. Yet the revolution is unfinished. UNWomen's 2011-2012 Report on Progress of the World's Women shows clearly that justice--an essential element in the realization of human rights--is still a distant dream for most women. When it comes to violence against women in particular, impunity is still rampant and justice is often denied.

The backlash and violence experienced by women's rights activists is especially worrisome. Women defenders often face gender-specific abuse in addition to the threats all defenders face, especially if they are seen as defying societal norms. This can take many forms: sexual violence and harassment, familial pressures and threats to their children, name calling and sexuality baiting, or other attacks on their reputation in the community or work place. Increasing numbers of women activists from Colombia to Nepal to South Africa and Mexico have been murdered or driven out of their communities for their defense of women's rights.

Despite the daunting challenges they face, women keep showing extraordinary, courage and creativity in demanding their rights and seeking to create a better world. New technologies have spread ideas of change rapidly, and young women have played key roles in the recent revolutions in the Middle East. These women--connected to each other and women in the rest of the world--are poised to be key actors and potential leaders in movements for change as well as governments in the near future.

For a field that has only really existed for two decades, the spirit and vitality of women's human rights is alive. Many problems still remain, but there is also an ever-widening number of actors--men as well as women--seeking state and global accountability for women's human rights. This engagement of new players, seeking new remedies to both ancient and fresher challenges, should lead to another decade of discovery and recognition in the work for women's rights as human rights and the realization of human rights for all.

Charlotte Bunch is the founding director and senior scholar at the Center for Women's Global Leadership at Rutgers University.