Search results
Representing the first book-length treatment of the application of feminist theories of international law, The boundaries of international law argues that the absence of women in the development of international law has produced a narrow and inadequate jurisprudence that has legitimated the unequal position of women worldwide rather than confronted it.
With a new introduction that reflects on the profound changes in international law since the book’s first publication in 2000, this volume is essential reading for scholars, practitioners and students alike.
binding one, was the campaign for a complaints mechanism in the form of an Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (the Women’s Convention). 25 The Vienna Declaration on Human Rights of 1993 stated that the CSW and Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) 26 should examine the possibility of a complaints mechanism
‘discrimination’, unelaborated in the text of article 26 itself. The comment refers to the definition of discrimination in both the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (the Race Convention) 93 and the Women’s Convention 94 and adapts this to the context of the ICCPR: the Committee believes that the term
The book explores the relationship between violence against women on one hand, and the rights to health and reproductive health on the other. It argues that violation of the right to health is a consequence of violence, and that (state) health policies might be a cause of – or create the conditions for – violence against women. It significantly contributes to feminist and international human rights legal scholarship by conceptualising a new ground-breaking idea, violence against women’s health (VAWH), using the Hippocratic paradigm as the backbone of the analysis. The two dimensions of violence at the core of the book – the horizontal, ‘interpersonal’ dimension and the vertical ‘state policies’ dimension – are investigated through around 70 decisions of domestic, regional and international judicial or quasi-judicial bodies (the anamnesis). The concept of VAWH, drawn from the anamnesis, enriches the traditional concept of violence against women with a human rights-based approach to autonomy and a reflection on the pervasiveness of patterns of discrimination (diagnosis). VAWH as theorised in the book allows the reconceptualisation of states’ obligations in an innovative way, by identifying for both dimensions obligations of result, due diligence obligations, and obligations to progressively take steps (treatment). The book eventually asks whether it is not international law itself that is the ultimate cause of VAWH (prognosis).
growing opinio juris. 82 What other instruments relate to violence against women? The General Assembly has built upon the 1993 Declaration by expressing concern for especially vulnerable groups of women, for example migrant workers. 83 The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (the Women’s Convention) does not explicitly condemn violence against women, but in
participate in the work of international organizations’. 151 CEDAW has stressed the importance of these provisions and called on states parties to the Women’s Convention to take temporary special measures to ensure that they are complied with. 152 The UN’s record on the employment of women and its resistance to improvement violate the standards of equality of the Women’s Convention. The patterns of both
narrower focus than the Women’s Convention but its two sentences contain some valuable guarantees. According to the terms of Article 5, the obligations of the State are limited to ensuring equality in relations of a private law character between spouses themselves, and in their relations with their children. Thus, unlike the Women’s Convention, which is quite general, this Article does not apply to issues of
change. This liberal feminist approach is the foundation of most of the existing initiatives to promote sexual equality in the international arena. The Women’s Convention, for example, relies on considerable state intervention to remedy discriminatory treatment. This is also the approach of the Platform for Action adopted at the Fourth World Conference for Women in 1995. There are, however, problems for
–321. 48 Collins, The Woman in White , p. 159. 49 Collins, The Woman in White , p. 174. 50 Collins, The Woman in White , p. 197. 51 Collins, The Woman in White , p. 180. 52 Collins, The Woman in White , p. 390. 53 Sojourner Truth, Ain’t I a Woman? (1851), speech delivered at the Women’s Convention, Akron, Ohio. www.edchange.org/multicultural/speeches/truth_a_woman.html . 54 C. J. S. Thomson, The History and
human rights. Many States have made reservations of a broadly cultural nature to the Women’s Convention, as well as the CRC. As observed in the introduction, many issues circling around the debate on so-called cultural relativism are not expressly conducted in relation to indigenous groups, but there are clear implications for them in the commentaries and principles. At their most polarised, rival arguments insist on either social transformation in the light of the norms of human rights, or on absolute cultural integrity. Neither approach is completely vindicated by