Human Rights

For a basic definition of human rights, I have taken gender out of the question
and gleaned the following from three standard reference works:

[Human rights are] Those rights to life, health, and freedom to which all
people are entitled simply because they are human beings. Much of the concern over human
rights comes because of the fact they are not universally observed by governments…There has
also been considerable debate whether rights include economic and social rights. While the
United States government has seen these as lacking the same fundamental status as political
rights, other countries especially those of the Third World disagree. In this broader view of
human rights, emphasis is laid on the right to work, to social security and to adequate food,
health, and housing.[1]

Human rights…are those rights and privileges held to belong to any person,
regardless of any provision that may or may not exist for them in their legal system, simply
because, as a human being, there are things which they may not be forbidden by any
government. Exactly what the list of these rights is, or why we are entitled to them, varies from
thinker to thinker.[2]

Human rights are rights to which every person is entitled simply by virtue of
being a human living in a society of other humans. Among these are the right to life, liberty, and
the security of the person.[3]

Human right activists have added features such inalienable, indivisible, and
interdependent to human rights[4], thus giving them an even more essential and fundamental
dimension.

It becomes evident when running through these definitions that even

without the added dimension of gender and development, and beyond the obvious questions
posed by the definitions themselves, concept of “human rights” conceals complexities and
tensions beneath its stated essentialism and apparent simplicity. One of the many complexities
which rise from these definitions is indeed the lack of universal government respect and
observance for human rights, which raises the question that if these rights are as basic as is
claimed by these definitions, how is it that they have been and are regularly violated by state or
non-state actors in all countries at one point or other -does this imply that there is a very
fundamental contradiction or incompatibility between the abstract notion of individual human
rights and the very real state or societal setting in which all humans, more or less, find
themselves placed in since their birth? Another interesting feature of the definitions is that in
the first two, which came from dictionaries of political science and thus were not rights-based,
human rights are identified by being set against governments- in other words, the non-
observance by governments of such rights has made them necessary, and this non-observance
is at the core of their definition. This immediately brings forth this question: are violations
committed privately, or by non-state actors, not human rights` violation? The two latter quotes
from rights-based documents do not identify or position human rights in the context of
government non-observance: for a human right activist, these rights are an essential part of
being human- regardless of society or state.

When human rights are linked to issues of gender and development, these
questions and tensions gain almost blazing significance and immediacy. As an illustration of this,
I turn to the article “Mainstreaming Women`s Human Rights”[5] which discusses how gender-
sensitivity was incorporated (or not) into UN aid work in Afghanistan under the Taliban, and
what compromises the UN made with the Taliban in order to make aid work targeting women
possible. Although it is true that the Taliban imposed a grossly exaggerated version of extremist
Islam which is mostly condemned by Muslim nations and moderate Muslims, and is no longer
officially practised anywhere in the world, yet there are two factors which makes this a good
case study: first, the Taliban have not lost any relevancy in present-day Afghanistan; and second,
the very extreme harshness of the situation of women in Afghanistan which was a direct result
of their gender in a dismally misogynistic and abusive culture provides a clear highlight on the
tensions between human rights in theory and practice.

Gaer begins her article by tracing the mention of violations of the human
rights in Afghanistan of women in UN documents and by Special Rapporteurs since 1993.
Women and their situation gain more and more prominence in various international
declarations, and annual General Assembly resolutions. And yet, the Inter-Agency Gender
Mission of 1997, sent to address the “nature of gender discrimination and proper actions in the
field by UN agencies and programs” reported:

UN agencies and their implementing partners in Afghanistan have done little

to promote gender equality. Indeed most programmes and projects ignore women at all stages
of their design and implementation. Even women-specific projects are not designed in
consultation with women. In what is perhaps the most devastating conclusion, the report
reveals the ignorance of field-based staff about the application of human rights guarantees to
everyone. UN staff are notably unprepared to confront the challenges of reversing gender
discrimination.

The report did not apparently have much of an impact, for in 1998, UN went on
to sign an MOU with the Taliban which is characterised as thus:

…the text of the MOU reveals a casual disregard for international human right principles and a
willingness to accept cultural and religious conditions as set down by local authorities as
guidelines governing their implementation…the MOU is riddled with contradictory language and
restrictions that flout most of the non-discrimination principles of international human rights
treaties…

Gaer goes on to list the compromises of the MOU: the right to education and
health care is in accordance with Islamic rules and Afghan culture; health education will be
promoted “in accordance to Islamic principles”, and perhaps most unacceptably, the MOU
declares that “women’s access to and participation in health and education will need to be
gradual.” In July 1998, the UN emergency relief co-ordinator publicly questioned the efficacy of
cutting UN aid programs because of gender concerns. “Is it better in view of unacceptable
violations of human rights to withdraw and condemn, or is it better to remain engaged and try
to make a small difference on the ground?” And the instances of deliberate UN downplaying of
gender for the sake of continuation of development programs is listed throughout the article,
together with parallel instances of international criticism of UN for adopting this “pragmatic”
stance.

In sum, the exchange between the Taliban and the UN pre-September 2001
and the commentary of the international community on this exchange provides a vivid and
extreme illustration of the ongoing debate between the “universalist” view of human rights,
which is more or less encapsulated in the definitions which this opened this essay, and the
“cultural relativist” view, which in practice at least, seems to be the line adopted by high-ranking
UN authorities operating in Afghanistan, albeit in the name of pragmatism and efficiency, and by
ironic extension, their Taliban counterparts. Indeed, in this example, the Taliban unknowingly
have become the strongest proponents of “Dominance theory“, a strand of human right
criticism which hold human rights are simply “instruments of neo-colonialism“ wielded by
Western powers in their quest to suppress and demonize non-Western cultures. [6]

And yet, when one considers feminist critiques of both human rights as an
abstract notion, and specific human rights as laid out in international documents normally
considered as keystones of rights- namely the UDHR, and the ICCPR, one can hardly be
surprised that out in the practice of development, gender issues are almost the first thing to be
compromised when human rights are at stake, as the case study above shows. Charlesworth
and Chinkin argue that there is a very real “gender bias” in human rights law:

In major human rights treaties, rights are defined according to what men fear
will happen to them, those harms against which they seek guarantees. The primacy traditionally
given to civil and political life by Western international lawyers and philosophers is directed
towards men within their public life – their relationship with the government.[7]

Thus, what the two opening definitions saw as defining hallmark of rights (their
formulation in response to government non-observance) is targeted here, while going on to
argue that this private/public dichotomy prevalent in rights discourse is gendered. That means,
violations taking place in the private sphere –the domain where women are particularly
vulnerable to abuse- take a lesser role or are granted less protection than violations in the
public sphere. Not only this, but even in the rights which could be thought equally important
for both men and women, for example the right to life or liberty, “no account has been taken of
the ways in which the mere fact of being a woman can be life-threatening, and the special ways
in which women need legal protection to be able to enjoy the right to life.” [8]

Despite the above criticism, Molyneux and Cornwall argue that rights-discourse
have become central features of development agencies, stating that:

Given that in many parts of the world women experience the consequences of a
lack of equal rights to men in continuing gender-based discrimination, unequal and poor pay,
high levels of violence and continuing exclusion from political arenas,2 they arguably have the
most to gain from a rights approach to development…[9]

They go on to question whether a rights-based approach to development is

indeed the most effective form of achieving gender justice, concluding through selected
examples that while `rights-based development` or RBD has indeed given a certain dynamism,
visibility and prominence to development work, the challenges of working with human rights in
development remain huge. This is partially because of the inherent tensions in this concept
which allow for selective interpretation by the various structures of states or agencies, resulting
in wide gaps between “principles and applications” of rights, as well as highly controversial and
divisive subjects such as reproductive and sexual “rights” of women.

Overall, one can conclude that while human rights definitely has a pivotal role in
gender and development frameworks, exactly how effective they can be is subject to intense
scrutiny. The lack of clear-cut answers is symptomatic of the lack of clear-cut definitions of
human rights, and the resulting controversies arising from the basic questions that they pose.