Human Rights and Women's Rights: The United Nations Approach

This chapter describes the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), which was the first international organ ever created to promote women’s rights and equality. The status of women has been on the agenda of the United Nations since its inception and typically addressed as an issue of discrimination in relation to human rights. As the UN’s work on human rights has evolved and expanded, so have its apparatuses and activities on the advancement of women’s rights and status. The CSW played a key role in drafting declarations and treaties that promote women’s rights, organizing world conferences on women, the development of other UN agencies that address women’s issues, and monitoring and evaluating the attention given to women by other agencies. The chapter examines and discusses the CSW’s operational structure, changing agenda, major accomplishments, the difficulties encountered by the Commission, and the controversies surrounding both its work and the UN approach to women’s issues.

Download Full-text

The Illusion of Progress: Evaluating U.N. Women’s Rights Instruments

Perceptions ◽

10.15367/pj.v4i2.103 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 4 (2) ◽

pp. 7

Author(s):

Christina Borst

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

United Nations ◽

Women's Rights ◽

Gender Discrimination ◽

Women’S Rights ◽

Cultural Patterns ◽

Concerted Effort ◽

Cultural Mores ◽

The United Nations

Though the realm of international women’s rights has overcome significant challenges, scope is often restricted to gender discrimination violations that are de jure rather than de facto in nature. These advancements concerning the rights of women can, to an extent, be attributed to the proactiveness of the United Nations. This paper seeks to identify the instruments the U.N. has developed for the protection of the human rights of women and address their subsequent effectiveness. By examining developed instruments, cultural patterns, and historical examples, the U.N. has and continues to make a concerted effort toward ensuring de jure protections. Enforced by analysis of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, discrepancies between what the U.N. classifies as human rights and the human rights of women become apparent. Still, the de facto discrimination against women in states with contrasting governmental structures and cultural mores is not customarily accounted for by the United Nations. Questions remain in regards to whether or not the U.N. can or should be responsible for remedying the global variance in de facto discrimination against women. It is suggested that the United Nations shift its focus toward strict instrument enforcement.

Download Full-text

United Nations endorsement and support for human rights: An experiment on women’s rights in Pakistan

Journal of Peace Research ◽

10.1177/0022343320912839 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 002234332091283

Author(s):

Gulnaz Anjum ◽

Adam Chilton ◽

Zahid Usman

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

United Nations ◽

Women's Rights ◽

Women’S Rights ◽

International Human Rights Law ◽

Policy Reforms ◽

International Human Rights ◽

International Human ◽

The United Nations ◽

New Policies

The United Nations is one of the organizations charged with developing and promoting international human rights law. One of the primary ways that the United Nations tries to do that is by regularly reviewing the human rights practices of member states and then recommending new policies for that state to implement. Although this expends considerable resources, a number of obstacles have made it difficult to empirically assess whether the UN’s review process actually causes countries to improve their human rights practices. To study this topic, we conducted an experiment in Pakistan that tested whether respondents were more likely to support policies aimed at improving women’s rights when they learned that the reforms were proposed by the United Nations. Our results indicate that the respondents who were randomly informed of the United Nations endorsement not only expressed higher support for the policy reforms, but also were more likely to express willingness to ‘mobilize’ in ways that would help the reforms be implemented. Our treatment did not have any effect, however, on respondents that did not already have confidence in the United Nations. This suggests that the international human rights regime may only be able to aid domestic reformers when there is already faith in those institutions.

Download Full-text