Ending the Marginalization: Strategies for Incorporating Women into the United Nations Human Rights System

Citation:

Gallagher, Anne. 1997. “Ending the Marginalization: Strategies for Incorporating Women into the United Nations Human Rights System.” Human Rights Quarterly 19 (2): 283-333.

Abstract:

This article describes and evaluates the progress made towards developing and incorporating a women perspective into the human rights work of the United Nations and to suggest strategies to facilitate this process. This article sets out to describe and to critically evaluate the progress which has been made towards developing and incorporating a gender perspective into the human rights work of the United Nations, and to suggest strategies that may be adopted to facilitate this process. In doing so, it seeks to examine the reasons why women have been at the periphery of international human rights, and what obstacles remain to their full integration. These objectives presuppose certain views and alliances which deserve to be identified at the outset. For example, it is accepted that human rights discourse, and the institutional structures which have been built around it-despite serious weaknesses-can be a valuable means of securing equality and basic dignity for women throughout the world. It is also accepted that marginalization of a group-any group vis-à-vis the international human rights system is harmful to that group's interest in securing the basic rights to which its members are entitled as equal persons under international law.

Topics: Gender, Women, International Law, International Human Rights, Rights, Human Rights

Year: 1997