Women’s Rights Are Human Rights: The Practice of the United Nations Human Rights Committee and the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

Leeuwen, F.V. (2013). Women’s Rights Are Human Rights: The Practice of the United Nations Human Rights Committee and the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. A.  Hellum & Sinding Aassen (eds.), CEDAW in International, Regional and National Law, Cambridge University Press. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282947004

Abstract

Women’s rights are human rights!’. This famous slogan was used by the women’s rights movement at the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna. The notion may seem self-evident, as the international system for the promotion and the protection of human rights that was installed under the auspices of the United Nations (UN) builds on the idea of equality in dignity and rights of men and women. Yet, as was convincingly shown by critics of this system, it is not. The women’s rights caucus present in Vienna in 1993 made it unequivocally clear to the participating states of the World Conference that much of what women experience as everyday abuse in their lives was largely kept outside the realm of mainstream international human rights.