Women's human rights and the conversation across cultures.

• Author: Andrews, Penelope
• Position: Globalization and Comparative Family Law: A Discussion of Pluralism, Universality and Markets

1. INTRODUCTION

   My presentation will examine the vision of women's rights and equality as outlined in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, "CEDAW". (1) The presentation will raise some of the possibilities and limitations associated with universalizing legal norms in a context of enormous global disparities, particularly in material and cultural terms. My friend and colleague, Professor Thandabantu Nhlapo, has raised some of these points in his presentation. I have chosen four issues to illustrate the possibilities and limitations of CEDAW's reach. (2)

   First, the limitations of universalizing legal norms are apparent in societies that confront legacies of war, dislocation, and dispossession. Much of Africa, for example, is currently experiencing the consequences of war, dislocation, and dispossession. There are other parts of the world, such as Afghanistan, that are also experiencing the ravages of war and dislocation. (I shall address the situation of Afghanistan later in this discussion.) Second, legal strategies adopted to achieve equality under the CEDAW model are premised on liberal assumptions that do not exist in large parts of the globe. Third, CEDAW advances a secular vision of individual rights enforcement and as a result could be limited in contexts of deeply entrenched cultural and religious mores. Finally, although CEDAW recognizes collective rights, it does not adequately address the contradictions inherent in the individual rights enforcement project within communitarian imperatives. In other words, CEDAW does not provide clear guidance in balancing individual rights with community needs in societies in which the interplay of individual rights and community concerns are constantly negotiated. Professor Nhlapo referred to these questions in his comments, and he has written extensively on these issues. (3)

   Our panel is focused specifically on how CEDAW operates in the advancement of human rights outside of Judeo-Christian contexts. These contexts, as exemplified by the four issues highlighted above, require innovative approaches to the implementation of rights. For the most part, the implementation of CEDAW will occur within societies with extremely limited resources and in those where there has been a breakdown of the formal institutions of the society. For women who have to survive in these contexts, culture is largely negotiated through economic considerations, which raise complicated and sensitive questions.

   When CEDAW was promulgated in the 1970s, the framework of international law, politics, and economics was clearly different from that which pertains today. The parameters and the human rights imagination of the globe was confined to demarcated boundaries--first world and third world, east and west, developed and underdeveloped--and the ravages of this contemporary period of globalization, and particularly the structural adjustment initiatives of the 1970s, had really not yet been fully experienced and appreciated. (4)

   It is arguable that the adoption of CEDAW was an indication of a universal consensus (albeit uneven) about the possibilities of legal processes in changing people's lives. The subsequent levels of local and global dislocation, violence, and lawlessness could not have been predicted. Nor could it have been predicted that the implementation of rights would still, thirty years later, be predicated on questions of daily survival. So too, this historical global juncture, described as one of the clash of cultures involving the Islamic world on the one hand, and the Judeo-Christian world on the other, was not contemplated.

2. "CLASH OF CULTURES": THE UNIVERSALITY OF HUMAN RIGHTS NORMS

   While preparing my comments for this panel, I was playing in my mind some vignettes that I wanted to share with you which underscore the issue of "culture" in various contexts. I have chosen four:

   Vignette 1: I do not know if any of you have read Barbara Kingsolver's book, The Poisonwood Bible, (5) which was set in the Congo in the early 1960's. There is a wonderful scene in the book in which one of the protagonists--an overly zealous preacher from the South of the United States--comes to christianize and civilize the locals. In this endeavor, he has to introduce...