Skip to main content

Women’s rights are human rights

Sex Discrimination

Women’s rights are
human rights

Speech by Pru Goward Sex Discrimination Commissioner, RAWA Seminar, Hearing Room, HREOC, Sydney, Monday 10 October 2005


Ladies and gentlemen.

Welcome and thank you for making time to join us for this afternoon’s seminar. The next couple of hours will be, I think, very confronting and yet also inspiring as we share together our passion for the rights of women around the world.

Today we are focussing on Afghanistan, and will gain a first hand insight into the current situation for women in the region today.

We are honoured to have two extraordinary women present to you today.

The first is an international guest, Amena Shams who is a member of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, known in short as RAWA. RAWA was established in Kabul in 1977 as an independent political and social organisation to fight for the human rights and social justice of the women of Afghanistan. Amena Shams is a member of RAWA and overseas the operation of RAWA’s orphanages in Pakistan.

Our second speaker is film maker, Carmela Baranowska, who recently won a Walkley for her documentary “Taliban Country”, produced following three weeks of being embedded with the US Marines in Afghanistan.

Welcome to you both and thank you for joining us.

I’m pleased to be hosting today’s seminar as the struggles of women in other countries to secure their human rights should  be of concern to all of us.

Unarguably, the most significant development of the articulation of women's rights came in the 1970s with the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

Adopted by the United Nations in 1979, CEDAW is a clear and unambiguous statement of the rights of women around the globe.

It prohibits discrimination on the grounds of sex, marital status, pregnancy and maternity.

It provides women with the right to participate equally within the political, social, economic and cultural life of their country.

And it obliges governments to take specific and positive steps to secure and protect the rights of women.

Since becoming a signatory to CEDAW, Australia has developed many mechanisms for enforcing the rights enshrined within this Convention. At the forefront are the mechanisms and ideals provided by the Sex Discrimination Act.

The criminal justice system, the legal system and cultural attitudes, among others, are also utilised for the implementation and enforcement of the rights enshrined in CEDAW.

We have come a long way on our journey to secure the rights of women around the world, but there is still some way to go.

Globally women’s rights are still vulnerable.

In many countries, women’s rights remain an intangible concept - the challenge remains making them something concrete.

In Australia we are fortunate to have protections in place. Our sisters in Afghanistan and around the world do not enjoy the same protections.

Afghanistan 's struggle has come to the centre stage over the last few years. Afghanistan represents the intersection of a number of issues- US and Australian foreign policy, the "war on terror", globalisation, the international drug market, the so called clash of cultures, traditional customary rights and the rights of the individual. When it comes to human rights, Afghanistan remains a testing ground for women's rights.

It is interesting how often women's rights are the contested ground in arguments about culture.

We see it here in Australia in the context of "family values" – which for many is code for arguments about women's bodies, women's roles and women's rights.

And it happens in the context of the so called culture wars that has been posited between Islam and the west by some commentators.

As women around the world – we bear the burden of culture, the burden of tradition.

In theory, culture incorporates men and women.

In practice however, it is women who have their behaviour most regulated by culture in a way that often puts at risk their physical well being, health and security.

This is a universal experience, even though bearing the burden means very different things in different countries.

It is the cultural, religious, social, political and economic realities of a country that will determine how this burden manifests itself.

However, as the world becomes a ‘smaller place’; as access to information means that we are more aware of what is happening to women not only in our neighbouring countries, but in countries around the world, we cannot ignore how this burden manifests itself here and in other different countries – especially when it is inconsistent with our universal system of women’s rights and human rights.

In Africa for example, bearing the burden of culture may mean undergoing female genital mutilation. This seriously jeopardises the health of a woman, and may result in her death, yet these concerns come second when weighed up against the cultural need to ensure her marriageability.

In Australia we see Aboriginal women bearing the burden of culture as the recent case of the arranged marriage of a 15 year old girl to a 55 year old man in the Northern Territory testifies.

And in Afghanistan earlier this year, a young 29 year old woman, Amina, was publicly stoned to death by the order of a local religious scholar after she asked for a separation from her husband who had recently returned after five years away. Her husband claimed she had improper relations with another man and she was subsequently sentenced to death.

This is very worrying for us all - for those women caught in the middle, as are the women of Afghanistan.

But none of us are free from this – as long as women's rights can be argued over and bartered away, we are all at risk.

The challenge in this situation, as in many of these situations, lies in finding where women and girls sits amidst often conflicting systems of law. In this case, customary, national and international human rights law – each which has something to say about her body and her rights.

Each purports to protect some part of her identity.

Too often boys and men are allowed and encouraged to embrace the new, modern, Western world, while the girls and women are seen as the vehicles for and bearers of cultural continuation.

Lumped with the task of carrying on often age old traditions, they live in jeopardy.

Their culture, which is important to them, often comes into direct conflict with systems of universal rights and women’s rights.

Women and young girls should not be forced to choose.

The challenge therefore is finding a place for tradition, culture and women rights in a modern world, and more specifically in the lives of women – for whom both are important.

For this reason, the struggles of the women of Afghanistan are struggles for us all. An affront to the rights of our sisters in Afghanistan is an affront to us all.

We are here to listen to Amena today primarily to demonstrate our support for your cause.

On that note, I welcome Amena Shams to microphone.

Last
updated 8 December 2005