More humane human rights. (Human rights: unfinished business).

Undoubtedly one of the most important changes for women in the past few decades has been the recognition and exercise of their rights.

The most relevant legislative changes were achieved through international conventions that have become law in participating countries. It cannot be denied that these changes were the result of activities carried out by the feminist and women's movements, which have facilitated an important transformation in societies' symbolic-cultural perception, encouraged the appearance of new leadership, and nurtured a debate regarding the nature of democratic citizenship in countries throughout the world.

But we still have a long way to go. The basis of many economic policies continues to be the "productive citizen," a masculine paradigm in which men are conceived as the principal and most stable income providers and, as such, entitled to social and economic rights. The major challenge we face is influencing the focus of economic policies, integrating them into social development, especially in the current context of economic globalization and fundamentalisms of every kind.

Local Realities and Rights

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW, 1979-1981), the CEDAW Optional Protocol and the agreements from the World Conference on Human Rights (Vienna, 1993), the International Conference on Population and Development (Cairo, 1994), the Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing, 1994) and even the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (Durban, 2001) have all been essential tools. Yet this enormous progress, fruit of the efforts of the women's movement, must be implemented and made to "really" exist in very different national and local contexts.

Many governments deny the existence of legalized discrimination against women. In most countries in the South, and even moreso in Muslim countries, formal laws are often overruled by custom. Even when the Constitution provides equal rights for women, reality sustains gender discrimination in the majority of public and private spheres.

Some Muslim countries lack even the illusion of the separation of constitutional law and custom, as both fall under the jurisdiction of the Sharia, or Islamic jurisprudence. Even in Latin American countries that are considered more advanced according to Western precepts and where women's rights are apparently respected, women are prohibited from making decisions regarding their own bodies or sexuality and are punished to the full extent of law and by society when they do so. One example related to the situation of adolescent women was the United States' insistence that any term or concept related to abortion be excluded from the final declaration of the last UN Summit on Children (May 2002).

In some "advanced" Western countries, it is still difficult for sex workers to get a fair trial in cases of rape or sexual violence. In countries like France, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and now Switzerland, abortion is only allowed if the woman is in a state of "crisis" or "desperation," and even those cases are subject to a doctor's approval.

Because violence is perceived as inevitable in any number of occasions and contexts, numerous violations of women's human rights are still allowed in many countries, including female genital mutilation, child brides, mail-order brides, polygamy as a non-reciprocal marriage right, and marital rape--which is not considered a violation of any law. The same is true of the violence used to target specific communities (ethnic cleansing). There is sexism that is termed "civilized" (Western) and sexism that is classified as "barbaric" (non-Western). (1) Human rights are hierarchically ranked according to their contexts.

Most, if not all, of these violations have been dealt with at UN international conferences or in other international forums. However, even though enormous advances have been made thanks to these events, the fact that decisions should be made by those who are most directly affected by the consequences has not yet been recognized (much less implemented). In no way do I mean to imply that the international conferences and agreements (on which women's and feminist movements have done extraordinary work) are of no use. It is clear that we would have no legal, material or formal recognition of the rights of women and other excluded populations without them. These events and the documents signed into law force governments to be less villainous.

Nonetheless, thousands of women and girls continue to be kidnapped and forced into prostitution despite international treaties or agreements. We live in a world where the rape of women is systematically used as a weapon of war, a world in which the concentration of wealth in a small segment of the population leaves millions in the most brutal poverty, which is the greatest of all human rights violations. Proclaiming social, economic and cultural rights without guaranteeing them has serious consequences and can become a vicious circle. With regard to concepts of development, structural adjustment policies and commitments to eliminate poverty, the mechanisms are weak and ineffective.

We Are the Context

This is the reality of millions of women, one that will not be easily changed by micro-credit programs or laws aimed at promoting gender equality. (2) The diverse contexts, their priorities and the contradictions or inconsistencies that form part of women's daily lives in the paradoxical spaces created by the global economy and religious fundamentalism must be placed not only on women's agendas but on those of governments and other groups in civil society. (3)

In the context of the South, the constant undermining of rights increases the risk of an abstract and idealized justice that fails to take into account differences among countries or differences within each country. And as if this weren't enough, the differentiated effects of adjustment policies on men and women would seem to be "neutralized" by the existence of laws that do not allow for these differences. This leaves us a panorama of theoretical and practical contradictions regarding human rights, which become more and more "characteristic" and "typical" of our region.

Context is what differentiates our specific realities, and this diversity has led us to examine our role as women from the South in our efforts to defend our rights and to build citizenship and democracy, questioning and searching out new meanings in the most collective fashion possible, in this context, sustainable development is a constant challenge, as is the current problem of gender inequality in matters pertaining to the protection of the environment, economic well-being and social equality.

In general, the obstacles to women's full participation in sustainable development and public life can be grouped into three categories: 1) constitutional factors, including administrative and legal areas; 2) cultural, social, psychological and behavioral factors; and 3) economic factors, such as access to and ownership of resources. (4) The following areas have been identified as priority areas and indicators for achieving gender equality in sustainable development: women's human rights and control over their own lives; the eradication of poverty; women's access to the control and management of resources and services; the impact of globalization; and funding for development, reproductive health and the environment.

In regard to globalization--which has clear consequences in the processes of sustainable development in our regions and involves not only economic issues but also important social, political and legal aspects--I would like to highlight two issues. The first is the role of transnational corporations and their social and environmental behavior. The second is changes in employment and new forms of job insecurity.

Among the effects of market liberalization and deregulation is the increasingly marked tendency for transnational corporations to locate parts of their production processes in different regions of the world, subcontracting workers in absolute desperation who form the last link in the chain of production. These multinational corporations crowd out small local producers, limiting their prospects for survival in the traditional economy and creating a mobile labor force. The bulk of this labor force will emigrate while another segment will be integrated into seasonal work, such as agro-exportation and piecework production of shoes, clothing or household appliances. All of these forms of employment--partial, seasonal, self-employment and subcontracting--are characterized by lack of job security, inadequate incomes, instability, lack of social security and the use of large numbers of women as the principal source of labor. The decentralization of the production process, which is also spatial, is a consequence of accelerated technological development, and lack of preparation for adapting to these new technological requirements tends to deepen social exclusion. The rights of women with precarious jobs or of those who choose migration as a survival strategy are seldom respected in any context, regardless of a given country's membership in the International Labour Organisation and ratification of ILO resolutions.

One of the consequences of globalization and job instability is the ineffectiveness of labor unions. There is a notorious drop in contracts (or collective agreements): workers sign individual contracts and may even lose rights that they had previously won. There are no opportunities for traditional unionizing, and alternative forms of defending workers' rights seldom materialize in these cases. While not a new phenomenon, the plight of women maquila workers is a prime example. This type of job instability affects men and women differently since the workers employed in the maquilas or as domestic servants are predominantly female, and these same women continue to fulfill other roles in social reproduction (the double or triple workday).

When a man with unstable employment gets divorced or separated, his wife has no way to ensure the transfer of child support, which directly affects the woman and her children.

These types of jobs do not guarantee women the right to maternity leave or to other benefits associated with the birth of their children. Nor do women with unstable jobs or women who participate in the informal market have access to social security. The decline or elimination of these types of rights affects not only women but also the reproduction of society as a whole.

The phenomenon of job insecurity is not new. Informal employment has been a characteristic of women's work in almost every part of the world: self-employment, piecework, unpaid rural family work, and domestic labor. None of these offer social security coverage, and all of them are characterized by instability, long hours, lack of contracts or short-term contracts, etc. The difference lies in the new modes of instability that come into being as a result of globalization and the change of the role played by the State. How do we protect our rights in these situations?

In regard to the defense of these rights, it is worth taking a closer look at the initiatives calling for the inclusion of social clauses in Free Trade Agreements, not only as a declaration of principles, but as a way of ensuring the inclusion of mechanisms that can have a real impact for workers. Also of interest are the efforts by various international NGOs to promote transnational corporations' use of codes of conduct and the campaigns for workers' dignity.

Strategies for adding specific clauses that impede the importation of goods produced under questionable environmental or working conditions (not only child labor, but also cheap female labor) should be promoted with greater force. Much more pressure should be put on governments to increase training, offer benefits and create a competitive and high-quality work force of women and men. In regard to social policy, governments should be encouraged to establish a minimum wage for men and women in order to guarantee the availability of resources necessary for facing the realities of growing old.

Ten years after Agenda 21 (Rio de Janeiro, 1992), and in recognition of advances made in regard to putting into practice the Right to Development, the International Monetary Fund's position is being challenged by the UN agencies' work to prioritize human rights over other international agreements and the many campaigns organized by global civil society in order to ensure that social, economic and cultural rights are not subordinated to the rules of international commerce in multilateral agreements. At the time of this writing, it is still unclear whether the World Summit on Sustainable Development (Johannesburg, August 2002) will incorporate a human rights focus as part of a substantial debate among governments.

Now is the time for civil society to present development models that move away from financial dependence and the external market and towards economic models that place emphasis on domestic markets, abilities and resources, particularly people. The challenge is to seek out and attempt to create a new global ideology with a more human face, an ideology that replaces the market, recognizing human rights as a top priority.

Notes

(1.) Cheifter, Silvia (2002). Prologue to "Globalizacion, contrageografias y resistencias" in Travesias (Buenos Aires: CECYM) vol. 9, no. 10, May, pp. 5-10.

(2.) Tauli-Corpuz, Victoria (2001). "Diversity, Universality and Democracy: A Perspective of an Indigenous Women" in Women in Action (Manila: ISIS International) no. 3, pp. 35-38.

(3.) Underhill-Sem, Ivonne (2001)."Women in Paradoxical Places: "Out of Place in the South and in the North" in Women in Action (Manila: ISIS International) no. 3, pp. 31-34.

(4.) Heinrich Boll Foundation (2001). Towards Earth Summit 2002, Social Briefing Paper No. 2.

RELATED ARTICLE: Equality now taking action for the human rights of women.

For too long, human rights violations against women have been denied the attention and concern of international organizations, national governments, traditional human rights groups and the press. Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of girls and women around the globe continue to endure debilitating and often fatal human rights abuses.

India: A 10-year-old girl is rescued by a flight attendant who notices her crying. Her father has sold her to the 60-year-old Saudi Arabian man sitting next to her for the equivalent of US$240.

Kenya: At a boarding school, 300 boys attack the girls' dormitory. Seventy-one girls are raped. Nineteen are trampled to death in the stampede to escape. The school's vice principal remarks, 'The boys never meant any harm against the girls. They just wanted to rape."

Brazil: A man who confessed to stabbing his wife and her lover to death is acquitted of murder for the second time by an all-male jury. The acquittal is based on the argument that he acted in legitimate defense of his wronged honor.

Ireland: A 14-year-old girl, raped by the father of her best friend, learns she is pregnant. She is prohibited from traveling to England where abortion is legal. Only when she indicates she will commit suicide if forced to carry the pregnancy to term does the Supreme Court allow her to proceed.

United States: A 51-year-old woman is stabbed 19 times and killed by her former boyfriend as she waits inside a courthouse to renew a protection order. Twice before he had been charged with harassment. Both times the charges were dropped.

These are only a few instances of abuses which occur every single day. Human rights violations against women must be documented, publicized--and stopped. We need Equality Now.

RELATED ARTICLE: About equality now.

Founded in 1992 to work for the protection and promotion of the human rights of women around the world, Equality Now is an international human rights organization dedicated to action for the civil, political, economic and social rights of girls and women. Taking advantage of both traditional and "high-tech" action techniques--such as letter-writing and fax campaigns, video witnessing, media events and public information activities--Equality Now mobilizes action on behalf of individual women whose rights are being violated and promotes women's rights at local, national and international levels. Working with national human rights organizations and individual activists, Equality Now documents violence and discrimination against women and adds an international action component to support their efforts to advance equal rights and defend individual women who are suffering abuse.

Through its Women's Action Network, Equality Now distributes information about these human rights violations to concerned groups and individuals around the world, along with recommended actions for publicizing and protesting them. The Women's Action Network is committed to voicing a worldwide call for justice and equality for women.

Issues of urgent concern to Equality Now include rape, domestic violence, reproductive rights, trafficking of women, female genital mutilation, gender discrimination, female infanticide, sexual harassment, pornography, and equal access to economic opportunity and political participation.

From the website of Equality Now, http://www.equalitynow.org.

The author is a Chilean sociologist and has worked with international development agencies for over twenty years. She collaborates with Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) and the Red de Educacion Popular entre Mujeres (REPEM, Women's Grassroots Education Network)