Women’s Rights Law

Statement by Afghanistan’s Women Protester Movements Coalition re Taliban ban on women workers at UN offices

/ Stephanie Farrior / Leave a comment

Afghanistan’s Women Protester Movements Coalition
Press Statement
5 April 2023

The Taliban’s ban on women’s employment at the United Nations offices was foreseeable. The Taliban have made women’s right to work and education a tool for their political bargaining with the international community. They don’t believe in the participation of women in public life. They seek to systematically remove women from public spaces and have issued more than 40 decrees aimed at oppressing women since their return to power.

In December 2022, when the Taliban banned women’s employment in NGOs, women protesters expected international aid agencies to have a unified approach in protesting the Taliban’s restrictions on women’s employment and not continue their activities in Afghanistan without female employees. Contrary to our expectations, once again international aid agencies, including the United Nations, negotiated an agreement with the Taliban which allowed women to continue their work in limited sectors.

Such settlements and the international community’s unconditional engagement with the Taliban have emboldened them. The lack of unified and strong action in response to the Taliban’s continued attacks on the rights of women has led to the Taliban continuing their attacks with impunity.

Only the Taliban are responsible for starving 28 million Afghans who rely on humanitarian aid. By banning women’s employment, the Taliban take away the right to a decent life from the Afghan people and contribute to more poverty and hunger in Afghanistan. If this situation continues it will lead to a further crisis in the country.

In response to the Taliban’s recent ban on women’s employment in United Nations agencies, we, members of Afghanistan’s Women Protester Movements Coalition, once again call on the United Nations and other international aid agencies to:

  • Stop their operations in Afghanistan until women are allowed to work.
  • Abandon unconditional engagement with the Taliban and use all means and leverage to hold them accountable for their human rights violations.

The situation in Afghanistan is not only a humanitarian catastrophe but most importantly a human rights crisis. International aid agencies, including the United Nations, must demonstrate their commitment to human rights values in practice and place women’s human rights at the top of their priorities.

If the United Nations and other international aid agencies cannot firmly defend the rights of their female employees, we doubt their intentions to help the people of Afghanistan transition out of the current crisis.

Addressing Officer-Perpetrated Gender-Based Violence and Ending the “Blue Wall of Silence”

/ Tamar Ezer / Leave a comment

Despite the challenges of 2022, it closed with an important milestone for women’s rights. The European Court of Human Rights issues a groundbreaking decision, taking a bold stand to address officer-perpetrated gender-based violence (GBV).

Officer-perpetrated GBV is a major issue across the globe and yet so often invisible and rarely addressed. In many cases, it is met with a “blue wall of silence,” where police departments protect fellow officers from investigation. This completely undermines the state’s response to GBV and is particularly troubling since many states rely on law enforcement as frontline responders to GBV.

At the very least, the justice system should not be a perpetrator of abuse. We need the equivalent of the “first, do no harm” guiding principle we have for physicians.

The European Court of Human Rights acknowledged this in the Case of A & B v. Georgia. In this case, a woman experienced regular physical and psychological abuse by her former partner, a police officer. He threatened to kill her and her family, repeatedly “flaunted his service pistol,” referred to his “official status as a police officer and strong connections within the police,” and threated to bring false charges against her father and brother if she dared to report the violence.

Nonetheless, over the course of three years, the woman and her family made multiple calls  to the police and the woman filed a complaint with various state departments to stop the abuse. However, officers called to investigate interviewed the woman while her former partner was present, mocking and threatening her, and they left together in the same car. Even worse: officers told the woman that “wife-beating was commonplace” and of “not much importance”; and that she should not contact them in the future “without a valid reason or face being fined for wasting police time as they were busy with other, more serious matters.”

In 2014, the former partner tragically shot and killed the woman. Her mother and son brought a case that went before the European Court of Human Rights.

Our Human Rights Clinic at the University of Miami School of Law had the opportunity to collaborate with the European Human Rights Advocacy Center (EHRAC) on this case. We filed an intervention, along with partners, arguing for heightened state responsibility in cases of officer-perpetrated GBV. Officers are uniquely positioned to use their state authority, training, and access to weapons and resources to facilitate abuse in their relationship. Moreover, heightened vigilance by the state is required to prevent impunity and safeguard the justice system’s integrity.

Human rights law has already recognized that officer influence can facilitate GBV in the context of detention and custody. We argued that this also pertains to officers committing private acts of violence within their relationship, which also leverage their official positions. Moreover, human rights law recognizes officers’ particular role and authority with regards to GBV, mandating trainings on professionalism and sensitivity.

: Addressing Officer-Perpetrated Gender-Based Violence and Ending the “Blue Wall of Silence”

The European Court of Human Rights agreed. The Court stated that it “expects Member States to be all the more stringent when investigating . . . their own law-enforcement officers for the commission of serious crimes, including domestic violence and violence against women in general, than they are with ordinary offenders, because what is at stake is not only the issue of the individual criminal-law liability of the perpetrators but also the State’s duty to combat any sense of impunity felt by the offenders by virtue of their very office, and maintain public confidence in and respect for the law-enforcement system.” The Court further referred to a “heightened duty to tackle prejudice-motivated crimes.”

The Court awarded damages to the plaintiffs. While it recognized the need for policy measures, it said it was up to the State of Georgia, supervised by the Committee of Ministers, to determine “the exact means to address gaps and “the discriminatory passivity” of law enforcement.

Our Human Rights Clinic has called for:

  • A “zero-tolerance policy” for GBV perpetrated by officers
  • Internal structures in police departments that:
    • Prevent the hiring of individuals with a history of GBV
    • Monitor current officers for signs of abuse
    • Handle investigation against fellow officers, including the removal of weapons during the investigation
  • Enhanced data collection on officer-perpetrated GBV
  • Online or anonymous reporting to better protect survivor safety
  • Programs supporting officer mental health, including stress managements and confidential crisis counseling.

We have also expanded our analysis of law enforcement responses to GBV in a human rights framework report and case studies focused on Canada and Brazil. The report and case studies address accountability for officer-perpetrated GBV, trauma-informed interactions with survivors, effective investigation of GBV reports, and intersecting discrimination.

As we celebrate another International Women’s Day, let’s take a step closer to addressing GBV, ending state impunity, and ensuring a safe existence for all.

Launching a Global Campaign Against Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan

/ Stephanie Farrior / Leave a comment

Three items to share on this, the one-year anniversary of the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan:

Register and attend what promises to be a riveting discussion on Global Strategies for Countering Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan on Friday 19 August 2022, with courageous Afghan women human rights defenders like Shaharzad Akbar and Zarqa Yaftali and international partners like the University of Michigan’s Professor Karima Bennoune and Human Rights Watch’s Heather Barr. Register here.

View filmmaker Ramita Navai’s documentary Afghanistan Undercover, about which noted interviewer Terry Gross of the program Fresh Air remarked in her interview with Navai: “I feel like the world isn’t watching as carefully anymore. And your documentary was a wake-up call to me. . . . things have gotten so dire for women there.”

Read Professor Bennoune’s powerful analysis The Best Way to Mark the Anniversary of Taliban Takeover? Launch a Global Campaign Against Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan, which explains why “it is critical to commit to a more effective and principled global response, and to do so by recognizing this grave set of abuses for exactly what it is: gender apartheid.”

Time to act, UN Human Rights Committee

/ Stephanie Farrior / 1 Comment

Afghanistan, which ratified the ICCPR in 1983, was last reviewed by the UN Human Rights Committee in 1995 – and it was a truncated review at that. The Afghan head of delegation was unable to be present due to delays en route, so the Chair suspended the review that had barely begun, saying that consideration of the report would be resumed at a subsequent meeting.

No subsequent review has ever taken place. Instead, there has been one postponement after another, as shown by the timeline below.  Why the neglect by the premier human rights treaty body authorized to monitor compliance with civil and political rights?  

Prompted by concerns we heard from Afghan women human rights defenders and Afghan human rights defenders more broadly, three of us wrote to the Human Rights Committee last week urging them to schedule a review of Afghanistan without further delay: Felice Gaer, Former Vice Chairperson and member, Committee against Torture, and Director, Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights; Karima Bennoune, Professor of Law, University of Michigan, and immediate past UN Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights; and yours truly, Stephanie Farrior, professor of international law for 30 years and past Legal Director of Amnesty International. We await a response. The Committee has reportedly already set its calendar of reviews for the next several years. If a review of Afghanistan is not already scheduled, it should be, and without yet more delay.  

Afghanistan has seen significant political turmoil in the years since that partial Committee review held in 1995 – from the Taliban, to the Karzai government after the US invasion and now, back to the Taliban, which is not recognized by the United Nations as the official representative of Afghanistan. This has not prevented other UN human rights treaty bodies from holding a review of the implementation of their treaty in Afghanistan (see below).

The Human Rights Committee did schedule review of Afghanistan for March 2000, but the government requested and received a postponement.  

The review was next scheduled to take place in October 2001, and in the preceding session in May, the Committee developed its “List of issues prior to reporting.” However, the events of 9/11 intervened, and the Committee decided “to postpone review of implementation of the Covenant in Afghanistan to a later and more favorable date.” A concern expressed in that meeting by the late Sir Nigel Rodley and shared by other Committee members at the time was that their statement postponing the review “should not be interpreted in such a way as to suggest that the Committee will henceforth no longer consider the reports of States Parties in which an armed conflict is taking place.” Christine Chanet added that the presence of armed conflict does not only not prevent consideration of a state party, but it actually “adds to the concerns of the Committee.”

It was not until a decade later, in July 2011, that a review of Afghanistan was once again on the table, when the Human Rights Committee announced it would develop a “List of issues prior to reporting” at its July 2012 session.  It did indeed adopt a list of issues at that 2012 session, but in the ensuing ten years, no review of implementation of the Covenant in Afghanistan was ever scheduled or held.

Today, the human rights situation in Afghanistan is dire. For women and girls, as a journalist quoted in Amnesty International’s recent report has stated, “it’s death in slow motion.” For some, it’s more than one can bear. According to UN News: “The situation for women is so desperate in Afghanistan that they are committing suicide at a rate of one or two every day, the Human Rights Council has heard.”

In light of the dire situation in Afghanistan, the Human Rights Committee could take action and schedule a long overdue review of the civil and political rights situation there. The Committee’s Rule of Procedure 70 allows for review of a state party in the absence of a report. In this case, the last report submitted by Afghanistan could be updated with the significant body of information documented by UNAMA, the UN Special Rapporteur on Afghanistan, and human rights NGOs.  In addition, Afghan human rights defenders are keen to submit shadow reports. They are also keen to see every human rights mechanism engaged to the extent possible, to keep up international attention and pressure.

In a situation where the de facto entity in control of a state’s territory is not a recognized government, the Committee could nonetheless follow normal procedures and send an invitation to participate in a review to the office of the Permanent Mission of Afghanistan in New York. The UN-recognized (former) government officials could attend, present an oral (or written) report – or not. It should be noted that Rule of Procedure 68.2 allows for consideration of a report if the state party does not send a representative.   

The timeline below shows year after year after year of postponements of a review of Afghanistan by the Human Rights Committee. Other treaty bodies have engaged in periodic reviews of Afghanistan in the years when the Human Rights Committee was not scheduling a review, most recently the Committee against Torture in 2017-2018, and CEDAW in both 2016 and 2020.

It is time for the UN Human Rights Committee to re-engage, and schedule a review as soon as possible, given the critical situation there and the importance of continued international scrutiny. The record of neglect by the Human Rights Committee means that there has been no authoritative analysis of the implementation of the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in Afghanistan for 27 years. The Committee should correct this situation promptly.  

October 1991: Afghanistan submitted 2nd periodic report to the UN Human Rights Committee. 

October 1995: Committee began review of the 2nd report, but soon suspended the review due to the absence of the head of delegation caused by travel delays. “The Chairman said that consideration of the report of Afghanistan would be resumed at a subsequent meeting,” and the Committee requested the Government of Afghanistan to submit information updating the report before 31 May 1996 for consideration at” its session in July 1996.  No additional information was received.

The next mention of Afghanistan in Summary Records after October 1995:

October 1999: The Committee invited Afghanistan to present its report at its March 2000 session. The State party asked for a postponement.

November 1999:  The Committee discussed and adopted a list of issues to be taken up in connection with the consideration of the second periodic report of Afghanistan.  Materials used in the preparation of the list included the report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan and a report by Amnesty International on the situation of women in Afghanistan.

May 2001: The Committee decided to consider the situation of Afghanistan during its session in October/November 2001, applying Rule of Procedure 68.2, which allows for consideration of a report if the state does not send a representative.

October 2001: The Committee decided to postpone consideration of Afghanistan to a later date, “pending consolidation of the new Government.” “The Committee has very serious concerns regarding the implementation of the provisions of the Covenant in Afghanistan, particularly with regard to the situation of women in Afghanistan, public and extrajudicial executions, and religious intolerance. . . . Despite the fact that, with the current situation of armed conflict in Afghanistan, other serious concerns concerning the protection of the rights guaranteed by the Covenant have been added, the Committee considers that reviewing the report would not be productive in the current situation. [The Chairman] has therefore decided to postpone consideration of the report to a later and more favorable date for the purposes of article 40 of the Covenant.”

Continued postponements: In succeeding annual reports, the Committee duly recorded the previous postponements, but never scheduled a review:

A/58/40(Vol.I)    2002-2003

A/59/40(Vol.I)    2003-2004

A/60/40(Vol.I)    2004-2005

A/61/40(Vol.I)    2005-2006

A/62/40(Vol.I)    2006-2007

A/63/40(Vol.I)    2007-2008

A/64/40(Vol.I)    2008-2009

A/65/40(Vol.I)    2009-2010

A/66/40(Vol.I)    2010-2011

May 2011: “Afghanistan accepted the new optional procedure on focused reports based on replies to the list of issues prior to reporting. It is thus waiting for the Committee to adopt a list of issues prior to reporting.”

July 2011:  The Committee report notes: “The timetable for consideration of reports posted on the Committee website would . . . take account of the States parties for which a list of issues prior to reporting was to be adopted in July 2012, namely Afghanistan, Croatia, Israel, San Marino and New Zealand.”

July 2012:  The Committee adopted a list of issues prior to reporting on Afghanistan with a deadline of 31 October 2013 for its response. In the Committee’s July 2012 LOIPR includes the following  “Please provide any other information on measures taken to disseminate and implement the Committee’s previous recommendations (CCPR/C/AFG/CO/2), including any necessary statistical data.”

For those interested in seeing what those previous recommendations were: Per the UN Library Services, “despite the fact that document CCPR/C/AFG/Q/3 clearly mentions CCPR/C/AFG/CO/2, this document symbol is not recorded in any other source or index and according to the historical research above, the second report issued in 1992 was never fully considered – so no formal documented outcome must have been issued.”

Over the ten years that have passed since it adopted the list of issues, the Human Rights Committee has never reviewed implementation of the Covenant in Afghanistan.

2013-2014: The Annual Report notes the Committee’s adoption of a list of issues prior to reporting on Afghanistan with a deadline of 31 October 2013 for its response. “This report has still not been received.”

Note: The Human Rights Committee’s Rule of Procedure 70 allows for consideration of a State Party in the absence of a report.

2014-2019: The next five Annual Reports of the Human Rights Committee stop giving the prior history of postponed reviews, and only mention Afghanistan in the list of states that are 10 or more years overdue in submitting a report.

There is no further mention of Afghanistan in Annual Reports or Summary Records.

Adoption as Secondary to Childbirth: India’s Maternity Benefit Act

/ Sunidhi Kashyap / Leave a comment

The joyous moments of childhood often include parents cheering on their children on their simplest yet the most beautiful achievements. Sadly, not all children are able to share ‘firsts’ or experience the thrill of their gleaming parents on their achievements. These children who are left abandoned or have lost their parents often feel a disconnect with the world, the feeling of not belonging. According to a recent report of National Commission for Protection of Children’s Rights (NCPCR), at least 10094 children were orphaned during the pandemic. Adoption, thus, presents an opportunity for these children to live a happy and secure life. 

Framework of Maternity law in India

In India, firstly, there is no scope of paternal or paternity leave and the leave is limited to the extent of mothers. The Indian legislation is drafted in such a way that it is believed only women have the sole duty of nurturing and taking care of their child. Thus, fathers are kept out of the purview of the legislation of granting paternity benefits. On the other hand, it is often seen that employers refuse maternity leave for adoptive mothers because the law does not mandate it. Adoptive mothers are treated to be a class apart from biological mothers and provide an absolute legislative cover to the latter and an exceptional layer to the former.

Under the current Maternity Benefit Act (1961), according to Section 5(4), a woman is allowed a maternity leave of 12 weeks only if the adopted child is below 3 months of age. If a woman adopts a child who is more than 3 months of age, she is not considered for maternity leave at all. On the other hand, biological mothers are allowed a maternity leave of 26 weeks. The most unsettling aspect is the age limit of the adopted child that is set in the Act. 

After the 2017 amendment, The Maternity Benefits Act has considered adoptive mothers to be deserving of a maternity leave, but the amendment doesn’t solve the cause. Not only is it treating adoptive mothers unequally, but is also snatching away a secured life of the adopted child. Firstly, the age limit of 3 months of the adopted child is keeping adoptive mothers outside the purview of the Act because the adoption process itself is very time-consuming. Secondly, it is disincentivizing adoption of children who are not a newborn baby. Thirdly, it is remiss to think that only children in the 0-3 months of age require continuous care and support. 

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Women Refugees and Gender Persecution

/ Cecilia Marcela Bailliet / Leave a comment

The UN AudioVisual Library invited me to give a lecture on Women Refugees and Gender Persecution. It gives an overview of gender-based violence, the context of forced migration faced by women, the application of the due diligence principle in Refugee Status Determination, assessment of risk, evidentiary issues, credibility determination, gender-related persecution, nexus to protection categories, and the application of cessation clauses and the Internal Flight Alternative. It will be made available on March 7th on the eve of International Women’s Day! Please check the UN AVL website

The Human Rights Brief of American University Washington College of Law published my article titled Examination of the Effects of Deportation as a Result of Revocation of Status Upon the Rights to Non-Discrimination, Family Unity, and the Best Interests of the Child: An Empirical Case from Norway, This article discusses the European and Nordic trend of non-European/Schengen nationals to their countries of origin or transit countries and implementing deportation as a principal mechanism of immigration control. It examines a particular case from Norway resulting from a review of cases involving select nationalities extending back in time beyond five years. This review identified persons who lied about their country of nationality and were subject to revocation of status and deportation in spite of their ties to family and integration within the community. The article discusses the role of the judiciary as a resistant gatekeeper to international human rights, in particular the right to family unity and the best interests of the child, as well as the right to non-discrimination. It calls for reform of review of old cases based on nationality, instead acting only an individualized security risk assessment and the adoption of a human rights based approach to revocation and deportation.

Go On! Book Launch: The Construction of the Customary Law of Peace: Latin America and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights

/ Cecilia Marcela Bailliet / Leave a comment

You are welcome to register for participation in the book launch of The Construction of the Customary Law of Peace: Latin America and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights on October 1st at 5pm, live streamed via Zoom:

https://www.jus.uio.no/ior/english/research/news-and-events/events/other/latin-america.html

At present, Latin America may be characterized as a region that has enjoyed an epoch of “long peace”, due to the lack of inter-state wars. Simultaneously we have seen a diametric rise in intra-state violence, evidenced by its ranking as having the highest level of violence in the world, and in particular having the highest levels of violence against workers and women.

This book explores the regional normative evolution of peace from its negative form (absence of violence) to its positive form (equality, non-discrimination, and social justice) and the challenge of articulating a pro homine peace in an increasing authoritarian populist context.

Bailliet has interviewed the sitting judges in The Inter-American Court of Human Rights. The court has established a large amount of case law regarding migrants, indigenous and elderly people’s rights. The court also employs orders demanding protection of human right advocates and other civil society actors participating in protests subject to state repression.

The sitting president for The Inter-American Court of Human Rights, Elizabeth Odio Benito, views women as the heart of peace, and concludes that the court protects peace because it protects women’s rights. At present there is a high level of polarization in the region, evident by societal mobilization and counter-mobilization regarding abortion, access to IVF, violence against women and family rights.

The book seeks to explore to what degree The Inter-American Court of Human Rights is capable of developing a framework for sustainable peace within the context of the triad human rights, democracy and development.

PROGRAMME:

17:00 Welcome and introduction by Cecilia Bailliet

17: 10 Prepared comment by Professor Thomas Antkowiak, Professor of Law and Director of the International Human Rights Clinic at the Seattle University School of Law (live streamed from the US).

17:30 Prepared comment by Professor Benedicte Bull, UiO.

Discussion:   Challenges to peace in Latin America 

Migrant Worker Women Advancing Gender Equity through the USMCA

/ rachelmicahjones / Leave a comment

Men only, 18–35 years old. 

In 2021, seeing a job posting with those words is startling. Shocking even. But more than a year into a world-changing pandemic that has pushed millions of women out of paid work, U.S. employers continue to discriminate against women, posting ads like that one. To evade legal consequences, U.S. businesses discriminate in Mexico, hiring men to work in the United States with temporary H-2 guestworker visas while turning women away. Other U.S. businesses discriminate by hiring women but channeling them into lower-paying jobs with poorer conditions than those they hire men for. Although the U.S. government knows that H-2 employers discriminate against women, it has done little to stop them. 

For more than fifteen years, since I founded Centro de los Derechos del Migrante, Inc. (CDM)—the first transnational workers’ rights organization based in Mexico and the United States—I have heard from women in Mexico about patterns of abuse in the U.S. H-2 programs. Migrant women have courageously spoken out about blatant discrimination in H-2 recruitment and hiring, sexual harassment and other violence against women at work, unfair pay, and unlawful working conditions. Women report discrimination in industries ranging from Maryland’s blue crab processors to fruit and vegetable sorting. Sex discrimination persists in H-2 labor supply chains even though U.S. law prohibits employers and labor recruiters from discriminating against women. Laws prohibiting discrimination protect all women who work in the United States, even if businesses hire them outside of the country.

Today, migrant women continue the fight for gender justice. In March, in honor of Women’s History Month, CDM and workers’ rights organizations across North America joined migrant women in filing the first viable state-to-state complaint under the new United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement (USMCA). The USMCA’s labor chapter, Article 23, requires the United States to enforce its anti-discrimination laws, including Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In failing to root out discrimination in H-2 recruiting, hiring, and employment and neglecting to ensure gender equity in the program, the United States is violating Article 23. 

In the complaint, we collectively make three demands:

  1. The U.S. government must end sex discrimination in the H-2 guestworker programs once and for all.
  2. The government must ensure that all workers have access to Legal Services Corporation-funded civil legal services. (Without lawyers working in solidarity with them, it is nearly impossible for migrant women to access justice through U.S. courts.)
  3. The government must investigate discrimination complaints from women in the H-2 program under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, rather than ignoring or summarily dismissing them.

And to increase pressure on the Administration, we are filing a supplemental complaint with Professor Sarah Paoletti, a Practice Professor of Law and the Director of the Transnational Legal Clinic at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law. The supplement will address the U.S. government’s obligations under the ILO and international human rights law to end discrimination in the H-2 program.

We have reasons to be hopeful that the USMCA can serve as a tool to improve access to transnational justice for migrant workers. Unlike NAFTA—the old trade agreement with its toothless labor side accord—the USMCA has a mechanism for migrant workers and their advocates to push governments to comply with labor and employment laws—or face sanctions. Concretely, this means that the U.S. government may face sanctions if it maintains the status quo and ignores the grave abuses that the petitioners report in the H-2 program. It means that the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission must end its practice of failing to investigate and meaningfully respond to migrant women’s discrimination complaints. And it means that the U.S. Departments of Labor and Homeland Security must stop allowing H-2 employers to discriminate without consequences. In receiving and reviewing our petition, the governments are legally responsible for showing us that they meant what they said about protecting migrant workers’ and women’s rights when they signed the agreement. 

The historic process for the migrant women petitioners began in Mexico, where we filed the USMCA complaint with the Mexican government. Mexico formally accepted the complaint and is now investigating discrimination and other abuses in the agricultural and protein processing industries, the industries in which the petitioners work. Earlier this month, Mexico asked the United States to honor its obligations under the USMCA and invited cooperation in doing so. And now the Biden-Harris Administration has the opportunity to make good on the promise of the USMCA and proactively address the urgent issues we raise in the complaint.

For too long, U.S. businesses have used the H-2 programs to bypass our civil rights and labor laws. Left without government oversight, H-2 employers have enacted their sexist, racist, and ageist ideas about the kinds of workers who maximize profitability. Sex discrimination in the H-2 program harms not only migrant women from Mexico but also U.S.-based workers. 

Over the next year, as we rebuild the U.S. economy for a sustainable and equitable recovery, justice for migrant women must be at the fore of the government’s labor and employment policies and practices. And next Women’s History Month, we look forward to celebrating meaningful, sustainable reforms in the H-2 program that will end discrimination against migrant women and promote access to justice. 

We would be grateful for your support in standing with migrant worker women to fight against discrimination. Please email me (rachel@cdmigrante.org) to join the supplemental complaint on the U.S. government’s obligations under the ILO or to submit an amicus in support of migrant worker women. 

Violence, Justice, Equity: Reflections on International Women’s Day

/ Pantea Javidan / Leave a comment

On this International Women’s Day (IWD), the official UN theme for 2021 is “women in leadership: achieving an equal future in a COVID-19 world.” The elimination of discrimination and violence against women and girls are targets of the Millennium Development Goals and the UN Agenda 2030, which emphasizes inclusivity in its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including gender equality and the empowerment of all females in Goal 5. Goal 10 aims to reduce gender and socioeconomic inequalities globally, including through the elimination of discrimination, violence, exploitation, forced marriage, and female genital mutilation.

Dating back to the first celebration in 1909 in the United States, IWD is rooted in socialist women’s leadership in struggles for labor and economic justice, such as the 8-hour workday and limits on women’s and children’s labor; political justice, such as suffrage and liberation from fascism and autocracy; a refusal to sacrifice husbands and children to wars; and breaking down false barriers between “public” and “private” life that conceal the important roles of mothers and wives. Women’s efforts against poverty and violence have also been consistent IWD themes, including the structural violence of female subordination—“a tolerance of violence against women and children” and being “subjected to a life of sub-humanity for the sheer fact alone that they were born female,” as noted on IWD 2012.

To imagine a gender-equitable future from this historical moment in 2021 requires reckoning with how women and girls have been faring. For instance, since the start of the pandemic in the US women—disproportionately women of color—have left the work force at four times the rate of men, reversing previous gains. One of the more well-known outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic is the escalation of domestic violence and sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV), triggered by prolonged social isolation, household tension in close quarters, and increasing strains on individuals and families due to deteriorating health, socio-economic, and/or political conditions. The “Forever Wars” and other conflicts around the world have also raged on during the pandemic, adding to the world’s refugee crisis in which 75-80% of displaced persons are women and children. Trauma is understandably a common preoccupation of our time.

Working at the intersection of human rights and trauma mental health, I have spent the last year writing about SGBV and trauma-informed approaches to interviewing female survivors for purposes of investigating human rights violations such as genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and mass detention of people seeking refuge from violence and poverty. Among multiple things competing for our attention, mine has been focused intensely on militarism, conflict-related SGBV, impunity, and feminist activism amidst growing societal & global inequities and increasing violence in many forms—criminal, sexual, domestic, and political—during the pandemic. In the ongoing and escalating struggle for gender justice, urgent attention to violence remains important. Among the types of violence and harm SGBV stands out for several reasons. It is the only serious crime for which many justice systems require victims to prove lack of consent to the harm inflicted. Across diverse legal systems, redress for SGBV is difficult to attain due to attribution of blame and complicity to victims/survivors as well as impunity for perpetrators. SGBV has also historically been the least punished offense committed during wartime.

In the long history of international feminist activism, it is only recently that women’s efforts led to the recognition of conflict-related SGBV as a war crime against the long-standing idea that sexual violence against women, girls, men, and boys is an expected military reward or byproduct of war. Women’s campaigning for redress of this injustice, through UN human rights and women’s rights conferences and particularly since the 1990s International Tribunals for Rwanda and the Former Yugoslavia, resulted in its designation as a crime against humanity. “From time immemorial, rape has been regarded as spoils of war. Now it will be considered a war crime,” said Judge Pillay of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (later, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights).

However, all forms of SGBV persist, supported by strong ideological underpinnings: state-supported violence, militarized masculinity, and victim-blaming alongside perpetrator impunity. These thrive in a broader context of social, economic, civil, and political inequities. SGBV is founded on sexist beliefs and compounded by other structural inequalities in the context of globalized discourses of militarized masculinity that merge sex and violence, and which are amplified through warfare. The globally pervasive threat of SGBV reduces the quality of life for targeted persons—disproportionately women, girls, and gender non-conforming persons—and is particularly acute in hyper-masculinist institutions in which sexual assault rates are often highest, such as in militaries. Conflict-related SGBV inflicts collective trauma by systematically targeting individual bodies in furtherance of broader social harms such as the mass displacement, dispossession, and extermination of entire neighborhoods and communities. Female survivors of conflict-related SGBV have reported feelings of complete insecurity and multiple losses: bodily integrity, health, loss of family and their livelihoods, disorientation and lack of belonging, profound dispossession of their personal identity, and marginalization.

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The Black and White Campaign in Turkey and its Repercussions Amidst Rising Femicides and an Increasing Hostility Towards the Istanbul Convention

/ Indrasish Majumder / Leave a comment

Pinar Gültekin a 27-year-old University student was brutally beaten and burned to a crisp by her ex-boyfriend on 21stJuly 2020 in Turkey adding to the country’s long list of femicides. The victim was reported missing for six days before being found dumped in a bin strangled to death by her former partner for disagreeing to reconcile with him. 

While the news of Gültekin’s death ignited demonstrations all across the country and women and men alike took to the street’s, the death of Pinar and similar atrocities against women in Turkey inevitably raises a few questions. What should happen when a 27-year-old girl is strangled to death and burned to a crisp by her ex-partner? What are the repercussions of a mother being stabbed to death by her husband in a café in front of her child? What happens when a girl is stabbed and burned to her death because she resists rape? What happens when the mysterious death of an eleven-year-old girl is deemed “suicide” by the judiciary. Maybe the answer to the above-mentioned questions lies not in what happens but how it happened or who/what perpetrated the incidents. While the atrocities may be perceived by some as interpersonal their prevalence only against a particular section of the community indicates towards an institutionalisation of violence abetted by a chauvinist patriarchal society. 

Violence against women existed long before the expression “femicide” was devised in 1976 by Diana E. Russell at the first “International Tribunal on Crimes Against Women in Brussels, Belgium”. While the term is defined by the “United Nations Office in Drugs and Crime”as the gender-based homicide of women it not just refers to the killing of women but condones an entire system of Judicial administration that fails to safeguard the women and prosecute the perpetrators. The concept is similar to “rape culture” except applying only in cases of murder concerning a women’s sexual orientation, indigenous identity, dowry-related issues. However, contrary to majority perception the acts under no circumstances are unrelated and spasmodic but is abetted by a chauvinistic society exhibiting unequal power structures and conventionally defined gender roles where women often find themselves pushed to the margins. Encouraged by Right-Wing Populist Parties the above-mentioned manifestations of violence against women in Turkey has increased exponentially over the decades.

The misogynistic heteronormative dogmas embedded in the social fabric of Turkey gets exemplified by the Global Study on Homicide, 2018 conducted by the “United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime” which reportedly delineated the death of 89,000 women in Turkey in 2017. Turkey has been ranked114 of 167 countries in the “Women, Peace and Security Index, 2019” and 130thof 149 countriesin “WEF’s the Global Gender Gap Index, 2020”. The data is at face value enough to glean the status and treatment of women in the country. 

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