Amnesty International Irish Section

Amnesty International recognises that human rights are indivisible and inter-dependent, and works to promote all the human rights enshrined in the Universal declaration of human rights, through human rights education programmes and campaigning for ratification and implementation of human rights treaties.

The Human Rights of women have been specifically targeted by Amnesty International since 1989. In that year the International Women’s Network was founded following the decision at the International Council Meeting, Amnesty International’s supreme governing body, to increase the focus which Amnesty gives to Women’s Rights.

The reasons for Amnesty’s specific targeting of Women’s rights lie within the reality of today’s world in which; most of the casualties of war are women and children; most of the world’s poor are women and children and 80% of the world’s refugees are women and children.

Women are in double jeopardy. Discriminated against as women, they are also as likely as men, If not more so, to become victims of human rights violations. Few countries treat their women as well as their men. The consequences of this discrimination are terrible. More women and girl-children die each day from various forms of gender based discrimination and violence than from any other form of human rights abuse. Every year, according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), more than a million infant girls die because they are born female. Every year, because of discrimination, millions of women are mutilated, battered to death, burned alive, stripped of their legal rights and bought and sold in an unacknowledged but international trade in slaves for domestic or sexual purposes. Because of their gender women are at risk of a range of violent abuses by private organisations and individuals.

The global status of women has necessitated the specification and clarification of the existing body of international humanitarian law, and promotion of the concept that women’s rights are human rights. Amnesty International sent a delegation to The Fourth UN World Conference on Women of 1995, to work with other NGOs and to lobby for this desperately required specification and implementation of human rights standards. In the following text the results of the conference are reviewed and the question of "where to next?" is discussed.

In 1995 Amnesty International undertook a campaign on women and human rights which ran from March until the end of September, and culminated in attendance at the fourth world conference on women (FWCW) in Beijing in September of that year. An Amnesty International delegation to the conference presented Amnesty’s message with respect to armed conflict and the human rights of women, universality of human rights and violence against women. Members and groups around the world simultaneously carried out their own demonstrations, exhibitions and vigils, and two staff from the Irish section attended the conference.

Amnesty International’s objectives for the FWCW

Our primary objective was that the platform for action, which was to be adopted at the conference should include:
A clear statement of the current impediments to women’s enjoyment of their human rights but, above all, focus on practical steps which governments will implement to ensure a real and measurable advance in the situation of women in every region of the world.

According to Kirsten Timothy, Deputy Director of the UN Division for the advancement of women and coordinator for the fourth world conference on women:
"The real battlefield in the fight for women’s equality is still back at home in the context of the cultural, religious and traditional norms that govern our societies. Only by exposing the real situation of women everywhere to public scrutiny can change occur."

In the Beijing declaration, the declaration of the conference, governments reaffirmed their commitment to the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights instruments. Furthermore they commit themselves to ensuring:
"the full implementation of the human rights of women and the girl child as an inalienable, integral and indivisible part of all human rights and fundamental freedoms".

The Platform for action

The platform for action is the document produced by the conference which sets out the actions to be undertaken by governments in the areas of education, review of national laws and implementation of international conventions.

It represents an important step by governments all over the world towards acknowledging the reality of human rights violations against women and includes the following important declaration of the universality and indivisibility of all human rights.

While the significance of national and regional particularities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds must be borne in mind, it is the duty of states, regardless of their political, economic and cultural systems, to promote and protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms.

The platform for action advanced several concepts, such as those that promote sexual rights, the valuation of women’s unpaid work, the equal right of women to inheritance, the condemnation of genital mutilation as a form of violence, the concept that women’s rights are human rights, and the need to take action to curb all forms of violence against women.

It weaknesses include a reluctance to identify many human rights violations against women which are prevalent throughout the world, in peace as well as conflict, such as rape or sexual abuse and other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment. Nonetheless Amnesty International views the platform for action as an important step forward by the world’s governments towards acknowledging the reality of human rights violations against women and girls.

Beyond Beijing - The Struggle Continues

Governments attending the Fourth UN World Conference on Women agreed in the Platform for Action that:
"the full and equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms by women and girls is a priority for Governments and the UN and is essential for the advancement of women..." and that: "Governments must not only refrain from violating the human rights of all women, but must work actively to promote and protect these rights." ( strategic objective 1, paragraphs 213 and 215)

In addition to the broad statement above, individual governments presented their Commitments for the promotion and protection of women’s rights as human rights in plenary speeches at the close of the conference. It is now the focus of Amnesty International, UN agencies and other NGO’s to ensure that governments worldwide fulfil the commitments they undertook at Beijing, to actively disseminate information relating to the conference and to educate women worldwide on what the platform for action could mean for them.

To this end a number of human rights groups, including Amnesty International have come together for the purposes of organising a working Conference entitled "Women’s Rights are Human Rights", to take place in Dublin in March of this year - check this page for further information on the upcoming Conference.

Amnesty International emphasises the importance of the principle endorsed in Beijing that women’s rights are human rights and will continue to urge that this principle be put into action by governments developing national plans of action for the promotion and protection of women’s human rights, through ongoing lobbying and campaigning activities worldwide.