Women's rights

Around the world, communities, groups and individuals joined the UN to celebrate Human Rights Day and to kick off a campaign to promote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Activities were as varied as the countries where they took place: from specially commissioned music in Guatemala to a blind theatre group in Senegal; from a human rights film festival in Pakistan to a human rights debate contest in Madagascar; from a speech by an Eleanor Roosevelt impersonator in New York to a lecture by Roosevelt’s grandson, Ford Roosevelt, in Rwanda. The UDHR, which turns 70 in 2018, was a milestone in the history of human rights. It was drafted by representatives from different legal and cultural backgrounds from all regions of the world. It was proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in Paris on 10 December 1948, and the date has since been celebrated as Human Rights Day. Other activities included: a special publication and video version of UDHR issues relevant to Peru; a tran...

There is a bridge between two universities in Japan that is a small testament to the power of linguistic inclusion and outreach. For more than 50 years Korea University, Tokyo (a Korean minority university) and Mushashino Art University (a Japanese arts university) were side by side, separated by single, chain link fence. Yet the two schools never communicated, recalled Wooki Park-Kim, a Korean minority rights activist born and raised in Japan. Koreans have been resident in Japan since 1910 due to colonization. Recently, the students decided enough was enough. They built a bridge from the Korean side to the Japanese side and began to host art exhibitions in one another’s universities. “Korean school students have been making great efforts to promote greater understanding with greater Japanese society,” she said. Park-Kim was speaking about the importance of mother tongue instruction as part of inclusive education during the United Nations Forum on Minority Issues. The forum, ...

Dr Luiz Loures, Deputy Executive Director of UNAIDS, fully admits that he is not an expert on human rights. He is a medical doctor with decades of experience, but he has seen how ignorance and stigma can prevent access to health care. Loures was a doctor early on in the HIV epidemic. During that time, Loures dealt first hand with the stigma and fear associated with HIV. He often would work 18-hour shifts in hospital, as his colleagues were too afraid to assist with his HIV patients. And patients were diagnosed late, if at all, because of the fear of being labelled with the disease. Things have changed in the 30 years since the HIV crisis first began, he said, but discrimination against people with HIV because of stereotypes and other stigma are still a barrier to accessing health care. “What I see in terms of stigma …it seems like we are stuck in the 80s,” Loures said. “And it is clear today that this stigma is killing (people), and bringing a new crisis (in health care) to u...

"The human rights of those living in fragile, failing or armed conflict states matter now and not only when war is over." This was the resounding reminder given by Ilwad Elman, a Somali-Canadian activist, to a gathering of high-level officials at the UN General Assembly in New York earlier this month. Elman, who works on rehabilitation of armed groups, including children, was speaking at an event co-hosted by the Governments of Sierra Leone, Costa Rica, the Netherlands and the UN Human Rights Office in New York on Sustaining Peace through the Strengthening of Human Rights in International Law. The event placed a spotlight on the need for human rights to be at the core of any steps towards resolving conflicts, building peace and sustaining it. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, echoing Elman’s call, warned against the temptation to cast aside human rights law, particularly the need for accountability and justice, in efforts to secure peace. ...

In France, an experiment showed that a woman with a Senegalese sounding name had only 8.4 per cent chance of being called for a job interview, as compared to 22.6 per cent chance for women with a French-sounding name. According to research by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, attacks against women whose appearance suggested they are Muslim have been reported in a number of European countries, while the majority of islamophobic acts committed in 2015 - 74 per cent in France and 90 per cent in the Netherlands - targeted women. These were examples of discrimination against women around the world given by Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, Kate Gilmore, at a panel discussion at the Human Rights Council that analysed the impact of intersectionality on women’s rights. Other figures can be found in a report published this year by the UN Human Rights Office. “The distortions of opportunity and personal progress that discrimination introduces is never down to jus...

More than 400,000 Rohingya have fled Myanmar’s Rakhine State in recent weeks, pouring into neighbouring Bangladesh with reports that they were driven from their villages by military forces who attacked them in their homes and burned vast swathes of territory. Satellite images have shown that close to 200 Rohingya villages have been destroyed and emptied. An international fact-finding mission established by the UN Human Rights Council has dispatched a team to Bangladesh, where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have arrived during the past month and taken refuge in makeshift camps. A Human Rights Council resolution in March 2017 called on the international fact-finding mission to establish the facts and circumstances of alleged human rights violations and abuses in Myanmar, particularly in Rakhine State. “It is important for us to see with our own eyes the sites of these alleged violations and abuses and to speak directly with the affected people and with the authorities,” Marzuki ...

After a tedious and fruitless battle to seek redress through the national legal system, a person with albinism brought an individual complaint against Tanzania before the Committee on the Rights of Person with Disabilities (CRPD), the UN body that oversees States’ compliance with the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities. In 2010, the complainant, who wishes to remain anonymous, was fetching firewood from the bush in the Mbeka Kibaoni area of the Mvomero District, when two men attacked him. His attackers hit him with clubs and when he regained consciousness, Mr. X realised that they had hacked off half of his left arm. After he received care at the municipal hospital, Mr. X reported the attack to the police. They arrested a man who later was brought before the District Court of Morogoro. As Mr. X did not recognize the accused as one of his aggressors, the investigation into the case stopped. From there, Mr. X wanted to initiate a civil litigation before a High Co...

It was a tipping point for women’s and children’s rights activists in Tunisia. Article 227bis of the Tunisian Penal code, the “article of shame” as they called it, had to be repealed. In December 2016, the Court of First Instance of Kef, a small town North-West of Tunisia, ordered a 13-year-old girl to marry the man who had raped her and gotten her pregnant. “When it comes to a 13-year-old, we cannot talk about sex with consent. It is rape,” said Houda Abboudi, head of the child protection services of Kef. “The court decision did not take into account the interest of this child ... who, on top of that, will have to marry her rapist,” which constitutes “a violation of her physical and mental integrity,” she stressed. Article 227bis did not recognize sex with a minor as rape as defined by international standards. It introduced the concept of “sexual aggression with consent” which also enabled an adult to marry a minor with whom they had had sexual intercourse without violence and...

GENEVA (22 August 2017) – UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein on Tuesday warmly welcomed the repeal of laws in Lebanon, Tunisia and Jordan that allowed rapists to avoid criminal prosecution by marrying their victims. “To punish a rape victim by making her marry the perpetrator of a horrible crime against her – there is no place in today’s world for such hideous laws. I warmly welcome the stand that lawmakers in Lebanon, Tunisia and Jordan have taken towards eliminating violence against women and ensuring that perpetrators of such violence are held to account,” High Commissioner Zeid said. On 16 August, Lebanon voted to repeal article 522 of its penal code, a law that provided that if a person accused of rape agreed to marry the victim, the accused not be subjected to criminal prosecution. Two weeks earlier, on 1 August, Jordanian lawmakers also voted to abolish a similar provision – article 308 of its penal code. The High Commissioner welcomes these positi...

When Pamela accepted an offer from a neighbour’s friend to help her go to Italy, she thought she was accepting a chance for a brighter future. She was 21, and the promise of a job in Europe was an attractive option to the limited prospects in her native Nigeria. She was introduced to a man who told her she must take part in a traditional Nigerian juju ritual that would ensure her protection – as long she did everything he said. The man then handed Pamela over to a Nigerian bus driver, gave her a bus ticket and a telephone number for his contact in Italy. Pamela travelled across Nigeria and Niger in a bus packed with other women and men, arriving one month later in Libya. There they were brought to a house run by a group of Nigerian and Middle Eastern men who told the group they were forbidden to leave while awaiting the boat journey to Italy. After one month of confinement in the house, where she witnessed beatings, rape and other abuses, Pamela and the other migrants were taken to...

GENEVA (26 July 2017) – UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein on Wednesday announced the appointment of Bacre Ndiaye (Senegal), Luc Côté (Canada) and Fatimata M’Baye (Mauritania) as international experts on the situation in the Kasai regions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Bacre Ndiaye will serve as chairperson of the team of experts. The establishment of the international team of experts was mandated by a UN Human Rights Council resolution adopted on 22 June 2017. In the resolution, the Council expresses grave concern about reports of “a wave of violence, serious and gross human rights violations and abuses, and violations of international humanitarian law in the Kasai regions.” The resolution refers to reports of the “recruitment and use of child soldiers, sexual and gender-based violence, destruction of houses, schools, places of worship, and State infrastructure by local militias, as well as of mass graves.” The Human Rights Council resolution r...

GENEVA (23 June 2017) – UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein on Friday said the creation of an international investigation into allegations of gross violations and abuses in the Kasai regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo sends a strong message to the perpetrators that the international community is serious about bringing them to justice. The resolution, passed by consensus in the UN Human Rights Council, calls on the High Commissioner to appoint a team of international experts to investigate “alleged human rights violations and abuses, and violations of international humanitarian law in the Kasai regions”. Since 2016, some 1.3 million people from the Kasais have been internally displaced by the violence, while some 30,000 refugees have fled to Angola. “We fully support the establishment of an international investigation by the Human Rights Council as a step forward in identifying the perpetrators of gross violations and bringing them to justice,” Hig...

​​​​​The basic values of the international human rights system are under attack in a new diverse ways in 2017, and one important part of the explanation is the rapidly growing sense of economic insecurity afflicting large segments of societies, said Philip Alston, UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. “People feel exposed, vulnerable, overwhelmed and helpless and some are being systematically marginalized both economically and socially,” he said. “But the human rights community has barely engaged with this resulting phenomenon of deep economic insecurity.” Alston made his statement during the presentation of his report to the Human Rights Council, taking place in Geneva throughout June. The focus of the report is “universal basic income” as a means to protect and promote human rights. “In many respects, basic income offers a bold and imaginative solution to pressing problems that are about to become far more intractable as a result of the directions in whic...

​​​​​In 2013, Afra* was abducted from her home in Northeastern Nigeria by the Boko Haram insurgent group that forced her to marry one of its members. She was 13 years old. When he died a few months later, Afra was made to marry another fighter. It was only in September 2016 that she was rescued from captivity by the Nigerian military and brought to a camp for internally displaced persons. There Afra realized that she was pregnant. Seeking the support of her family, she has since been staying with two of her sisters. But support has been slow to come: she carries the stigma of being pregnant with the child of a member of Boko Haram. Afra’s story is typical of that of hundreds of young girls and women who have been caught up in Boko Haram’s terror campaign in the Lake Chad Basin. The future for Afra, the 82 “Chibok Girls” released in early May this year and those sharing similarly painful stories, remains uncertain. A long journey to recovery For the UN Special Rapporteurs on s...

​​​​​​​​The worldwide erosion and backlash against fundamental human rights threatens the health and well-being of all people, a UN high-level expert group on health and human rights said in a new report. For women, children and adolescents, the denial of human rights and poor health is acute, limiting opportunities and even life expectancy. “Good health not only depends on but is also the prerequisite for pursuing other rights. Human rights cannot be fully enjoyed without health, likewise, health cannot be fully enjoyed without the dignity that is upheld by all other human rights.” This conclusion comes from the High Level Working Group on Health and Human Rights’ new report on realizing human rights to health and through health. In the report, published this month, the Group urges governments to recognize and respect the integral relationship between upholding human rights and steadily improving health, particularly among women, children and adolescents. During an event publi...

​​​​​​​As a newcomer in Switzerland, Latif Alabdullah, 25, wants the usual things most new arrivals anywhere hope to find: decent housing, a good job, a chance to make a fresh start. Since arriving in Geneva 18 months ago, he has waited for an answer to his asylum application and worries about what could happen if his application is rejected. Alabdullah’s Syrian passport would leave him no option but to return to Syria, where he would be required to do military service, or pay an “army fee” he could not afford, or go to jail for failing to do either. While he waits for the decision of immigration authorities, Alabdullah has lived in a foyer, or boarding house, for migrants and asylum seekers and, more recently, in a studio apartment, with the assistance of Hospice Général , a social service assistance program of the City of Geneva. While he continues his job search, Latif works as a volunteer with Thrive, a local community organization that provides employment assistance to migrant...

​​​​​Justin Hansford often remembers the first time he travelled to Geneva. He was there to present his organization’s shadow report for the review by the UN Committee against Torture of his country, the United States. Hansford, a lawyer for the Black Lives Matter movement, came to support the mother of Mike Brown, an African American teenager who was shot multiple times by police officer Darren Wilson on the afternoon of 9 August 2014, while he was walking down a street of St Louis, Ferguson, Missouri. Mike Brown’s slain body lay on the asphalt for four hours before it was removed. “Out of all the official mechanisms - the civil courts, criminal courts, the US Government, the Department of Justice that decided not to press charges against Wilson – [the UN Committee] was the only place where Mike Brown’s mother got a chance to tell her story,” Hansford said. “The activists got to tell their story in front of an official mechanism that listened to their voices and gave them respec...

Why were you released? Noura Aljizawi admitted she’s asked that question a lot. The activist and former vice president of the Syrian National Coalition was held for seven months by Syrian police in 2012, where she was beaten and shocked with electrical rods. Many others had disappeared in similar circumstances, never to be seen or heard from again. Yet she got out. “Being released and not killed was not down to the humanity of the torturers…but thanks to you,” she told an audience at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva recently. “Human rights organizations, bloggers, activities, organizations…your support in undertaking a large solidarity campaign and therefore putting the regime under pressure not to kill me but to ultimately release me.” Aljizawi spoke during a High Level Panel discussion on human rights in the Syrian Arab Republic. The panel’s purpose was to increase the visibility of violations and abuses of human rights law and humanitarian law committed by all sides in ...

​​​​Rokhaya Diallo was born and raised in Paris, France, from Senegalese parents. For a long time, she thought of herself as a French person but at some point people started looking at her as if she was a foreigner. It was at that moment that she started to wonder why people would not acknowledge her as a French native. “It was obviously because of the colour of my skin,” she said. “I noticed that most images of France shared from France did not include people like me.” Diallo thought it was time to challenge those misconceptions and display French society as a multicultural and multi-faith country. Her public activism started in 2006 when she founded an anti-racist association called Les indivisibles (The Undividable) which aimed at addressing racism in media discourse. Ten years on, Diallo notices little change. In a discussion at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva when the international community commemorated the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discriminat...

Commemoration of the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade Opening Statement by Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Geneva, 16 March 2017 Director-General, Excellencies, Colleagues and Friends, Today, we honour the memory of the millions of victims of slavery. In particular, the Transatlantic slave trade, over the course of more than four centuries, abducted more than 15 million people from their homes across Africa and transported them by force to the Americas, where they were bought and sold, exploited and frequently killed. We commemorate the suffering of those countless millions of men, women and children. We celebrate the heroes who opposed, and triumphed over, this massive crime against humanity. And we renew our pledge to ensure that no human being is treated as a commodity.  This commemorative day also presents the opportunity to examine the scars created by slavery on...

​​​​Sokhna Diara Diouf is 15 years old. She is a member of the Citizenship and Human Rights Club of the CEM les Martyrs school of Thiaroye, on the outskirts of Dakar, Senegal. The Regional Office for West Africa of the UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR-WARO) has been supporting that Club since 2014 in the framework of its human rights education activities. Every Thursday, Sokhna and other students in her class, girls and boys – although she admits that the girls are more numerous – participate in the club’s meetings to choose the topic that will be the focus of the debate on citizenship and human rights the following Thursday. This time, the theme is schooling, keeping girls in school and marriage. What influences the choice of themes are the students’ challenges in everyday life. They choose a theme that will enable them to discuss human rights while also applying them to problems they encounter daily. Thus, the issue of girls' school attendance and keeping them in school freq...

​​​Over 1.4 million people die each year on the world’s roads and up to 50 million suffer non-fatal injuries. The majority of casualties occur in Africa and Asia. “While these numbers may seem chocking, they don’t capture the devastating scope of a tragedy that occurs on the roads everyday: the loss of a child, the loss of a caregiver, the life-altering disability,” Jean Todt, UN Special Envoy for Road Safety, said of road casualties at the opening the Global Road Safety Film Festival in Geneva. For two days, online visitors will be able to watch 232 films from 41 countries on a website dedicated to the festival. A number of prizes will be awarded by a high-level jury which includes the Executive Secretary of the UNECE, Christian Friis Bach; UN Human Rights Chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein; filmmaker, Luc Besson; actress and UN sustainable development ambassador, Michelle Yeoh; actor Jean Reno; President of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach; and the President of the Jur...