[women-rights] Violence Against Women - Call for Essays

Seeking activists, practitioners and scholars to write essays on violence 
against women and human rights.

Contact: Erin Mahoney at <emahoney@cceia.org>.

Human Rights Dialogue, a semiannual publication of the Carnegie Council on
Ethics and International Affairs, is seeking short essays for its Fall
2003 issue.  In the coming issue, Human Rights Dialogue explores the
effectiveness of the human rights framework in defining and eradicating
violence against women. Throughout societies worldwide, women are beaten,
battered and killed because of their subordinate status as women.  They
are killed for dishonoring relatives, having sexual relations outside of
marriage, choosing a partner against parental wishes, or seeking a
divorce.  Women face acid attacks and dowry-related murders. They incur
rape and battery in the home and in civil strife.  This violence not only
threatens women's lives, it severely limits women's health choices,
decision-making in the home and in society, participation in governance,
education and overall economic and social well being.  Evolving often from
women's lower status in society, gender-based violence is endemic and
affects woman in every corner of the globe.

Over the past decade, many mainstream human rights organizations and
women's rights advocates have sought to eliminate gender-based violence
with a human rights framework.  Proponents of the human rights approach
argue that this framework offers activists an international frame of
reference within which they can place their existing agenda.  The
framework also offers linkages with other women's organizations and
oppressed groups in their country and across the world.  It serves to
legitimize women's rights at the national and international level, thus
offering activists constrained by their governments with a set of
international instruments and tools of advocacy.  The human rights
approach is also useful in that it separates violence from cultural
beliefs or tradition by defining harmful practices as acts of violence in
violation of basic rights to life and to be free from degrading, cruel and
inhumane treatment.

However, many women's rights activists have argued that the human rights
framework is limiting in practice.  Critics argue this universal set of
rights may be too broad and all encompassing-overlooking the need for
specific and identifiable women's rights to address gender-based violence.  
They question the notion that women can unite under a global banner of
human rights, citing conflicts of interest even at the national level in
regards to many issues such as class and race.  Others question the
efficacy of a framework that has historically focused on civil and
political rights-overlooking the connections between economic and social
rights and violence against women.  The traditional human rights approach
has also been faulted for emphasizing rights in the public sphere while
neglecting to address rights in the private sphere-where women are most
vulnerable to violence.  Another challenge in addressing this issue with a
human rights framework is the legal approach that human rights is often
associated with does little to address the cultural and societal norms
that propagate this violence. And often activists using this language are
discredited as westernized and anti-tradition.

Submission Details:
For the past two years, Human Rights Dialogue has focused on the popular 
legitimacy of an international human rights framework. In the coming issue, 
we are interested in descriptive accounts of how activists are responding 
to violence against women. We are looking for critical perspectives on 
whether and how the human rights framework is a useful tool in addressing 
gender-based violence.  We are also interested in how activists are 
defining violence against women, the strategies they are using to fight it 
and the challenges they are facing in doing so.

Submissions are especially welcome from (but not limited to) activists or
practitioners grappling with violence against women in the context of
fundamentalism, armed conflict, poverty, health crises, and democracy.  
Essays should seek to address one or more of the following questions by
analyzing a concrete case study in the author's country or institution of
which he or she has first-hand knowledge:

- Have you found the human rights framework a useful advocacy tool for 
addressing violence against women? If so, what specific human rights and 
human rights instruments are you using in your work?
- Are there specific ways the women's movement can push the human rights 
framework to be more useful in addressing this issue?
- Does a human rights approach offer a clear definition of violence?
- In your work, how do you label violence against women? Do you see this 
instead as gender-based violence or do you use another approach? Why?
- How do you address cultural and religious norms that propagate violence 
against women?  Is it effective to find sources within religion or 
tradition to eliminate violence against women? Does the human rights 
framework help or hinder you in accomplishing this aim?
- Is gender violence more readily justified or accepted as a cultural norm 
or tradition than other human rights issues such as race discrimination? 
How do you address this in your work?
- Are there different roles for local and international human rights 
organizations? How can they compliment each other?
- Are you increasing your focus on international institutions, foreign 
governments or transnational actors and their role in causing human rights 
abuses? If so, how are you attempting to hold them accountable?
- To what extent is your advocacy group working with other actors such as 
anti-poverty groups, labor unions, health organizations and even national 
governments to address problems related to violence against women?
- Is it useful to connect violence against women to other rights issues 
such as democracy or to other forms of violence such as armed conflict or 
caste violence?
- Does your organization find it preferable to connect violence against 
women to issues of children, family or motherhood? Why or Why not?

Submissions should be no more than 1200 words and written in English. We 
seek essays written in an engaging, informal, and testimonial style.  We do 
not seek articles that are academic in tone or include 
footnotes.  Contributors are encouraged to use interviews in their 
essays.  Please see http://www.cceia.org/themes/hrd.html for previous 
issues of Human Rights Dialogue.

Publication in Dialogue is competitive.  Authors whose submissions are 
selected for print must be prepared to respond to edits and 
queries.  Submissions that exceed the stated word length will, due to space 
constraints, be shortened. The authors of selected essays will be asked to 
provide us with a biography, contact details for the organizations that 
they are affiliated with as well as for those mentioned in their articles, 
and if possible a photograph of themselves. Please also be prepared to 
provide photos or art to be considered for publication alongside the 
article. An honorarium of $100 is awarded to authors whose work is selected 
for publication. The deadline for submissions is July 3, 2003.
We encourage those planning to submit to contact us about their plans for 
their articles as soon as possible.  Interested parties should direct their 
inquiries to:  Erin Mahoney email: emahoney@cceia.org or tel. 212-838-4120 
or fax:  212-752-2432.

About the Carnegie Council and the Human Rights Initiative
The Carnegie Council, based in New York City, is a nonpartisan, 
nonsectarian organization dedicated to research and education at the 
intersection of ethics and international affairs. The goal of the Carnegie 
Council's Human Rights Initiative is to engage new and diverse voices from 
around the world in global dialogue and mutual learning around human rights 
concepts and action, with the goal of exploring how the human rights 
movement could be better configured intellectually and operationally to 
cope with the challenges of 21st century.  The underlying assumption being 
explored is what we have termed "the human rights box":  namely, that the 
human rights movement is constrained by a set of historical and structural 
circumstances that have enabled the human rights framework to gain currency 
among elites while limiting its advance among the broader population of the 
world. Participants' testimony, working knowledge, strategies, analysis and 
reflections are shared through the regular publication of our Human Rights 
Dialogue.

Please contact us or consult our website, www.cceia.org, for more information.