ARTS1811-Contemporary Issues in Government and Global Politics

The main essay question of this paper is why the human rights abuses impacts more significantly on the women.

Everyone is familiar of the phrase called the “human rights”. It refers to the privileges that the individuals get just on the basis of being human beings. Human rights is an essential part of every man’s life and it has been continuously evolving all through the history of mankind. Still, these rights have always been violated and are abused in the human history. However, the major impacts of these human rights abuse is on the women of the very nations where it is been abused. This paper shall argue on the basis of the defined essay question. It shall argue on why this is the case in most of the countries, especially in India and Pakistan.

It is to note that abusing women and violation against them is also a violation of human rights. The violence against the women is a significant obstacle against the gender equality (Garcia-Moreno et al. 2016). Like men, women too are entitles to equal protection and enjoyment of each and every human rights as well as the fundamental freedoms like the right to life, equality, liberty, freedom of speech, security, protection under law, free from all discrimination, favourable condition of work and the right of not to be subjected to any kind of inhuman treatments (Sen 2017). Still, as per Garcia-Moreno et al. (2015) in most of the countries women are still not safe and they are numerous violence actions that are been taken against them. Violence against the females include, but it is not limited to the violence taking place in family, rape in relationship or marital rape, women trafficking, sexual exploitation, harassment at workplace, abortion, forced prostitution, infanticide of the new born baby girls, practicing harmful traditional practices including genital mutilation, early marriage, forced marriage, stoning, honour killing, acid attack, widow burning etc. (Heise 2018). Although men too experience gender violence as well, but it is the women all around the world who are disproportionately impacted by the sexual violence. As per the WHO, above 35% of the women experience sexual and physical violence throughout their life time (Cook et al. 2017).

The section 1 of this essay has provided the main question, answering which this essay has elaborate on. Secondly, the section 2 has presented the thesis of the paper and section 3 has shed light on outlining wide range of empirical and theoretical focus of the essay. Lastly, section 5 has presented a brief annotated bibliography on the most useful source that have been consulted.

5. Annotated bibliography

5.1. Article 1

Bunch, C., 2018. Transforming human rights from a feminist perspective. In Women's rights, human rights (pp. 11-17).

This article has explored on the contribution of the feminist to the discourse of human rights in several ways. The initial portion of this study has described and analysed the evolution of the concept of “women’s rights are human rights” and the development of the notion of indivisibility of the rights. The next part of the paper shed light on the debates of the feminist in the context of women’s human rights in the three issue contexts and they are- democratization, globalisation and the culture. This paper concluded on the notion of the present challenges in regard to the data collection in assessing the achievement of the human rights of the women. The concept of the human rights has been contested in several different ways in this study (Bunch 2018). However, the major limitation of this study is that it could not delve into the debates. Instead, it focused on what the feminist have understood about the rights of human beings to be in the theory and in the practise.

5.2. Article 2

Decker, M.R., Crago, A.L., Chu, S.K., Sherman, S.G., Seshu, M.S., Buthelezi, K., Dhaliwal, M. and Beyrer, C., 2015. Human rights violations against sex workers: burden and effect on HIV. The Lancet, 385(9963), pp.186-199. 

In this paper, the authors Decker et al. (2015) have reviewed several evidences from near about 800 different reports and studies on the burden and the HIV implications of the human rights violations on the women sex workers. According to the authors, these types of violations both directly and indirectly increases the susceptibility of the HIV as well as they undermine the effective HIV-prevention and the efforts of intervention. These violations comprise of the sexual and physical violence from the intimate partners and the law enforcement, unlawful detention and arrest, inequality in accessing the health services, forcefully testing of HIV and discrimination in the society (Decker et al. 2015). The findings of this study affirms that the value of the human rights based HIV responses for the women sex workers as well as underscore the obligation of the states for upholding the human rights of these marginalised population. However, it is to note that this study have not used in primary source as data collection method. It has only gone through different literature, reading materials, journals and reports and several government websites for gathering data and information. Hence, it is the major limitation of this study and this questions its reliability and the accuracy of the findings.

5.3. Article 3

Iida, K., 2017. Human rights and sexual abuse: the impact of international human rights law on Japan. In International Law in East Asia (pp. 141-166).

The author of this report Iida (2017) have based this entire study on reviewing the various different literatures available on the issue of sexual exploitation in Japan. This paper addresses the diverse forms of sexual exploitation of the female children in Japan and that of women as well in several parts of the country. It is to note that females in this country are still vulnerable to many forms of sexual exploitation including online prostitution (Iida 2017). It is also one of the key destinations for trafficking of girl child for sexual activities and there are also several cases found about sexual exploitation of the women and girl children in the sector of travel and tourism. Furthermore, it has also been found that it is alleged that the victims of female sexual exploitation are most often treated as the juvenile delinquents and stigmatised as the result. With the same, there are only a few state run recoveries, rehabilitation and reintegration programmes in this country. The only limitation of this study is that it has used secondary data collection method in order to assess the information and data. Primary method would have been of much more use in order to assess the current situation of this country 

Bunch, C., 2018. Transforming human rights from a feminist perspective. In Women's rights, human rights (pp. 11-17).

Cook, A., Spinazzola, J., Ford, J., Lanktree, C., Blaustein, M., Cloitre, M., DeRosa, R., Hubbard, R., Kagan, R., Liautaud, J. and Mallah, K., 2017. Complex trauma in children and adolescents. Psychiatric annals, 35(5), pp.390-398.

García-Moreno, C., Hegarty, K., d'Oliveira, A.F.L., Koziol-McLain, J., Colombini, M. and Feder, G., 2015. The health-systems response to violence against women. The Lancet, 385(9977), pp.1567-1579.

Garcia-Moreno, C., Jansen, H.A., Ellsberg, M., Heise, L. and Watts, C.H., 2016. Prevalence of intimate partner violence: findings from the WHO multi-country study on women's health and domestic violence. The lancet, 368(9543), pp.1260-1269.

Heise, L., 2018. Violence against women: the missing agenda. In The health of women (pp. 171-196).

Iida, K., 2017. Human rights and sexual abuse: the impact of international human rights law on Japan. In International Law in East Asia (pp. 141-166).

MacKinnon, C.A., 2017. Rape, genocide, and women’s human rights. In Genocide and Human Rights (pp. 133-144).
Sen, A., 2017. Elements of a theory of human rights. In Justice and the Capabilities Approach (pp. 221-262).