A Women's Human Rights Approach to the World Conference Against Racism

The World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance  (WCAR), which will be held in Durban, South Africa from August 31 - September 7, 2001, and the discussions it should bring about locally, nationally, regionally, and globally present important opportunities for advocacy for women's human rights. The WCAR is an occasion to renew our commitment to looking at the intersection of racism, sexism and other oppressions in a rights based context.  If we are to successfully advance human rights for all women, the women's human rights movement must deal with our diversities of gender, race, ethnicity, caste, class, culture, religion, sexual orientation, nationality, language, age, status as indigenous peoples, health status, disabilities, status as refugee/displaced people, etc.  This requires both challenging systems of power and privilege which are based on differences as well as valuing aspects of our diversity. This is not an easy or inevitable endeavor, but we must keep the effects of multiple oppressions central in all our work.

Racism is Everyone's Issue

Racism affects us all and should be seen as an issue relevant to all women and men.  All women and men are constantly affected by the race/gender intersection whether our racial group is the subordinate or dominant one in our societies.  It is important that we understand constructions of race, including the construction of "whiteness" and white privilege, in order to understand both how race privilege and race subordination function, and in order to challenge racial hierarchies. Just as women want and expect male allies to learn about the construction of gender and to work against its oppressiveness, so too we must ask women of all races to learn about and combat racism.  While discussing the intersection of race and gender at the WCAR does not mean putting all the issues of all women onto that agenda, it does mean acknowledging that racism is a daily reality that affects all women.

Forms of Multiple Discrimination/Intersectional Discrimination

Many of the women's human rights advocates who have been involved in the preparatory discussions for the WCAR have been calling on governments to recognize and address forms of multiple discrimination/intersectional discrimination.  Intersectional discrimination means that overlapping oppressions often create specific forms or ways of experiencing discrimination.  It also implies that it is not always possible to say with certitude that a person is being discriminated against because of only one factor but rather suggests that it is because of a combination of factors such as gender, race, caste, class, ethnicity, culture, religion, sexual orientation, nationality, language, age, status as indigenous peoples, health status, disabilities, status as refugee/displaced people, etc. For example, when rape and sexual violence is used as an instrument of genocide, women are often targeted not only as women, but also as members of a particular ethnic group.

While the terms intersectional discrimination and forms of multiple discriminations have punctuated WCAR discussions during the last year, women's recognition of these realities is not new.  Much of women's organizing has been built on the fact that women's identities such as race, economic status, marital and/or citizenship status become overlapping causes of discrimination, and solutions to their problems must address all of these issues simultaneously.

As a result of women's lobbying, the Beijing Platform for Action recognized that not all women are the same and that women experience discrimination and other forms of human rights violations not solely on the grounds of gender. The Beijing Declaration calls on governments to "intensify efforts to ensure equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms for all women and girls who face multiple barriers to their empowerment and advancement because of such factors as their race, age, language, ethnicity, culture, religion, or disability, or because they are indigenous people."[1]   In June 2000, governments recommitted themselves to this call during the 5-year review of the Beijing Platform for Action. 

Intersectionality and Universality

One of the leading challenges we face in human rights theory and practice today is achieving the right balance between respect for diversity and the affirmation of universality, which means that all human beings are entitled to full enjoyment of human rights. The struggle for the human rights of women is at the center of this contemporary controversy over universal human rights versus cultural relativists claims of conditional human rights.  The defenders of women's human rights must respond to this debate by emphasizing that all women have a universal right to the enjoyment of all human rights and that differences in the contexts of their lives does not diminish this entitlement.  However, this does not mean that all women's experiences, strategies or choices in affirming their human rights are or need to be identical.  Rather, human rights can only be universal in practice if they are looked at in terms of the full diversity of people's experiences and when diverse remedies are shaped in response to different and intersecting factors that deny women and men the full exercise of their rights. In working toward the WCAR, women can continue to advance our understanding of the creative tension between these demands of the universal and the particular.

Intersectionality and Indivisibility

The human rights system is based on the idea that human rights are indivisible and interrelated. But the treaties and mechanisms set up to defend and promote human rights tend to be linear - that is, they treat different aspects of abuse and discrimination (race, sex, age, migrant status, etc.) separately.  Over the past decade, there have been moves towards realizing indivisibility that can help to build an understanding of an intersectional approach to human rights practice.  For example, the women's human rights movement has called for the integration of gender perspectives into the application of all human rights mechanisms.  Feminists have insisted that in order to integrate gender effectively, we need data disaggregated by sex.  Additionally, we need to examine how the "forms" a violation takes may be different for women and men, how gender affects the "circumstances" in which abuse occurs, and the gender specific "consequences" of violations (such as rape).  Only then can we shape remedies as well as preventative strategies that will be effective for women as well as men. By asking similar questions about race or other factors, this work on methodology and guidelines for how to relate gender to human rights can be useful to thinking about an intersectional approach that looks at how race and gender as well as other factors affect each other. 

Intersectional Methodologies

Essential to the task of advancing the human rights of women is the expansion of existing methodologies and the design of new methodologies that address intersectional discrimination.  Such methodologies not only surface the diversity of women's experiences but also seek to address discrimination that occurs when multiple identities intersect. This year's session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in March 2001 produced agreed conclusions on "Gender and all forms of discrimination, in particular racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance".[2]  The agreed conclusions called upon governments, the United Nations and civil society to "develop methodologies to identify the ways in which various forms of discrimination converge and affect women and girls and conduct studies on how racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance are reflected in laws, policies, institutions and practices and how this has contributed to the vulnerability, victimization, marginalization and exclusion of women and the girl child."[3]  This call was the result of work by women's rights advocates at all the various preparatory meetings for the WCAR.  During the CSW a Working Group on Women and Human Rights built on this work by proposing elements for a methodology addressing intersectional discrimination.  The proposed elements are an elaboration of methodologies developed for the inclusion of a gender perspective in the application of human rights mechanisms: [4]

1. Disaggregated Data Collection: The first requirement for intersectional analysis is to describe women's realities more accurately and to determine what factors contribute to women's discrimination ­race, ethnicity, descent, citizenship status, etc.  Data that is designed, collected and analyzed with an understanding of forms of multiple discrimination will make it easier to identify the magnitude of the impact of particular problems and policies on particular groups of women.

2. Contextual Analysis:The second task is to identify the root causes and context of the problems.  Contextual realities could include the legacy of slavery or colonialism or ancient animosities, as well as religious and cultural factors.  For example, disaggregated data may reveal the extent of rape of ethnic women during a situation of war, but an analysis of the context reveals a history of inter-ethnic struggle for economic power that created a climate of acceptance among the majority group for the rape of minority women.

3. Intersectional Review of Policies and Systems of Implementation: With data and contextual analysis as background, policy initiatives and systems of implementation can be evaluated for their usefulness in addressing the problems faced by different women with their differing intersectional identities.  For example, review of a policy that has been designed to address racial discrimination and economic opportunity for one group of women could reveal that the initiative creates further tensions with an other group of women creating a competition and hierarchy of minorities that serves to perpetuate the power of the dominant group.

4. Design and Implement Intersectional Policy Initiatives: The final step is using all this information to develop new strategies to eliminate and reverse patterns of negative discrimination that have been identified.  Strategies could include ideas for new or modified local, national, regional or international laws or processes that address forms of multiple discrimination.

Standard Setting and Accountability

Two of the most fundamental elements of a rights-based approach are standard setting and accountability.  The WCAR provides an opportunity for all United Nations bodies, other international institutions, governments, the private sector, civil society, and other non-state actors to advance these two tasks.  The human rights conventions provide an ethical perspective that sets common standards for achievement, which act as measurements to promote respect for the rights and freedoms of all peoples.  Accountability means that it is not merely a good idea, but that it is a duty of governments, the United Nations, and other inter-governmental bodies to make every effort to implement the human rights commitments they have made.  Governments are responsible for implementing human rights standards and must live up to those standards themselves as well as implement them with regard to other actors: the private sector - including corporations and other bodies for which governments hold regulatory responsibility - and private individuals over whose conduct governments carry judicial responsibility.  Accountability to implementation of human rights standards can be more effectively determined if the WCAR sets goals and targets nationally, regionally, and internationally. 

The Center for Women's Global Leadership at the WCAR

Demonstration of an Intersectional Methodology

The Center for Women's Global Leadership has planned a public hearing and a popular education event to demonstrate an intersectional methodology.  The Center sees the WCAR as an opportunity to tell women's stories and to document concrete examples of intersectional discrimination in women's lives.  The goal of the hearing, "Women at the Intersection of Racism and Other Oppressions: a Human Rights Hearing," is to give voice and visibility to the multiplicity of women's experiences as these reflect the interlocking influences of discrimination based on gender, race, ethnicity, class, caste, sexuality, language, health status, age and other realities that have become the bases of human rights violations. This aim is to surface such multiple and intersecting realities, which have often been submerged in a single issue or hidden in a single identity such as race or gender.  The hearing will look at intersectionality in relation to areas vital to the WCAR: War, Conflict and Genocide; Migration and Immigration; and Bodily Integrity and Sexuality. The popular education workshop, "Race, Class, Gender and Rights," will provide a hands-on experience in using an intersectional methodology.  Activities will use stories from the lives of the participants to develop intersectional data and build a contextual analysis.  With this as grounding, the workshop will evaluate anti-racism policy initiatives and develop new measures to more fully address the intersection of oppressions.

Monitoring and Advocacy for Intersectionality

In addition to the two events planned, the Center and its allies have been monitoring the issue of gender and intersectional discrimination throughout the WCAR preparations and have been active in the women's caucus for the WCAR at the various preparatory events.  We have been advocating for the WCAR to recognize and specifically address the impact of the intersection of gender and other forms of discrimination with racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance in all aspects of the WCAR Declaration and Programme of Action.  Moreover, we urge all United Nations bodies, other international institutions, governments, the private sector, civil society, and other non-state actors to include an intersectional methodology as a basis for designing and implementing all policies and programmes aimed at the elimination of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance. 

Examples of ways to institutionalize an intersectional methodology:

• Human Rights System: Mechanisms of the human rights system - including rapporteurs, treaty bodies, commissions and expert meetings - should work together and incorporate an intersectional analysis of discrimination in their work.
• Contextual Analysis: All actors should engage in a comprehensive analysis reflecting on the history and legacy of racism, including colonialism and slavery, as well as its current manifestations in the global economy, and on their affects on women at local, national, regional and international levels.
• Justice: Special measures must be created to provide justice for women who are targets of violence against women based on racism, racial, caste-based and ethnic discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, that include services and remedies which recognize the diversity of women's needs and realities.
• Representation: Women who have experienced forms of multiple discrimination and who reflect the diversity of women's lives should be placed in decision-making processes in all aspects of civil, political, economic, social and cultural life.

[1]Beijing Platform for Action, UN Doc. A/Conf. 177/20 (1995) Ann. I, para. 32.

[2]To read the agreed conclusions visit http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/csw/draftacrace.htm .

[3] para 40 Commission on the Status of Women, 45^th session Draft agreed conclusions on gender and all forms of discrimination, in particular racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/csw/draftacrace.htm .

[4]For more information on the work of the Working Group on Women and Human Rights and Recommendations for an Intersectional Methodology visit http://www.cwgl.rutgers.edu/globalcenter/policy/bkgdbrfintersec.html.