Gender, Planning and Human Rights

Tovi Fenster, Tovi Fenster

• Editorial: Routledge
• Año: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781134732586
• Edición: 1
• Categoría: Physical Sciences
• Categoría: Geography

Challenging the traditional treatment of human rights cast in purely legal frameworks, the authors argue that, in order to promote the notion of human rights, its geographies and spatialities must be investigated and be made explicit. A wealth of case studies examine the significance of these components in various countries with multi-cultured societies, and identify ways to integrate human rights issues in planning, development and policy making. The book uses case studies from UK, Israel, Canada, Singapore, USA, Peru, European Union, Australia and the Czech Republic.

Part I

INTRODUCTION

1

GENDER AND HUMAN RIGHTS: IMPLICATIONS FOR PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT

Tovi Fenster

This book is about the geographies and spatialities of human rights. It aspires to challenge the traditional treatments of human rights that are cast exclusively in legal frameworks by arguing that, in order to promote the notion of human rights, its geographies and spatialities must be investigated and become more explicit. The rationale behind this argument is that space is more than relevant for understanding human rights violations. Some of the most brutal and cruel cases of human rights abuse are connected to the lack of freedom to move in space by imprisonment at home, whether it is enforced physically or psychologically through fear and terrorism or imposed by rules and the cultural meanings of spaces. One of the major concerns of the human rights discourse is the practice of locking up women or prohibiting them from moving freely in their environment in order to ensure their faithfulness and modesty, while their husbands are free to move around. The right to work and the right to political participation are also abused because of lack of freedom to move in space (Nussbaum 1995). Fear of violence makes women avoid certain spaces. Should women go to a bar for a drink, as men do, the response may be sexual terrorism. Men’s control over public space in the evening makes even western women fear male violence, deterring most of them from being independent despite their professional success. Women’s inhibited use and occupation of public space is seen as a spatial expression of patriarchy (Bunch 1995, Valentine 1989) and as a violation of human rights. This situation shows that space is never neutral; instead, it affects and is affected by social and power relations in society.

That is why, until now, voices criticising the legal exclusivity in human rights discourse have argued that male dominance such as this makes freedom of movement impossible and encroaches upon socio-economic rights. Hence, other approaches, apart from litigation, are needed to promote human rights (Gomez 1995). This is exacdy what this book suggests. It provides another, perhaps new, channel for promoting and implementing human rights in planning and development – via understanding of their spatialities.

The discourse about planning, especially for multicultured societies, has become very complex and politically charged in many parts of the world since the mid-1970s. For this very reason, this book highlights human rights issues in relation to planning and development. Spatial planning is never a neutral process. It reflects social and power relations within a society as well as affecting them and, to a large extent, spatial relations actually represent and sometimes also reproduce social relations (Moore 1996). It is via planning schemes and development projects that states’ policies are carried out, with or without attention to human rights issues, affecting every aspect of daily life. Therefore it is important to focus on the incorporation of space into human rights discourse. The need for such attention is most acute for members of ethnic minority groups in multicultured societies as well as for immigrants.

The geographies and spatialities of the human rights discourse are tackled here in several ways; first, the chapters represent different geographical settings. Each looks at the human rights discourse in a different country, culture, political and social background. Second, the case studies represent human rights issues in a range of political settings such as liberal western democracies (the USA, UK, Australia, Canada, Europe and Israel), as well as in a post-Communist regime (the Czech Republic), and in semi-totalitarian regimes (Singapore and Peru). What comes out of these experiences is that in spite of the different geographical and political settings, abuses of women’s human rights appear to be similar. Third, the book challenges the extent to which geographical divisions such as developed/developing, private/public and other dichotomies are relevant to the analysis of human rights issues. As the case studies show, these dichotomies disappear when looking at how women’s human rights are abused. Fourth, the chapters highlight the different scales in which human rights issues can be analysed, especially with regard to planning and development: the body, the home or the private space, the street, the neighbourhood, public spaces, regions within countries and between countries, and national and international levels. Taking these various scales into account not only sheds new light on identifying obstacles in promoting human rights issues at each scale but also reveals the links between abuses of human rights across the different scales. Pointing out the commonalties and differences between the case studies offers new insights enabling us to formulate more effective ways to promote human rights issues. Some of these understandings will be presented in the conclusions of this book.

Each of the fields addressed in the book – of gender, planning and human rights – can be viewed as a topic in itself in terms of its political agenda and the practical implications for individual life; indeed a growing body of literature exists on each of these themes. However, the intricate links between the three, that is, how gender and human rights should be expressed in planning and development, are less investigated dimensions of the subject. This introductory chapter aims at highlighting some of the issues closely related to each of the three themes and their interrelationships. Since there is some confusion in the notion of human rights, I will begin by presenting some of the definitions used in the literature.

DEFINITIONS OF HUMAN RIGHTS

Human rights are defined at different scales, and in relation to different spaces and spatialities (socially constructed spaces), with the human body being the basic ‘territory’ in the discourse. Physical violation, killing, imprisonment, torture and rape are only a few examples of human rights violations of the ‘body’. Nevertheless, acknowledgement of bodily rights was not explicit in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, the first UN declaration on human rights. This declaration ‘recognises the inherent dignity and equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family as the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world’. Although it does reaffirm ‘the faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women’ (in Wetzel 1993), it is still rather vague and general about the rights of the human body. Probably, as in many other UN declarations, vagueness is sometimes necessary to make these declarations accepted internationally. Nevertheless, this document became a means for the UN apparatus to ask countries questions about human rights issues that were previously considered internal affairs. From then on a large number of documents, declarations, charters and covenants has been produced. As a result, an impressive body of international law looks at human rights in different sectors of life: economic, housing, political, cultural, social and spatial as well as at different spatial scales: the body, home, the street, the neighbourhood, public spaces, regions and countries.

When the human body is taken as the basic scale in the human rights discourse gender becomes a basic factor. While men suffer from similar abuses of their human rights, women are usually more vulnerable. Their dignity, freedom and equality is more readily violated than those of men partly because traditional human rights formulations are based on a ‘normative’ made model and applied to women as an afterthought, if at all (Charlesworth 1995). This male bias raises a concern about the lack of representation of feminist perspectives in the formulation of international human rights standards (An-Na’Im 1995).

The concept of human rights as women’s rights in relation to their bodies refers mainly to the right to possess one’s own body, including reproductive rights, freedom of sexuality, freedom of marriage, laws that criminalise rape in marriage, and laws that criminalise forced prostitution. These human rights issues are, sadly enough, the arenas of women more than of men. As the next section reveals, women’s human rights are constandy abused, and women are always more vulnerable. In such a situation, a gendered analysis of human rights issues is indeed justified.

With regard to the gender-neutral (or blinded) human rights definition, some argue that what is included in the definition of human rights is what encompasses basic human needs, i.e. the right to work, to adequate food, to education, to shelter, and to health (Wetzel 1993). Broader definitions invoke issues of empowerment (Cook 1995), including participation in the development and planning of one’s environment. In this context, participation may as well be viewed as part of citizens’ rights and as part of people’s full membership in a community (Lister 1995, Marsall 1950). Participation is a contested term, as its validity relies substantially on the political context of its implementation. It is indeed crucial to involve people in the planning process, but it is not always enough to ensure the incorporation of human rights issues in planning and development. To guarantee that, participation must be about empowerment, that is, there must be a real commitment of policy-and decision-makers to empowerment (Howard 1995).

Another question under debate is whether ‘human rights’ is a different concept from ‘citizenship’. Wetzel (1993) argues against this position, proposing the compatibility of human rights with state citizenship. In his view, the human rights system is built upon the notion of an organised state, a society that is obliged under the human rights law to provide its citizens with freedom from violation of each individual’s rights. From this perspective, the state is required to create conditions under which its citizens can meet their needs expressed in the human rights system. In contrast, Lister (1995) suggests that the notion of human rights is more global than that of citizenship rights because it relates to both citizens and non-citizens: immigrants, refugees, asylum seekers, for whom human rights are even more crucial than for citizens. Without this distinction, she argues, human rights become an exclusive right of nation-states’ citizens whereas non-citizens find themselves excluded.

ARE HUMAN RIGHTS GENDERED?

As already mentioned, human rights are tragically gendered on all scales of analysis. Women and their dependent children make up most of the world’s refugees and displaced people (Amnesty International 1995). Human rights are also gendered, since women represent a large majority of the poor in every country. To acknowledge economic well-being as a human rights issue would certainly help to eradicate poverty. The exclusion of women from positions of public power, especially at the national scale, is another aspect of gendered human rights. This exclusion prevents them from being involved in decision-making in shaping laws and institutions affecting women’s (and others’) lives.

The following somewhat historical background of the development awareness of the gender dimension of human rights shows up the dominance of legal aspects in this discourse. Officially speaking, the gendered nature of human rights has been validated by special UN events held since the beginning of the 1970s. The proclamation of the year 1975 as the International Women’s Year marked the start of several UN conferences on women’s issues. The first, held in 1975 in Mexico City, produced the Declaration of Mexico, 1975. It was a revolutionary conference that recognised for the first time the oppression of women everywhere, linking this situation of oppression with inequality, with underdevelopment as well as with an unjust world economic system. In addition, the Mexico declaration mandated the elimination of such violence against women as rape, incest, forced prostitution, physical assault, mental cruelty and coercive and commercial marital transactions. Though it has been adopted by majority vote, the document was largely ignored by most nations. Its importance may lie in the fact that it helped women to realise that collective action was the key to their power and effectiveness; the ensuing links of solidarity began to forge a chain of women throughout the world.

The UN in Copenhagen, Denmark endorsed the subsequent Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women in 1980. It contributed to the recognition that discrimination against women is a social problem that requires urgent solution. This Convention suggested a set of corrective measures which must be implemented in each state, such as the passage of measures to ensure women’s equality in the legal system, guaranteeing women the right to go before tribunals and other public institutions when faced with discrimination, and so on. The problem remains, however, that no mechanisms exist to enforce the Convention within states, so that these conventions have changed the lives of women litde or not at all. It is now well recognised that the implementation of these conventions depends largely on both global movements of feminist international power and local movements of women themselves, as well as on their awareness of the existence of these conventions.

The final UN Decade of Women conference in Nairobi in 1985 emphasised the global power of women. Fifteen thousand women from over 150 nations stood united despite their national, ethnic, racial, geographical, cultural, economic and age diversity. The Nairobi Forward-looking Strategies for the Advancement of Women (1985) reflected the commonalties of experience and needs, pointing to the fact that universal oppression and inequality are grounded in the patriarchal systems that ensure the continuance of female subservience and secondary status. This document also acknowledged the fact that women do two-thirds of the world’s work, yet two-thirds of the world’s women live in poverty, their work is unpaid, underpaid and invisible; women are peace-makers, yet they have no voice in arbitration; there is a universal sexual exploitation of girls and women, too often resulting in sexual domination and abuse throughout their lives; women provide more health care (both physical and emotional) than all the world’s health services combined; women are the chief educators of the family, yet they outnumber men among the world’s illiterates at a ratio of three to two. Even when educated they are not allowed to lead. This scenario shifts culture by culture but the story line remains the same (Schuler 1993). In practice, however, gains that achieved even de jure (legislative) equality were not matched by de facto reality.

The International Women’s Rights Action Watch, set up in 1986 is one of the mechanisms established to monitor progress towards the achievement of human rights for women. The presence of women from every corner of the Earth at the UN Human Rights Conference in Vienna in 1993 sent a further clear sign that women had entered the formal human rights arena and demanded that their human rights be met.

The Beijing Platform for Action of 1995 called for the government’s active participation to end discrimination. It demanded that governments promote, increase, provide or ensure the availability of and access to, the health care they need, the education that is required for literacy, and move women out of poverty, end violence against them and eliminate sexual harassment. Improvements in women’s lives were seen in Beijing as benefiting society at large, that is, improve women’s lot and society as a whole will benefit – a new language, a new thought. In this conference, the issue of government’s ‘right’ to interpret human rights according to their own philosophy or circumstances has emerged with the concern that this could be a regressive step with regard to women’s human rights issues.

In spite of the international nature of the concept, gendered human rights may have different meanings for women from different parts of the world and of different political backgrounds. For women in post-Communist countries of Eastern Europe, for example, human rights discourse may be more promising than the discourse of western feminism, because women’s rights, like political participation, is overly identified with former Communist regimes; the human rights discourse can be used to bring attention to transitional violence against women (Eisenstein 1996). This point of view is expressed in Jiřfina Šiklová’s chapter on the Czech women in the post-Communist environment. Cultural and political differences highlight a very basic question about the expressions of the human rights discourse at different scales and in different spaces such as the contested ‘private/public’ divide. What is ‘public’, what is ‘private’ and who defines the boundaries between them is a geographical as well as political and cultural issue.

GENDER, PLANNING AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Planning and human rights

Planning is defined here as a set of rational actions, which aim to organise the use of space according to principles and goals determined in advance, usually by those in power. As such, planning is a very powerful action since it dictates the future of individuals and groups by shaping economic, social, cultural and physical spaces, which usually meet only the needs of the powerful actors in society. This interpretation follows the Marxist argument that spatial planning is one of the expressions of power relations between the different social groups within society, since the goals for planning are usually formulated by the dominant group controlling the resources (Paris 198...