In Celebration of Women, and the Rule of Law
On this International Women’s Day, there are, of course, abundant reasons to be disturbed about the attacks on women’s dignity that occur every day, throughout the world, from the rollback of reproductive rights in the United States to the entrenchment of gender apartheid in Afghanistan to the increasing risks to women’s health and education as a result of cuts in foreign aid, to every day violence and abuse endured by girls and women everywhere… the list goes on. We should never close our eyes to it.
Many of these assaults on women’s dignity and women’s lives are perpetrated through and with the backing of law. Sometimes laws are positively harmful, such as laws that limit girls’ and women’s choices beginning and ending marriages or impair access to reproductive health. In other instances, the law fails women by what it doesn’t do, such as not prosecuting perpetrators of gender-based abuse and violence. Historically, the law has not been a friend to women anywhere in the world. And we shouldn’t forget that either.
But the law is an amazing thing. It contains within it the capability of reform, the potential for expanding protection, and the means of uplifting people so that they can live lives of meaning in safety and dignity. Law can do all that. In fact, it is only the law, and the commitment to the rule of law, that can do it. We have no choice but to depend on it.
And we must also remember that we are fortunate to live in a time when adherence to the rule of law is the norm, the expectation. We expect countries to adopt constitutions that protect rights and we expect them, in the main, to adhere to those constitutional rights. Unlike in previous eras of human history, when states violate human rights now, they are held to account, in courts or tribunals, or in the public arena. Protests erupt because people expect more of their governments. We should not lower our expectations.
And the kernel of those expectations is the commitment to human dignity. We are living in what Catherine Dupré has called the Age of Dignity. And of all of law’s attributes, the commitment to dignity offers girls and women the greatest hope. The commitment to dignity is what brings the law closer to justice; in fact, it’s the only thing that can.
Indeed, a strong transformative impulse has characterized the law’s turn toward dignity since the beginning. Eighty years ago, the Charter of the United Nations established as the organization’s first two purposes to end the scourge of war and to “to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small.” A few years later, the American Declaration of Human Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights launched the human rights project in the same way: with the recognition of human dignity and the equality of the sexes as their foundational values, inscribed in their preambles and opening articles. The recognition of human dignity was viewed as the first step in the long journey of transformation from war and violence toward respect for human rights and peace.
This included, as a centerpiece, the equal rights of women and men – a goal that came to fruition forty years ago with the adoption of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. Like other human rights treaties, the CEDAW also begins with an affirmation that all people are born equal in dignity and rights.
The lesson is simple: when the rule of law is based on the equal and inherent dignity of all members of the human family, the law can change . It can end practices that were previously deemed acceptable and insist on a new way forward for all women. It can change the way we think about women’s roles in society and what are capable of and what we can contribute. In the ongoing struggle for rights, advocates should insist that the rule of law always reflect, protect, and promote the inherent and inviolable dignity of all girls and women. We should demand no less. We are worth no less.