When culture hurts: dispelling the myth of cultural justification for gender-based human rights violations.

• Author: Zaunbrecher, Katie L.

1. INTRODUCTION II. DIFFERING HUMAN RIGHTS PRIORITIES ACROSS CULTURES A. Ulterior Motives for Commitment to Human Rights III. DEFENDING "CULTURE" AGAINST "FOREIGN" VALUES A. The Cultural Defense B. Combating the Cultural Defense IV. THE RISK THE CULTURAL DEFENSE POSES TO WOMEN'S RIGHTS A. Cultural Complications in Protecting Women's Rights B. A Case Study: Honor Killing as a "Cultural" Practice V. RECONCILING CULTURE AND WOMEN'S RIGHTS A. Integrating Cultural Standards and Human Rights Norms B. Educating Women and Men of Women's Rights C. More Accurate State Reporting (With the Help of NGOs) VI. CONCLUSION I. INTRODUCTION

   "In the [21st] century, the problems posed by cultural relativism, and the implications for women's rights, will be one of the most important issues in the field of international human rights." (1)

   In 1948, (2) all fifty-eight member states of the newly-created United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Universal Declaration), (3) the first comprehensive expression of international human rights law of its kind. Yet more than half a century later, there is little consensus on the substance, scope, and enforceability of international human rights. Nowhere is this debate more contentious, and perhaps more injurious, than on the subject of women's rights. Rather than granting women the basic rights and privileges men have long enjoyed, regimes of many oppressive states have persisted in endorsing harmful cultural practices that endanger the health, safety, and welfare of women. (4)

   Although today, the majority of recognized states have signed both the Universal Declaration and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), (5) a number of patriarchal governments continue to engage in state-sanctioned violence and discrimination intended to prevent women from obtaining adequate education and healthcare, succeeding professionally, or actively participating in society. (6) Adding insult to injury, those same states often dismiss accusations that these practices amount to human rights violations; rather, they classify such practices as "cultural" or "traditional," virtually immune under international human rights law. (7)

   This brazen hypocrisy has been reinforced by much of the international community's reliance on the cultural relativist assertion that codified human rights standards should bow to traditional local practices and cultural interpretations of human dignity. (8) The so-called "cultural defense" to human rights violations has been invoked to justify the unabashedly brutal treatment of women through practices like honor killing, genital mutilation, domestic abuse, and rape. (9)

   Whatever the legitimacy of these practices within the cultures in which they occur, the international community is beginning to recognize that achieving gender equality (and consequently, eradicating these abusive customs) is crucial to maintaining international peace and security: As many have recently noted, "[i]t is not only that these problems adversely affect half of the world's population ... [A] deep change in women's circumstances and possibilities produces change throughout social, economic and political life." (10)

   Over the last two decades, major humanitarian and financial institutions around the world have acknowledged the importance of gender equality for global economic development and the attainment of international stability. (11) In the early 1990s, Lawrence Summers, then Chief Economist of the World Bank, wrote: "Investment in girls' education may well be the highest-return investment available in the developing world. The question is ... whether countries can afford not to educate more girls." (12) Likewise, the United Nations Development Programme announced that "[w]omen's empowerment helps raise economic productivity and reduce infant mortality [and] contributes to improved health and nutrition," (13) and other important studies have recognized that "promoting gender equality is crucial to combat global poverty." (14)

   Perhaps even more significantly, in the wake of the September 11 attacks, some counterterrorism experts have noted that countries that harbor terrorists are disproportionately those that also discriminate against women. (15) They hypothesize that the reason there are so many Muslim terrorists has less to do with the Quran and more to do with the lack of gender equality in Islamic countries. (16) As the Pentagon has dug deeper into the origins of terrorism, it has fostered an interest in grassroots projects, particularly with regard to girls' education, as a method to more effectively fight the War on Terror. (17)

   Given the wealth of evidence indicating the damage done by gender violence and discrimination worldwide, it is important to recognize, today more than ever, that simply labeling a degrading practice "cultural" should not make it immune to condemnation by the international community.

   In order to examine the cultural defense and its dangerous effects on women more closely, I will begin by discussing the various foundations of the cultural defense and evaluating how cultural interpretations of human rights often provide a screen behind which both states and individuals are able to abuse and oppress disenfranchised groups, particularly women, despite the mandates of international human rights law. I will then outline a strategy that enables greater oversight of the domestic human rights implementation process with an emphasis on creating a safer world for women. This plan will stress integrating norms that value international women's rights into widely held cultural and religious beliefs in order to provide greater legitimacy to human rights; educating men and women on their legal rights and obligations under treaties like CEDAW and the Universal Declaration; and increasing state responsibility to international human rights obligations through accurate self-reporting.

2. DIFFERING HUMAN RIGHTS PRIORITIES ACROSS CULTURES

   Despite the numerous international human rights treaties binding nearly all of the world's recognized states, many unanswered questions about the scope and definition of human rights remain. (18) U.N. member states often have a multitude of unexpressed incentives for ratifying a human rights treaty, making it difficult to distinguish legitimate rationales from more sinister motives. (19) All of this uncertainty plays into the confusion and tension among nations as they struggle to cooperatively define human rights on the international stage and to determine what is expected of them at home. (20) In the decades since the adoption of the Universal Declaration, it has become evident that the codification of human rights alone often fails to prevent governments from effectively thumbing their noses at their international obligations. (21) In fact, the very arguments offered by many non-Western thinkers in favor of "collective human rights" (22) over "individual human rights" (23) have at times been advanced by the governments of many developing states to rationalize political, ethnic, gender, religious, or cultural repression on the road toward economic and national development. (24)

   1. Ulterior Motives for Commitment to Human Rights

   Because much of international human rights law is "soft," devoid of any meaningful enforcement mechanism, it depends almost entirely on voluntary compliance, which in turn rests, for most governments, solely on perceived self-interest. (25) States often seem quite ready to formally endorse norms to support international human rights standards, while in reality having no intention of actually adhering to such standards. (26) As human rights continue to be politicized both at home and on the international stage, weaker states may express commitment to international human rights treaties simply to earn credit in the eyes of the rest of the world. (27)

   For better or worse, the global economy has become intertwined with international human rights law: the World Trade Organization often makes international trade regulations contingent upon compliance with human rights standards, while both the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank demand promises of satisfactory human rights practices as quid pro quo for receiving economic aid. (28) Public commitment to human rights treaties often provides weak or developing nations with their most meaningful bargaining chip with which to negotiate with more powerful states. (29)

   Perhaps due in part to the proliferation of human rights references in all areas of global governance, the cultural struggle between individual and collective rights has begun to take on a more perverse form. In addition to the cultural attractions of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) for many Third World nations, the so-called "second generation" Covenant has few monitoring and enforcement mechanisms, making the cost of a public declaration of commitment relatively low. (30) Therefore, autocratic regimes prone to oppression may be more likely to sign onto the ICESCR for less than benevolent motives. (31) The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), by contrast, has significantly more powerful means of enforcement, making an official endorsement of the first generation rights potentially more costly. (32)

   Yet, some research seems to suggest that the causal connection between international human rights treaties and domestic human rights practices may be tenuous at best: in many instances, the national status of human rights has worsened after a government signed an international human rights treaty. (33) It appears that in such cases, cultural concerns aside, some states may view signing a human rights treaty merely as a means of satisfying their international audience, believing that, having done so, they are then free to act as they wish at home. (34)

   These...