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Claiming Rights, Claiming Justice: A Guidebook on Women Human Rights Defenders

by APFWLD
Claiming Rights, Claiming Justice: A Guidebook on Women Human Rights Defenders

This guidebook is designed to support the ongoing process of enhancing the understanding of, and sensitivity to, the specific issues and situations confronted by women human rights defenders. Women human rights defenders are women who defend human rights as well as those who defend sexuality-related rights. By naming the specific violations, risks and constraints that they face, this guidebook aims to continue advocacy, research, and documentation, which could advance the rights of women human rights defenders as well as bring further recognition and acknowledgment to their work.

This guidebook provides the basis for continuing engagement with issues regarding the protection of women human rights defenders at both the conceptual and practical levels. It is a contribution towards enriching the use and interpretation of human rights, drawing from the special collaboration among women’s rights, human rights, and sexual rights advocates who produced this guidebook together. As a result, this document demonstrates the many links between human rights, women’s rights, and sexual rights, and represents one specific initiative towards the continuing struggle for the advancement of human rights for all.

The idea to develop a guidebook was first explored in the international campaign on women human rights defenders entitled Defending Women Defending Rights. It was a mobilisation to move the activism for women’s rights forward focusing on the human rights of the activists themselves. The campaign brought together an international coalition of representatives from women’s rights, human rights, and lesbian, gay and transgender movements who were committed in the advocacy for the concerns of women human rights defenders. The campaign was launched in 2004, and it culminated in an international consultation on women human rights defenders in Colombo, Sri Lanka on 29 November – 2 December 2005.

One of the key recommendations from the participants in the consultation was the creation of “a documentation system on violations and abuses against women human rights defenders in order to develop protection mechanisms that are more responsive to their needs”. Claiming Rights, Claiming Justice: A Guidebook on Women Human Rights Defenders was written to respond to this recommendation. Based on the calls of the campaign, this guidebook was written to highlight the following major categories of perpetrators or political contexts:

  • resistance to state violence and repression of women human rights defenders, with a focus on state actors’ responsibility;
  • responsibility for violations by non-state actors, including violations perpetrated by family and community members and obstacles faced in those arenas;
  • violations perpetrated in relation to heightened fundamentalisms on a global level; and
  • violations perpetrated in relation to regulation of, and attack on women’s sexuality.

This guidebook reflects the rich perspective of activists working from different areas of expertise and backgrounds. Women human rights defenders from women’s rights, human rights, and gay, lesbian and transgender groups who were involved in the campaign and the international consultation committed themselves to the production of this book. Many of the insights and examples used in this book were drawn from their stories.

In addition, two consultations were organised in Nepal (with participants from South Asia) and in Indonesia (with participants




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