Women Often Disenfranchised from Human Rights

Posted August 12, 2006 in News

This reflective article from Rwanda reminds us that women have been systematically denied human rights, through not fault or choice of their own, but simply for as they are born. It is an approrpriate refute to whining comments by some sectors that only their group is targetted for special treatment.

Berna Namata rightly comments that: "Though the principles of Human Rights are universally acknowledged the extent to which women enjoy and exercise these rights does not tally with the males. To understand the imbalance in the exercise and enjoyment of Human Rights one has to widen their understanding of the African culture which virtually provides the platform for only men to enjoy Human Rights. In society today violation of women's rights is manifested in different ways which in fact are supposedly Human Rights according to the Human Rights committee. Women suffer from torture in most accepts of their life because they are women. Some women are harassed by their own husbands in homes and are too intimidated to report to officials in authority who are usually men, culture permits men to be responsible for their women so any woman who leaves home because of domestic violence in most cases will be blamed and treated as a social outcast."

She later cites a shocking example "where a man was questioned as to why he had chopped off the head of his bride after staying together for two weeks only and the man confidently replied "if you buy a cow and it misbehaves what do you do? 'The reply came from the spectators in the crowd "you slaughter it and buy another one" This sparked off roars of laughter, even among the police who more often look at such cases within a household as a simple domestic matter." This parallels the examples of 9- & 10-year old girls being married off and when their wombs are torn over by conceiving babies too young, they are left in the fields for the hyenas (as highlighted on Oprah only a few months ago).

These shocking examples of the extreme systemised mistreatment of women then send up one's hackles when one reads Prof Fackenheim comments only the Jews (and Gypsies which the Nazis perceived as Jews) were singled out extermination. In this sense, Fackenheim distinguishes between people who choose to die as martyrs or by refusing to be apostates. He argues that uniqueness of the Holocaust was "...that the Jew was not murdered because of his faith, but for reasons that had nothing to do with his faith.  He was murdered because of the Jewish faith of his great-grandparents."

Fackenheim tries to make out that this is unique to the Jewish people. Yet, Namata points out that women are abused for reasons that have nothing to do with their faith, they are abused (even murdered) simply because of their gender, which is determined by the potter in the womb before they have even split into two discrete cells. 

In failing to recognise the parallels of injustice, such Jews have also failed to respond to their missive to act as a kingdom of holy people to the rest of humanity. Where the Jews help perpetuate and theologically justifying the disrespect (even neglect, abuse or murder) of women, they have then failed in their divine message to bring reverence to all of humanity and creation, including both women and Jews. The same can be said of any people of any faith or philosophy who make the same hyperboles to glorify their own and dehumanise the suffering of others.

In this sense, the comment by Fackenheim is almost prophetic: "I have found in thirty years of university professorship that the intellectuals and professors are very intelligent people, but they can combine intelligence in their own fields with the most exasperating lack of common sense in all other fields."

Sources: Allafrica.com and Algemeiner

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