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Rights Spotlight: International Day of Families

This May 15th is the International Day of Families. So what’s this all about – and what do families, human rights and gender justice have to do with one another?

Established principles of international human rights law uphold the rights of all individuals within families to be free of coercion, violence and discrimination; free to found families on an equal basis; and free to become a part of diverse forms of families around the world.

Yet today we stand witness to ongoing violations of these intrinsic rights across regions – including intimate partner violence and child abuse, harmful practices, stigmatization, and unequal family laws – and the failure of states to ensure these rights and to hold perpetrators accountable.

And at the same time, conservative actors are leading the charge at the United Nations and other human rights spaces to undermine and chip away at our rights protections themselves. Ironically, many of these actors use emerging discourses around ‘the family’ to defend violations committed against family members, to bolster and justify impunity, and to restrict equal rights within and to family life.

Today, join the Observatory on the Universality of Rights (OURs) in calling for our universal human rights: equality within families and respect for the human rights of all family members worldwide, without discrimination. Human rights are indivisible, universal, interdependent, and inalienable to every person in the world.

OURs aims to monitor, analyze, and share information on anti-rights initiatives threatening our human rights systems. We hope to strengthen the work of activists facing direct challenges to rights, especially rights related to gender and sexuality.

This International Day of Families, OURs highlights a selection of relevant resources. Please share these with your networks, let us know of your key resources, and tweet using the hashtags #RightsAreUniversal and #FamilyDay

 

Families are diverse

Counter to the claims of anti-rights actors, as the human rights framework has recognized time and time again, families are diverse and take many different forms around the world.

 

Conservative discourses undermining rights

We are increasingly seeing the spread of a conservative discourse in human rights spaces which seeks to employ the term “family” strategically – to reserve human rights for the few instead of for all, to promote inequality and to weaken our existing human rights protections.

Regressive actors are collaborating across borders and religions to attack human rights standards with appeals to a narrow and discriminatory conception of ‘the family’ and ‘family values,’ including the recent “Protection of the Family” resolutions at the United Nations.

 

Equality in family laws

From country to country, personal status or family laws discriminate against women and are employed to restrict their rights to family life and other fundamental freedoms.

Not only do these laws continue to grant unequal rights to custody; provide cover for coercion, abuse and sexual violence; and delimit women’s access to money – states continue to attempt to back out of their human rights commitments to change these laws and challenge discriminatory gender stereotypes by reference to national sovereignty, tradition, religion and culture.

 

Resources

Diversity of families

Conservative discourses

Family laws

 

 

 

Why Domestic Violence Still Plagues Morocco

By Daria Etezadi

The Moroccan woman was 21 when she first laid eyes on the man who would become her husband. She saw the handsome 24-year-old in a photograph presented by his parents. That was three years ago, when she was still a student. Within a year, S.S., who did not want her name used, had dropped out of her university classes, forced by her father to marry the man. Shortly after the wedding, S.S. says the beatings and rapes began.

“The whole time I just thought about killing myself,” she says. “There is no law that will help me sue my husband for the things that he did. So he always gets away with it.”

Morocco is hailed as one of the most progressive Muslim countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Yet despite amendments made to the Family Code in 2004 that increased women’s rights, domestic violence is still not a crime.

A bill addressing violence against women [VAW] in Morocco had been in limbo for more than 10 years when, on March 17, lawmakers finally took up the issue and passed the bill. But there are detractors, including some unexpected ones: Nongovernmental organizations that have long lobbied for legislation to protect women opposed the bill, saying it fails to address the urgent needs of Moroccan women.

Read the full story from Newsweek

Morocco: Tepid Response on Domestic Violence

Moroccan police, prosecutors, judges, and other authorities often fail to prevent domestic abuse, punish the abusers, or assist survivors, Human Rights Watch said today in a letter to the Moroccan government.

In part, that is because Moroccan laws don’t provide officials with guidance on responding effectively.

Human Rights Watch in September 2015, interviewed 20 women and girls who had suffered domestic abuse. They said that their husbands, partners, and other family members punched, kicked, burned, stabbed, and raped them, or subjected them to other abuse. Human Rights Watch also interviewed lawyers, women’s rights activists, and representatives of organizations providing shelter and services to survivors of domestic violence. Morocco should strengthen and adopt draft laws that would improve protection for victims of domestic violence.

“Many women and girls enduring domestic violence don’t get the help they need from Moroccan authorities,” said Rothna Begum, Middle East and North Africa women’s rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Adopting and enforcing a strong domestic violence law would not only help victims, but also help the authorities do their jobs.”

A national survey of women aged 18 to 65 by the Moroccan High Commission for Planning found that in 2009 nearly two-thirds – 62.8 percent – had experienced physical, psychological, sexual, or economic violence. Of the sample interviewed, 55 percent reported “conjugal” violence and 13.5 percent reported “familial” violence. Only 3 percent of those who had experienced conjugal violence had reported it to the authorities.

Most of the domestic violence survivors Human Rights Watch interviewed said they had sought help from police, prosecutors, or courts. But many said police officers refused to record their statements, failed to investigate, and refused to arrest domestic abuse suspects even after prosecutors ordered them to. In some cases, police did nothing more than tell victims to return to their abusers.

Read the full story from Human Rights Watch

Lebanon grants trans people right to legally change their gender

The Court of Appeal in Lebanon has said trans people can legally change their gender.

Judge Janet Hanna in Beirut was examining the case of a trans man who had undergone gender surgery and wanted to be listed as a man, not a woman, in the official population register.

As it is a senior court, the judge’s ruling in favor of the man will now set a precedent confirming the legal rights of trans people in the Middle Eastern country.

Judge Hanna confirmed three basic rights in her ruling: The right to change gender to relieve psychological and social suffering, the right to access treatment for gender conditions and the right to privacy.

The court learned the trans man had ‘suffered since birth from gender identity disorder disease’ and had ‘masculine features in terms of external appearance, psychological and emotional characteristics.’

The man had got a medical report explaining his transition was a ‘mature’ and informed decision.

He was initially denied the right to officially change his gender by a lower court but appealed and the case was heard by the Court of Appeal last September. That judgment was announced today.

Judge Hanna ruled: ‘The person’s right to receive the necessary treatment to relieve the suffering from physical and mental illness is a fundamental and natural right, no one can deprive him of it.’

Bertho Makso, an LGBTI activist and director of Proud Lebanon, told Gay Star News: ‘There has been much suffering in the past because this right was not given to trans people.

‘This is a breakthrough for the trans community and all LGBTI people in Lebanon as we fight for our right to be treated with dignity and respect.’

 

By Tris Reid-Smith

Article originally published on the Gay Star News website