Human Rights And Gender Violence Case Study

1477 Words3 Pages

Mohammed Hassan
Political Science 286
Professor Renu Bhagat
04/23/2014
Human Rights and Gender Violence

Human Rights and Gender Violence by Sally Engle Merry is a study done which investigates the on-going tensions that occur among local justice and international law and one that discuss the approaches toward diminishing gender violence. In addition to being an active member of various feminist organizations that are located in several different countries, Sally Merry is also an observer of UN diplomatic negotiations allowing her to provide an inside look on how human rights law holds authorities responsible for protecting their citizens while still strengthening and expanding state power. Human rights law and the legal protection of violence against women are still considered moderately new concepts in most nations. This consequently leads to significant differences that exist between what is decided by the United Nations and what women actually experience on everyday circumstances in their local communities. Sally Merry argues that human rights law must be explained in local terms to be both effectual and accepted in premise to local communities that have existing social hierarchies. Differentiating between the US and internationally. Further including that gender violence is frequently rooted deep into both religious and cultural beliefs, so acquiring change is often strongly opposed by those very same communities. Various powerful approaches to diminishing gender violence include criminalization; batterer retraining programs and humans rights interventions.

Sally pushes criminalization of gender violence heavily because she sees it as a formidable way of diminishing gender based vi...

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...a tool in the hands of the people who appeal to it to order to achieve their different, often conflicting political goals.

In conclusion, Sally Merry discusses in her book the processes in which the local and the global are intertwined, she identifies places where global, national and local processes are revealed. She stresses the use of criminalization, batterer retraining programs and human rights interventions to diminish gender violence. She further imposes that for human rights laws to be effectual and accepted they must be explained in local terms. With the many differences when it comes to mainly culture and religion, forming laws based upon local terms is clearly an effective way in creating laws that people would agree on. Once again differentiation between US and international scopes in terms of problems and solutions relating to gender based violence.

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