Document Type

Article

Disciplines

International Law

Abstract

On the eve of the twenty-first century, the doctrine of women's rights is enjoying a long-awaited, hard-won, and much celebrated currency. "Women's rights are human rights;"2 "the human rights of women and the girl child are an inalienable, integral and indivisible part of universal human rights; '3 vast and active telecommunications networks are being established to link the women of the world in their cause of international human rights for women. There is a buoyancy and an excitement which pervades this line of rights-inquiry and rights-discourse. The women's rights movement' is characterised by a dynamism which infuses most of those associated with the campaign for women's human rights and its process.

Against this backdrop, this article proposes an examination of the current state of women's rights in the Russian Federation. A review of the actual state of realization of certain of the "universal" rights of Russian women, enshrined in the CEDAW,5 the International Covenants, and other international and regional instruments, may provide a measure of the success of activity to secure universal women's rights, while casting light on the foundations of the alleged "universality" of women's rights enshrined in international documents.

An important key to the advocacy of Russian women's rights in a legal system antithetical to, or at the very least inexperienced with the notion of individual rights lies in the alleged universality of human rights in general, and women's rights specifically. To that end, this essay proposes an exploration of the concept of "universality" in women's rights. The case of Russian women's action to secure women's rights is an interesting one in which to consider the success of "universalizing" women's rights. Rule of law is fledgling in many of the countries of the former Soviet Union, and the notion of rights, whether promulgated at international or municipal law, as legitimate claims of individuals against their governments remains a fluid, temperamental, and unpredictable experiment. Is such a transitional legal system capable of dealing with and being receptive to its women's claims of rights? What rights are Russian women seeking to claim? Is the existence of an international women's rights project useful to Russian women activists? Theoretical foundation in a universal source provides the justification for describing human rights, and women's rights, as universal. Yet, the theoretical location of "universality" in a foundation which suggests a set of core, inalienable human rights in every individual is a significant challenge to human rights theorists. Three options have been identified to answer the question of the location of a source for human rights: (1) to favor foundationalism and to seek to derive human rights from the laws of God or a God-substitute; (2) to accept the antifoundationalist case and to expose the concept of human rights to the vagaries of contingency, or (3) to find a third way] On a practical level, the embodiment of core, inalienable human rights and women's rights in instruments of international law has not unimpeachably advanced the respect for, and preservation of, these rights around the world. In attempting to understand the epithet "universal," used in respect of women's rights by the international women's rights project, the actual state of development of women's rights in Russia and the utility of the "universal" women's rights project to the independent women's coalition in the Russian Federation will be considered.

This article is divided into four parts, each of which addresses and probes the notion of "universality" and the coextensive questions of the immutability and inalienability of human rights. First, it reviews the current state of women's rights discourse in the Russian Federation. An examination of the issues faced by Russian women's rights activists highlights the difficulty of crusading for women's rights in a society historically riven with clearly defined distinctions in the "natural" roles assigned to men and women, and consequent sex-role hierarchies. The necessity for some universal underpinning for women's rights is highlighted in the face of a civil society and a legal system as yet ill-equipped for individual rights-adjudication. Second, it explores the unifying and potentially universalizing element of woman's body as a foundation in women's rights discourse. Third, it considers the recent and influential statement of the situation of women's rights in Russia in "Russia, Neither Jobs nor Justice," prepared by the Women's Rights Project of Human Rights Watch.' The Recommendations of the Women's Rights Project Report to the government of the Russian Federation are reviewed with a view to determining how useful the international women's rights project, and its purported advocacy of "universal" women's rights, is to the Russian women's rights project.

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