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

Document number
1383
Date
2007
Title
Claiming Rights, Claiming Justice: A Guidebook on Women Human Rights Defenders
Author/publisher
Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD), UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General on the Situation of Human Rights Defenders
Availability
View/save PDF version of this document
Document type(s)
Training Material/Resources,
Keywords
Prevention, Awareness Raising, Media, Information Campaigns, Empowerment, Advocacy, Civil society, NGO, Human Rights approach, Activism, Education, Training; Women's rights; Women; Control and regulation of prostitution, Protection, Punishable forms of prostitution,
Summary
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. 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. This guidebook was written to highlight the following major categories of perpetrators or political 12 A Guidebook on Women Human Rights Defenders 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 is intended to be of primary use to women human rights defenders themselves as part of a continuous process of acknowledging, validating, and transforming their practical experiences and insights into a body of knowledge, theories and tools for use by them and by others. It is intended to complement current human rights documentation manuals and training, and to further a gender perspective in many of the existing human rights documentation and monitoring systems.
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