Reimagining Human Rights Law

This subject focuses on the reimagination of human rights from a gender and women’s rights perspective. The traditional human rights canon has been challenged in important ways by its deficiencies in the protection of the rights of women and sexual and gender minorities. The primary focus on violations by state actors was shown to obscure and make invisible violations against women in the private sphere of family and home, in particular gender-based violence. The partial and contingent protection of sexual and reproductive rights under international human rights law has revealed persistent gendered limitations. Meanwhile, the adherence to date of international human rights law to the male/female binary has proven exclusionary to the promotion and protection of the rights of sexual and gender minorities.