PADM 5855. International Human Rights

1. Human rights, their definition and enforcement - the case of women's rights

22, 24 January 2024

This first session of the seminar will be given on January 22 at 13:25 in persoon or via Zoom. It is a case study of how women's human rights have evolved over time. It will largely be based on the Professor's own experiences while he was Deputy Director of the United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women.

Questions covered	What are human rights? Are women's rights human rights, and are human rights women's rights?
Lecture	Text of the lecture given on January 22, 2024
Required readings	McFarland, Chapters 1, 4, 12, 14, 21, John Mathiason, Review of Michelle Foster. International Refugee Law and Socio-Economic Rights: Refuge from Deprivation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. John Mathiason, The Long March to Beijing: the United Nations and the Women’s Revolution, Vol. 1. The Vienna Period, Preface and Part One. Hillary Clinton's Beijing Speech on Women Resonates 20 Years Later, New York Times, September 5, 2015
Recommended readings	Franke Wilmer, Human Rights in International Politics: An Introduction, Chapters 1-3. July 2017 Meeting of the Committee on the Eliminatiion of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) - John Mathiason,  The United States Does Not Believe in Women's Rights (in the course canvas) Jack Donnelly, Universal Human Rights, Chapter 1
Discussion questions	Why was it so difficult to get human rights for women? Why was there a need for a Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women? Why do you need a secretariat about women's human rights?

Recordings

Recording of the sessions on 22 and 24 January 2024 will be in the course Canvas.

© 2017, 2018 John R. Mathiason. All Rights Reserved.

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© 2010 John R. Mathiason

Revised: January 4, 2024.