Assign 9
Toni Mitchell
Assign 9
The history of rights shows that the struggle for the recognition of women’s rights was difficult enough and the recognition of the right of women to a life without gender violence has been even more difficult. With a perspective based in a socio-legal and critical approach, Sally Engle Merry defends the recognition of the right of women to a life free of gender violence must be seen as a conquest of the feminist movement and women’s organizations. It was the struggle of the feminist movement which provided the catalyst for the recognition of women’s rights and the specific right of women to a ‘healthy’ life free of gender violence and to protection against such violence. The right of women to a life free from gender-based violence cannot be fully realized without the implementation of this right at the international and the local level. The implementation of rights and the existence of social movements involved with the right to a life free from gender violence is decisive to transforms the demands for protection from violence and its eradication to be see not as a question of mercy, but as a question of justice; and putting the individual experiences of gender violence victims within a wider framework from which the abuse can be considered as a social problem.
Throughout the article,“Rights Talk and the experience of Law: Implementing Women’s Human Rights to Protection from Violence” , Merry interviews a number women known to society as a victim of domestic violence. She uses the issues concerning the bettering of women to model the way law acts to change social behavior. she examines examines various forms of intervention which have been developed in the US and globally for diminishing violence against women. She further discusses how they have globalized, focusing in particular on the role of the international human rights movement in defining gender-based violence as a human rights abuse.
From my point of view, those wishing to make a human rights claim on a violation of reproductive rights, must use the terminology of other mainstream rights to do so. although this may appear as something difficult for a woman to do, Merry argues that “Human rights are difficult for individuals to adopt as a self-definition in the absence of institutions that will take these rights seriously.” Another thing that caught my attention is the usage of the term victim. Why is it that when authorities are involved, women
