Aspiring For Better
An Ideal Human Rights Treaty
An Ideal Human Rights Treaty
Human right treaties if ratified, should be effective in protecting human rights and by doing that they should improve human lives. But in reality they are not effective. One of the biggest problems with human rights treaties is that they have no enforcing and neither executive power. Even upon ratification, it is up to the ratifying states if they implement the treaty in their national legislation and be bound by the responsibility to uphold them. The best examples are treaties that relate to women and children’s rights. Although almost all countries have ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the Convention on Consent to Marriage, Minimum Age for Marriage, and Registration of Marriages, most developing countries are likely to depart from the obligation to uphold these legally binding documents by allowing or ignoring the presence of early marriages or as commonly known the child marriages.
In most developing countries, violence against women and the exploitation of children is so rampant that is becoming a worldwide concern. The most apparent reason for violence against women is poverty – as we know from research, poverty and domestic violence almost always correlate. Also, the embedded cultural belief that is especially discriminatory towards women justifies the domination and the violation of women’ and girls’ rights, worldwide. The backwardness of the developing countries, topped with all these other factors further weakens human rights treaties.
Most developing countries have no choice but to prioritize. Sustaining life by providing basic necessities like food, water, shelter and some sanitary conditions for their people is understandably is a more important goal to achieve that gender equality. But as advocates for women rights would agree, women are an...