“Women’s rights are human rights” was a declaration made by the United Nations during the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995 in Beijing, China. The resolution recognized twelve primary areas of concern, including poverty, inequality in education, and the imbalance of power between genders. Despite the passing of nearly 30 years, many of these issues persist, as noted by Misun Woo, the regional coordinator of Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD).
Woo questions why there has been little progress in advancing women’s human rights and ending the prevailing injustices they face. The challenges are not just rooted in patriarchy, but are also driven by other factors creating marginalization and inequality, such as globalization, climate change, various fundamentalisms, and militarism.
According to Woo, the future will require the concerted efforts of feminist and women’s rights movements, particularly those led by the Global South, to define solutions and reclaim lost ways of life due to dominance and oppression. It’s about connecting these stories and solutions to collectively envision and construct a better future.
Despite the diverse nature of APWLD’s members and partners across Asia, common themes emerge in the challenges faced by women. These include human rights violations, discrimination, gender-based violence, deepening poverty, economic exploitation, weak political representation, and increasing inequality, particularly in access to education and health.
These issues are not new. Despite the passage of numerous resolutions and agreements, many women in Asia and the Pacific continue to grapple with rights violations, injustice, discrimination, and inequality. The root of the problem lies in the unaddressed structural causes of marginalization and inequality. These complexities require long-term strategies and cross-movement efforts to initiate change.
APWLD focuses on how patriarchy merges with systems that regularly compromise women’s human rights, such as globalization, fundamentalisms, and militarism, and the ongoing influence of colonialism and imperialism. The challenges women face in the Asia and the Pacific region are not isolated but deeply structural, with lasting repercussions on women’s rights. Thus, APWLD prioritizes these common issues to aid intersectional movements in disrupting and dismantling these interconnected systems of oppression.
