Impact of Human Rights Abuse on Women

This essay explores the impact of human rights abuse on women, focusing on why women are disproportionately affected. It discusses the theoretical and empirical aspects of the issue, with a focus on India and Pakistan.

Running head: IMPACT OF HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSE ON WOMEN
Impact of Human Rights Abuse on Women
Name of the Student:
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1IMPACT OF HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSE ON WOMEN
1. Essay question
The main essay question of this paper is why the human rights abuses impacts more
significantly on the women.
2. Thesis
Everyone is familiar of the phrase called the “human rights”. It refers to the privileges
that the individuals get just on the basis of being human beings. Human rights is an essential
part of every man’s life and it has been continuously evolving all through the history of
mankind. Still, these rights have always been violated and are abused in the human history.
However, the major impacts of these human rights abuse is on the women of the very nations
where it is been abused. This paper shall argue on the basis of the defined essay question. It
shall argue on why this is the case in most of the countries, especially in India and Pakistan.
3. Empirical and theoretical focus of the essay
It is to note that abusing women and violation against them is also a violation of
human rights. The violence against the women is a significant obstacle against the gender
equality (Garcia-Moreno et al. 2016). Like men, women too are entitles to equal protection
and enjoyment of each and every human rights as well as the fundamental freedoms like the
right to life, equality, liberty, freedom of speech, security, protection under law, free from all
discrimination, favourable condition of work and the right of not to be subjected to any kind
of inhuman treatments (Sen 2017). Still, as per Garcia-Moreno et al. (2015) in most of the
countries women are still not safe and they are numerous violence actions that are been taken
against them. Violence against the females include, but it is not limited to the violence taking
place in family, rape in relationship or marital rape, women trafficking, sexual exploitation,
harassment at workplace, abortion, forced prostitution, infanticide of the new born baby girls,
practicing harmful traditional practices including genital mutilation, early marriage, forced

2IMPACT OF HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSE ON WOMEN
marriage, stoning, honour killing, acid attack, widow burning etc. (Heise 2018). Although
men too experience gender violence as well, but it is the women all around the world who are
disproportionately impacted by the sexual violence. As per the WHO, above 35% of the
women experience sexual and physical violence throughout their life time (Cook et al. 2017).
4. Essay structure
The section 1 of this essay has provided the main question, answering which this
essay has elaborate on. Secondly, the section 2 has presented the thesis of the paper and
section 3 has shed light on outlining wide range of empirical and theoretical focus of the
essay. Lastly, section 5 has presented a brief annotated bibliography on the most useful
source that have been consulted.
5. Annotated bibliography
5.1. Article 1
Bunch, C., 2018. Transforming human rights from a feminist perspective. In Women's
rights, human rights (pp. 11-17).
This article has explored on the contribution of the feminist to the discourse of human
rights in several ways. The initial portion of this study has described and analysed the
evolution of the concept of “women’s rights are human rights” and the development of the
notion of indivisibility of the rights. The next part of the paper shed light on the debates of
the feminist in the context of women’s human rights in the three issue contexts and they are-
democratization, globalisation and the culture. This paper concluded on the notion of the
present challenges in regard to the data collection in assessing the achievement of the human
rights of the women. The concept of the human rights has been contested in several different
ways in this study (Bunch 2018). However, the major limitation of this study is that it could

3IMPACT OF HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSE ON WOMEN
not delve into the debates. Instead, it focused on what the feminist have understood about the
rights of human beings to be in the theory and in the practise.
5.2. Article 2
Decker, M.R., Crago, A.L., Chu, S.K., Sherman, S.G., Seshu, M.S., Buthelezi, K.,
Dhaliwal, M. and Beyrer, C., 2015. Human rights violations against sex workers:
burden and effect on HIV. The Lancet, 385(9963), pp.186-199.
In this paper, the authors Decker et al. (2015) have reviewed several evidences from
near about 800 different reports and studies on the burden and the HIV implications of the
human rights violations on the women sex workers. According to the authors, these types of
violations both directly and indirectly increases the susceptibility of the HIV as well as they
undermine the effective HIV-prevention and the efforts of intervention. These violations
comprise of the sexual and physical violence from the intimate partners and the law
enforcement, unlawful detention and arrest, inequality in accessing the health services,
forcefully testing of HIV and discrimination in the society (Decker et al. 2015). The findings
of this study affirms that the value of the human rights based HIV responses for the women
sex workers as well as underscore the obligation of the states for upholding the human rights
of these marginalised population. However, it is to note that this study have not used in
primary source as data collection method. It has only gone through different literature,
reading materials, journals and reports and several government websites for gathering data
and information. Hence, it is the major limitation of this study and this questions its reliability
and the accuracy of the findings.
5.3. Article 3
Iida, K., 2017. Human rights and sexual abuse: the impact of international human
rights law on Japan. In International Law in East Asia (pp. 141-166).

4IMPACT OF HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSE ON WOMEN
The author of this report Iida (2017) have based this entire study on reviewing the
various different literatures available on the issue of sexual exploitation in Japan. This paper
addresses the diverse forms of sexual exploitation of the female children in Japan and that of
women as well in several parts of the country. It is to note that females in this country are still
vulnerable to many forms of sexual exploitation including online prostitution (Iida 2017). It is
also one of the key destinations for trafficking of girl child for sexual activities and there are
also several cases found about sexual exploitation of the women and girl children in the
sector of travel and tourism. Furthermore, it has also been found that it is alleged that the
victims of female sexual exploitation are most often treated as the juvenile delinquents and
stigmatised as the result. With the same, there are only a few state run recoveries,
rehabilitation and reintegration programmes in this country. The only limitation of this study
is that it has used secondary data collection method in order to assess the information and
data. Primary method would have been of much more use in order to assess the current
situation of this country.

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References:
Bunch, C., 2018. Transforming human rights from a feminist perspective. In Women's rights,
human rights (pp. 11-17).
Cook, A., Spinazzola, J., Ford, J., Lanktree, C., Blaustein, M., Cloitre, M., DeRosa, R.,
Hubbard, R., Kagan, R., Liautaud, J. and Mallah, K., 2017. Complex trauma in children and
adolescents. Psychiatric annals, 35(5), pp.390-398.
García-Moreno, C., Hegarty, K., d'Oliveira, A.F.L., Koziol-McLain, J., Colombini, M. and
Feder, G., 2015. The health-systems response to violence against women. The
Lancet, 385(9977), pp.1567-1579.
Garcia-Moreno, C., Jansen, H.A., Ellsberg, M., Heise, L. and Watts, C.H., 2016. Prevalence
of intimate partner violence: findings from the WHO multi-country study on women's health
and domestic violence. The lancet, 368(9543), pp.1260-1269.
Heise, L., 2018. Violence against women: the missing agenda. In The health of women (pp.
171-196).
Iida, K., 2017. Human rights and sexual abuse: the impact of international human rights law
on Japan. In International Law in East Asia (pp. 141-166).
MacKinnon, C.A., 2017. Rape, genocide, and women’s human rights. In Genocide and
Human Rights (pp. 133-144).
Sen, A., 2017. Elements of a theory of human rights. In Justice and the Capabilities
Approach (pp. 221-262).