Women's rights protection an unfinished business

A man once asked me what I meant when I said, "Women's rights are human rights, and human rights are women's rights."

I asked him to think of all the rights he as a man enjoyed and apply them to women. What would it be like if his rights were taken away? What if he were not allowed to vote? Or inherit property? Or go to school? Or drive? Or hold a job outside his home? In America, It's easy to lose sight of the importance of human rights, because our freedoms are guaranteed for both men and women.

When I listen to the stories of women around the world, I am haunted by the sights, sounds and emotions of those who have been left out of the circle of human rights. A young woman forced into prostitution, dying of AIDS. A woman in a refugee camp, holding her children as they die in her arms. Women rape as a tactic of war or the victims of domestic abuse in their own homes. Women forced to have children in some countries, forced to abort them in others.

These women understand the importance of human rights because they've lived without them. They believe human rights are as essential to life as air or water. They know, in spite of everything they are told by culture and tradition, that these are the rights of the children of God.

This week marks the beginning of a year-long observation of these rights -- an opportunity to rededicate ourselves to the cause of equal rights for all humanity.

It was on Dec. 10, 1948, in the aftermath of the unspeakable horrors of World War II, that the United Nations General Assembly, prodded in large measure by Eleanor Roosevelt, chair of the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. If defines basic human rights, from life, liberty and security to freedom from slavery and torture.

In a controversial decision, historic for its time, the Declaration stated that all of the enumerated rights belong to men and women equally. Yet, even today -- 50 years later -- full economic, social and political opportunities for women remain too often an elusive goal.

To be sure, we have made progress. Yet, in many places, the suffering of women continues, explained away as a "cultural phenomenon." inheritance rights for women fall behind those of men. Access by women to equal educational opportunities is limited, and illiteracy rates remain disproportionately high. In some countries, only men enjoy the right to vote, and women are trafficked as domestic servants, sweatshop workers and prostitutes.

There is no easy answer that will suddenly free women from these conditions. But, as we embark on this commemorative year, and as we approach the new century, it's time to bring all human beings into the full protection of this extraordinary promise.

How can we expect to make progress when women make up half of the world's population yet remain disproportionately poor? Women and children are 80 percent of the world's 23 million refugees. Two-thirds of the 130 million children not in school are girls.

Still too often, we fail to see the connection between women's rights and human rights. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press, the rights to petition the government and to assemble -- all these are essential. But think how much weaker these rights are in a nation where the majority of young women are illiterate. Rights on paper that can't be realized in practice are not really rights at all.

The full protection of the rights of women is the unfinished business of this turbulent century.

The beliefs inscribed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were not invented 50 years ago. They are not the work of a single woman or culture or country. Some of humanity's bravest lessons emerge only after its deepest tragedies. This Declaration took shape in a world ravaged by the horrors of militarism and fascism -- in the wake of the most violent revelation of the depths to which human beings can dehumanize one another. But these rights have been with us since civilization's first light.

It is time for the global community to embrace human rights and especially women's rights once and for all. Now, while we stand at the threshold of a new millennium, we must rededicate ourselves to completing the work that farsighted men and women started 50 years ago. We owe it to every woman who is not living in freedom and security. Women's rights, after all, are human rights, and human rights are women's rights.

-- Creators Syndicate