africa/global: Women's civil and political rights in a human rights perspective

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) combines civil, political, social and economic rights in one standard-setting document. Subsequent human rights treaties reflect the efforts of the international community to give these rights a legal basis at the national and international level. However, the system of treaties that has evolved since 1948 has been defined by a major chasm between those who view narrowly-defined political and civil rights as the "real" human rights and those who argue that economic, social, and cultural rights are more important. Women's Human Rights advocates are critical of this dichotomy because it goes against the principle of the indivisibility of all rights. Feminist analyses of human rights reject the mainstream hierarchy that privileges civil and political rights over economic, social and cultural rights.