Education into the 21st Century: Dangerous Terrain For Women?

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Their tortuous journey is intercut with shots of an increasingly desperate, red-faced Neville seeking out ways of recapturing the girls, returning them to Moon River and containing the contaminant. It concluded that the policy of forcible removal, pursued from to , constituted genocide and recommended the payment of reparations, the provision of services for the affected persons, and the enactment of new laws in the area of child welfare, family law and juvenile justice. The process of recuperating the traumatised, alienated subjects of the past into the liberal democratic state through the discourse of human rights represents the metamorphosis of a racist state into one that is caring and compassionate.

Human rights become a site for reconciling moments of rupture and exclusion, and bringing the past into synch with the norms and values of liberalism, rather than bringing about a deeper interrogation of those norms and values. However, the release of Rabbit-Proof Fence in disrupts this attempt at tidy closure and a sense of moving on. Screened at a time when the war on terror, the overarching concern with the security of the nation-state and the sovereign subject was and remains dominant, celluloid serves to remind the spectator of the new exclusions being produced in the contemporary moment by the liberal democratic state and the beckoning need for a closer scrutiny of the central premises that constitute the human rights project.

My own location as a postcolonial feminist legal thinker prompts me to impact and subvert the terrain of human rights, while at the same time, as a practitioner, to reformulate, rather than abandon, rights as a tool to bring about transformation in the lives of those who are excluded from their ambit. I explore the possible ways in which both of these desires — though on their face antagonistic — can be reconciled so as to avoid the traps of mainstreaming that can sanitise the discourse, and at the same time ensure that a critique of the discourse does not become irrelevant.

The establishment of human rights in the mid 20 th Century as part of a modern project of international institutions was a critical moment. It brought into being the possibility that states could no longer shelter behind the fig leaf of sovereignty for violations committed against individuals. It was a new form of interventionism that emboldened the liberal internationalist and his or her belief in the virtue of law and principle of universality.

Human rights marked a point of arrival — a step in the progress of human development. This belief in the transformative and progressive potential of human rights is contingent on an assumption that we have, as a civilised world, moved forward, and that the coming together of nation-states in the recognition of universal human rights is a critical part of the liberal project that seeks to advance individual rights and human desires. It is a narrative that is driven by a persistent belief that history has a purpose and direction coupled with an assumption that the world has emerged from a backward, more uncivilised era.

Indeed, it reflects the metamorphosis of civilisation from the primitive, into a modern and evolved form, and this progress has emanated from the heart of Europe. It has mostly been achieved except in some of the outposts of the empire. This new emboldened project has received a major impetus in the post-Cold War era in the form of liberal internationalism, which no longer faces any ideological resistance. A veneration of these ideals and hubris born of the profound belief in this justice-seeking project have come to characterise the practice in the field.

There is a real earnestness on the part of well-intentioned activists, practitioners, judges and even politicians that they are pursuing a progressive, even righteous, goal. Those who do not necessarily regard human rights as such a neat and tidy project — as a project that is progressive let alone transformative — have challenged this narrative of progress. The view that the international recognition of human rights marks an end to an ignorant past and enables the realisation of freedom and equality is challenged as empirically and theoretically flawed: There is a dark side to human rights work, which has been exposed by, amongst others, postcolonial scholars, feminists and new scholars in international law.

These scholars have examined the costs of this work, revealing some of the resulting, often unanticipated damage done. What has emerged is how it is possible to read the virtuous script of human rights against the grain, to read another narrative into the story line that was, perhaps, never intended by those who inspired the project or to accord a meaning to it that counters or subverts any progressive reading it might have had.

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Original intent is invariably not knowable. But even if it was, and however well-intentioned it may have been, it does not necessarily continue to inform the constitutive basis of the human rights project — as progressive, emancipatory and liberating. Perhaps partly because of these limitations, as well as the powerful hold that sovereignty continues to have on some nation-states, there is another more reactionary critique of human rights that has emerged.

In its crude form, this critique views human rights as a corrosive tool that has eroded the legitimacy conferred or exercised through sovereignty, and threatened national and social cohesion. According to this view the era of historical progress and coherence has ceased, and we have entered the age of uncertainty and instability. This position argues that legitimacy, security and social cohesion reside in the glories of the past and its certainties, which must be retrieved and the encroachments of human rights law on sovereignty arrested. In contrast to this deep opposition to the human rights project, a more sophisticated, nuanced position is emerging, which seeks to engage with human rights discourse to pursue a very reactionary and conservative agenda.

The Pope recognised that women had and continue to experience historical disadvantage, and called for:.

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In a similar vein the Vatican has opposed violence against women, while at the same time distinguished its position from feminists by casting itself as a preserver of the family. Although this instinct is not to be derided, it is the deeper political agenda of the evangelicals that are cause for alarm. These include their views on sexual integrity and the role of women in the family. These responses exemplify how human rights are a contested terrain and not one that can simply be read in linear terms.

I want to expand on this idea that human rights is an arena where different visions of the world are fought out and how this struggle is obscured in linear accounts of human rights. This includes, for example, an excavation of how the discourse is permeated by imperial ambition, assertions about moral and civilisational superiority, as well as religious evangelicalism. In the contemporary period, there is an explicit example of this complex narrative in the context of the bombing of Afghanistan in October These claims were wrapped in a strong, bold argument in favour of self-defence, including the right to pre-emptive strikes.

Subsequently, as Vasuki Nesiah argues, there has been a subtle mutation of the discourse on the part of those countries which participated in the Afghanistan offensive, from self-defence to human rights, providing the tool for legitimizing the operation that had initially seemed so suspect. Thereafter, it was but one small step towards Iraq. Images of shock and awe were replaced by congregations of Iraqi men and women, struggling in the constituent assembly to bring some form of governance to Iraq and draft a constitution.

The language of human rights and democracy have been somewhat muted, if not actually countered, by the daily civilian atrocities committed by the occupying forces and the insurgency, the failure of the newly formed government of national unity to restore law and order, the continuous questioning over the legality of the war, as well as the prison humiliations and abuses at Abu Ghraib and the massacre of Iraqi civilians by US marines in Haditha.

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Perhaps the jury is still out on this one — it is too early to say whether Iraq can be successfully rescripted as a noble endeavour by the altruistic West, in particular the United States, to bring democracy and freedom to the Middle East. Yet for some in the United States, this claim appears self-evident.

Once again, five thousand years seems to represent the quicksand of history. And universal human rights are cast as impervious to history.


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These critiques as well as the reactionary possibilities of human rights, constitute some of the theoretical and practical tensions that characterise human rights law and disrupt the idea that human rights is one long and steady march towards progress. In this section, I unpack the normative assumptions that inform the notion of universality to which human rights claims are tethered. The human rights project is based on the assumption that all humans are entitled to enjoy human rights without regard to distinction.

It is a claim that regards human rights as being based on notions of objectivity, neutrality and inclusion. Yet when we examine the Enlightenment project, the precursor to the human rights movement, it exposes a history of how claims to universality and inclusion have co-existed with exclusion and subordination. Even within Europe, gender and racial apartheid established a hierarchy of what and who constituted the liberal subject — the white, Christian, propertied male. These values meet with some of the same difficulties today in their encounters with difference and unfamiliarity.

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While there is some concern over the universalist claims of human rights in light of the harms and exclusions that have characterised its liberal antecedents, there remains a deep commitment to the project and faith in its universal application. The exclusions of the past are regarded as moments of profound inconsistency in what liberalism stands for and how it has operated, for example, in relation to women and other socially disadvantaged groups.

As some feminist scholars have argued, it is, in fact, a failure of liberal thinkers to follow their own thought through to its progressive end. For example, subordination by sex was deemed to be natural and the subject of sex ignored by liberal political philosophers and their theories of justice. Independence from colonial rule fought and won through the invocation of civil and political rights is used as another example to substantiate this position.

Yet this search to restore liberalism to its pristine elegance and original features is an elusive one, for its history belies the possibility of any such origins. International law coupled with its humanitarian zeal was structured by the colonial encounter and its distinction between the civilised and uncivilised. In order to gain entry into the community of international law and family of civilised nations, outside communities had to strive to resemble the European.

Revisiting the colonial encounter is critical in order to understand the limitations and possibilities of human rights in the contemporary period. It is essential for human rights advocates to embrace this history. Thus, the liberal tradition from which human rights have emerged not only incorporates arguments about freedom and equal worth but — and this is the core of my argument — it also incorporates arguments about civilisation, cultural backwardness, racial and religious superiority.

Further human rights remain structured by this history. This dark side is intrinsic to human rights, rather than something that is merely broken and can be glued back together. The liberal subject lies at the heart of the human rights endeavour. This subject is free, unencumbered, self-sufficient and rational, existing prior to history and social context. A host of subjects continue to be denied inclusion into the project, or entitled access only to the extent that they resemble the familiar subject of human rights discourse.

The second is to treat the difference as natural and inevitable. These are not rigid and absolute categorisations, but frequently overlap and leak into one another. And all of these responses are present in the contemporary moment. Assimilation is integral to the liberal tradition.

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It is accompanied by cultural erasure and plays out on a host of sites. In the context of the colonial encounter in India, assimilation took the form of learning how to imitate the colonial power. The native was entitled to certain rights and benefits to the extent that he could reinvent himself as an Englishman.

In the contemporary period, this response is found in the proliferation of new citizenship and nationality laws being enacted throughout Europe and elsewhere. One recent explicit example of this response can be found in the Danish family reunification law. According to the Aliens Act Denmark , the government has sought to restrict the number of resident permits awarded for the purpose of family reunification ostensibly to reduce the number of unemployed aliens.

Under the Aliens Act , the legal right of family reunification has been withdrawn and replaced with a provision regulating the right to a residence permit in Denmark for the purpose of family reunification with a person living in Denmark. It is based on extremely strict age and connection requirements.

The marriage or registered partnership should be recognisable under Danish law and entered into voluntarily.


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There is also a requirement that the parties be over the age of 24, [39] even if one of the parties is a Danish citizen and that their aggregate ties with Denmark be stronger than their aggregate ties with another country, a condition that is lifted in situations where the person residing in Denmark has held Danish citizenship for at least 28 years. Evidence of either or both parties making extended visits to another country, and having children or other family members in another country, are also factors to be taken into consideration.

The impact of the aggregate ties requirement was illustrated in the case of Tien Dang, a 26 year old Vietnamese whose application to bring his wife to Denmark was rejected. The fact that he was a permanent resident and gainfully employed in Denmark, had his own home there, spoke Danish fluently and had other family members in the country including his children and parents were considered insufficient to counter the finding that his attachments with Vietnam were greater than his attachments to Denmark, presumably because he continued to visit his wife there.

He remained an impostor, unable to reinvent himself as a true and loyal Dane. Following on the Commissioners report , Tien Dang has filed a suit challenging the Danish family reunification law as contravening the European Human Rights Convention, which guarantees all individuals the right to a family life.

It does not challenge the unstated culturally normative standard being introduced through national immigration criteria to scrutinise those who are trying to enter through legal routes , as Dang appeared to fully comply with this standard and was still denied his right to family life. The line between belongingness and non-belongingness is being increasingly drawn in an insular, culturally intolerant direction, where only certain recognisable identities can cross into the legal zones. The second response of naturalising or essentialising the difference has a rich genealogy.

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Education into the 21st century: Published London ; Bristol, PA: Language English View all editions Prev Next edition 3 of 3. Check copyright status Cite this Title Education into the 21st century: Subjects Feminism and education. Women -- Education -- Congresses. Feminism and education -- Congresses. Back to the future? Feminist strategies for change. Towards the 21st century. Notes A selection of papers from a meeting of over 30 feminist educators and theorists held in northern Sweden in the spring of Includes bibliographical references and index.

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