IFHHRO conducts annual conferences on themes linked to health and human rights each year. The conference theme for year 2005 is Engendering Health and Human Rights. The Conference is being held in Mumbai, India on 30thth September and 1t October 2005. The overall aim of the conference is to debate and bring to the table issues of gender inequities within the human rights context and discuss good practices and strategies for engendering health and human rights, including the role of health professionals.
The conference will be for two days. There will be one plenary on each day and a number of parallel sessions on sub themes. The plenary sessions will be conducted by invited speakers and sub-theme session presenters will be selected on the basis of abstracts submitted. Each sub theme parallel session will have upto four presenters who will be given 15-20 minutes for presentation and each session will have 40 minutes of open discussion time. The expected participants at the conference is 150.
Objectives
Outline of the Theme
While human rights initself is about equity, the character of society, which presently is dominated by a patriarchal and class differentiated framework, determines the extent of equity that will be found in reality. Human rights are no exception. The fact that a separate mandate called CEDAW was necessitated in the international arena clearly reflects that gender equity is a concern that needs to be addressed separately. Given this reality the theme Engendering Health and Human Rights has been taken up as the focus area of the 2005 IFHHRO Conference.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948 outlined a consensus on the human rights of all people. However, tradition, prejudice, social, economic and political interests have combined to exclude women from prevailing definitions of "general" human rights and to relegate women to secondary and/or "special interest" status within human rights considerations even in the 21st century. This marginalisation of women in the human rights domain has been a reflection of gender inequity in the world at large and has also had a formidable impact on women's lives. It has contributed to the perpetuation of women's subordinate status and thus has made the process of seeking redress for human rights violations disproportionately difficult for women and in many cases outright impossible.
But the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), adopted in 1979 by the UN General Assembly changed this. The issue of gender, since CEDAW, has moved to centre stage in the debate on human rights. CEDAW has laid the foundation for women's international human rights laws, transcending national, religious and customary laws. To address the legal, social and economic structures at the root of women's weak position in law and society, CEDAW requires States to undertake constitutional, legislative, and socio-economic reform aiming at the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women in the private as well as in the public sphere. Yet, in most societies there still exist extensive gaps between principles of gender-equality and self-determination, and the local traditions and customs that govern women's everyday lives.
Gender concerns in the rights and equity framework revolve around four key issues that violate gender equity. The first is gender based violence like sexual assault, domestic violence and violence against women (especially rape) in conflict situations. The second is gender discrimination based on misuse of technology like genetics, prenatal diagnostics, ultrasound (such as prenatal sex-selection). The third is access to healthcare, especially reproductive health services, including issues around contraception and reproductive technologies. And the fourth is the absence of gender concerns in the health and human rights movements as well within associations of health professionals.
The global human rights framework and the human rights movement have not adequately dealt with nondiscrimination and equity concerns when it comes to gender issues. This conference aims at filling this gap with regard to the above issues and including a special focus on the role of health professionals: how to commit doctors and nurses in the rights-based approach of the right to health of women and girls, how to help them prevent violence, and adverse medical and other (cultural) practices against them; how to empower health professionals in protecting the rights of women etc.
This conference will focus on engendering health and human rights by pushing the boundaries of the health and human rights discourse to cover all aspects related to women's discrimination and gender based violations and in creating an effective and responsive system for enforcing human rights that are also gender just. The response of health professionals and their perceptions, attitudes, practices etc. will be an integral part of this discourse.