Rebecca L. Barlow
At the root of many investigations into Islam’s relationship with modernity is a commonly held view that human rights are the legacy of Western culture. This logic is often stretched to suggest that whereas Western societies embody a cultural predisposition towards the international human rights framework, it is considered foreign, unfamiliar, and extraneous in other cultural settings. For relativists, human rights represent a culturally constrained project: a product of enlightenment theory and European individualism with little applicability in non‐Western contexts. In a world that took a paradigmatic turn on 11 September 2001, the non‐Western ‘other’ in this political master narrative has increasingly come to imply ‘Muslim’. Now we are faced with a philosophical, and sometimes theological, debate surrounding the universality of human rights norms on the one hand, and Islam as a ‘complete way of life’ on the other.
Nowhere is this debate more entrenched than in terms of gender relations and women’s status. According to the modern principle of gender equality, any distinction made on the basis of sex that has the intention or outcome of according women unequal rights to men is ipso facto discriminatory and unjust. But from the relativist viewpoint, gender equality is considered context dependent, or worse, a lofty ideal of women who are white, Western, and privileged. It is often presumed peripheral to Muslim societies organised around ‘traditional’ family relations, and, further, undesirable to Muslim women whose identities hinge on religious tradition within the family structure. These presumptions emerge at least in part from images of the ‘Muslim woman’ as a dutiful, and often submissive, wife, daughter, or mother. Such notions are not solely the result of the Western imagination, since there is a strong insistence from within some Muslim countries that women’s human rights are inauthentic to Muslim societies, and by definition ‘un‐Islamic’. The problem lies with the acceptance of such claims as the ‘Muslim view’ on human rights – as if there is a homogenous and uncontested position that has somehow made its way into every Muslim society and community around the globe. Subsequently, restrictions on women’s freedom in Muslim societies come to be externally viewed as reflecting a community belief in Islamic principles – instead of the result of patriarchal political calculations by those in power. It is adherence to Islam, according to the relativist position, that precludes the resonance of universal human right norms with those following a Muslim way of life.
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Popular assumption holds that as the victors of World War II, it was the Great Powers who championed the idea of human rights as a central axis for the post‐conflict structure of international governance. The master narrative reads as follows: Western countries, represented by the emerging American superpower, led the world in the development of the human rights regime. Those same powers ensured that the emerging framework would have a Western bias, and provide a tool for the spread of Western interests and values. On close inspection, however, this narrative sits uneasily with the historical events and circumstances of the time. It is true that ‘freedom’ became the rallying call for Americans and the Allied powers under the leadership of President Franklin D Roosevelt. However, by many accounts, in the immediate months following the end of World War II, Roosevelt’s ‘four freedoms’ speech was relegated to the status of wartime rhetoric. Some have argued that at the end of World War II the Great Powers sought to arrest the rising interest in the development of human rights norms, or to restrict it at the very least.
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Early resistance to the international codification of human rights by the world’s leading powers demonstrates a crucial point: there is nothing inherent in human rights as a concept, nor the human rights system, that provides a tool for Western cultural hegemony. In fact, one could argue that the case is quite the opposite. In the mid‐twentieth century, the Great Powers knew the formalisation of specific requirements on all states to observe individual human rights would require significant abrogation of authority. For Britain and the Soviet Union, a doctrine of human rights would pose a fundamental challenge to essential political orientations: colonialism in one instance, and Stalinism in the other. For the United States, formal recognition of human rights would bring the discriminatory domestic policies towards African‐Americans and the indigenous population to international scrutiny.
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State delegates to the first meeting of the United Nations found themselves under intense public pressure to include a precise mandate for human rights in the organisation’s charter. The United States took steps to indicate some recognition of public sentiment. Under‐Secretary of State Sumner Welles made a public statement guaranteeing that nothing would be finalised in the United Nations Charter until all countries absent from the Dumbarton Oaks discussions were given opportunity to express their views. Thus, in subsequent symposia held in San Francisco, smaller and less powerful countries capitalised on the opportunity to contribute. The governments of Cuba, Egypt, France, Guatemala, India, Lebanon, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Paraguay, and South Africa submitted amendments to the Dumbarton proposals that called for the explicit recognition of human rights as the motivating and organising principle of the United Nations. After two months of deliberation, the Great Powers decided they could not ignore the extraordinary amount of public pressure to reformulate the Charter proposal. By the time the Charter of the United Nations was signed on 26 June 1945, the language of human rights had been mainstreamed throughout the document. This occurred not under the leadership or insistence of the powerful, but through the strong sentiment and persistence of small and less powerful states.
Article 68 of the Charter charged the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) with the task of establishing the Human Rights Commission (HRC). Soon after, ECOSOC developed the terms of reference that would guide the work of the Council, mandating it to submit proposals, recommendations, and reports regarding the establishment of an ‘international bill of rights’. But when the HRC met for the first time in January 1947, diverging interpretations came to light regarding ECOSOC’s proposal. The United States and the Soviet Union insisted that the terminology ‘international bill of rights’ required the Human Rights Commission to develop a declaration of human rights principles. Other delegates – according to Morsink, a majority of states – were sure that ECOSOC’s recommendations meant nothing less than a legal covenant, with implementation machinery attached.
The imperative of dealing with intense political and social problems of the time led delegates from smaller and less powerful states to insist on a declaration with authoritative character. Indian delegate Hansa Metha expressed distaste at the prospects of ‘a vague resolution including mystic and psychological principles’. She argued that the United Nations Charter and pursuant ECOSOC resolutions called for a human rights declaration with ‘imperative character’ that should be ‘binding on all Member States’. Fernand Dehousse of Belgium argued that an ‘academic vote’ for an inspirational statement ‘might even endanger the Commission’s existence and would cause immense disappointment to a world that was awaiting positive solutions capable of influencing human destiny’.
As elected Chair of the Human Rights Commission, Eleanor Roosevelt had the final word, instructing members that any written formulation of rights ‘should not be drawn up in such as way as to give the impression that Governments would have a contractual obligation to guarantee human rights’. This unequivocal position was something of an enigma from the woman who had developed a reputation as the ‘first lady’ of the world for her arrant dedication to the human rights cause following the end of World War II. Her ruling provides an insight into the realpolitik of late 1940s America. According to Waltz, Roosevelt did not enjoy great popularity in the decision‐making circles of her own country, where right‐wing opponents to the idea of human rights held significant political sway. Known as the ‘Old Guard’, these men expressed concern that a human rights doctrine would disturb the balance of power between state and federal government in the United States, and impede the president’s capacity to make international agreements. At root, this anxiety may have more accurately reflected an implicit recognition that a robust and binding human rights system would fundamentally alter the United States’ racial hierarchy. Despite strong personal identification with the human rights cause, Roosevelt’s public position on the Human Rights Commission was thus constrained by the US State Department. The final document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948 was a non‐binding declaration of principles. This reflected the intents of the US and Soviet governments, and occurred in spite of the demands of many smaller and less powerful states for de jure human rights requirements.
Importantly, however, despite a lack of legal clout, the Universal Declaration has taken on great political weight as the apex of rights‐based standards required for meaningful participation in global civil society. It is not outside the boundaries of logic to argue that, in some ways, the non‐prescriptive nature of the UDHR has worked in favour of the human rights cause. As a proclamation of internationally agreed‐upon standards, the Universal Declaration is available for re‐appropriation in diverse cultures and societies all around the world. While human rights are formalised at the international level, they are protected first and foremost at the local level. The implementation of human rights at the local level can take various forms according to different priorities of reality – so long as the normative function of the right is maintained. Furthermore, the non‐legal nature of the Universal Declaration has served as a safeguard against dogmatic reification. As such, human rights are widely understood to be constantly evolving, with the dynamic to respond to new rights‐based problems and challenges as they emerge within the variables of time and place. The Universal Declaration has been the catalyst for many finely nuanced treaties, protocols, and conventions, which together form a sophisticated comprehensive framework on international human rights. This reflects the declaration’s normative function and content, which has allowed it to stand alone in international relations as an independent statement of ethics.
The temporal history of the human rights project defies its subjection as a Western imposition. In dealing with the emerging international framework in the mid‐twentieth century, the Great Powers sought to ensure the outcome was as non‐impacting as possible. The protection of individual human rights that transcended race, ethnicity, religion (and later, gender), implied an abrogation of state and colonialist authority; this was a point on which the Great Powers were unwilling to negotiate. What this suggests is that it is a weak human rights system that fosters Western cultural hegemony – rather than a robust system of legally sanctified rights. And indeed, in 1953, only four years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the General Assembly, the United States announced its formal intention to retreat from participating in the further development of the international human rights system. The US superpower was completely removed from the development of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and took nearly thirty years to ratify the document after its adoption in the General Assembly in 1966. The historical master narrative of universal human rights thus obscures a crucial detail: the most forthright proponents of a robust human rights system following World War II were not the Great Powers, but rather small states and representatives of non‐Western countries.
The One Million Signatures Campaign was launched in August 2006, presenting one of the clearest expressions of human rights activism in the history of the Iranian women’s movement. The method and aim of the campaign are clear: after the collection of one million local Iranian signatures in protest of all discriminatory laws on women, the petition will be presented to parliament, along with a draft bill to bring all local laws into line with international standards on women’s rights and gender equality. The state has predictably responded to the Campaign with claims that it is both ‘un‐Islamic’ and ‘un‐Iranian’. Many of the women involved have been accused of ‘endangering national security’ and spreading ‘propaganda against the state’. Underlying this reaction is the charge that expressions of solidarity with international norms could not possibly represent a truly home‐grown initiative.
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Despite the regime’s insistence to the contrary, the One Million Signatures Campaign comprises a diverse cross‐section of Iranian women. Feminists of both secular and religious orientations back the campaign in principle and action. The campaign may not represent the dissolution of differences between secular feminists and Islamic feminists, but it does indicate the will of both groups to move away from ideological idealism in favour of a common strategic umbrella with clearly defined goals. The human rights discourse expressed through the One Million Signatures Campaign represents a practical move beyond the boundaries of the Islamic/secular feminist debate towards a common call for universal standards on gender equality.
The birth of the One Million Signatures Campaign can be traced to the 22nd Khordad event in 2006. Following the state’s crackdown on the International Women’s Day celebration in March, some members of the women’s movement questioned the wisdom of holding another public event to commemorate the June protest. Rumours circulated that security forces had been granted authority to shoot at all future protests. A debate over the efficacy of public gatherings played out among women of both secular and Islamic feminist leanings. According to secular feminist Jelveh Javaheri, Islamic feminists such as Shahla Sherkat said that ‘holding public gatherings was futile and furthermore, radical’. Secular feminists countered that even if only a small number of women turned out to commemorate the 22nd Khordad, it was better for the women’s movement to maintain a public presence and not back down in the face of state intimidation.
Under the auspices of a handful of secular feminists who, Javaheri admits, felt ‘very alone’, the 22nd Khordad event went ahead. In a bold move, the protestors called upon the state to re‐introduce CEDAW into parliamentary debate. The reaction of the regime was predictable: severe state‐sanctioned violence forced the women to disperse. Although this did not come as a complete surprise to secular feminists, the extent of the brutality meted out by security forces, as well as the clandestine procedures that followed, caused perceptible shifts in secular feminist philosophy.
Prominent activist Parvin Ardalan insisted the event made secular feminists ‘more determined than ever to overcome the atmosphere of fear’, and noted a desire among established feminists to empower women in the wider community, encouraging them to join the struggle for gender equality. At the same time, however, she observed a number of revisions taking place within the secular feminist camp. Given the clear majority of hardliners in parliament, secular feminists decided that to press on with demands for constitutional revision ‘seemed out of the question’. This decision held great significance in terms of secular and Islamic women’s abilities to work under a common strategic umbrella. Islamic feminists consistently encouraged women’s rights activists to maintain a slow pace of reform by exploring the capacities of the existing constitution to accommodate change. Following the brutal crackdown on the 22nd Khordad event in June 2006, secular feminists appeared ready to explore this option. The shift contributed to an emerging resolve among secular feminists to develop a long‐term strategy for change – rather than engage in short‐term initiatives such as public protests and gatherings. What women needed, they argued, was an ongoing, procedural approach to the issue of gender equality in Iran – a clearly defined modus operandi. Reflecting on the isolation felt during the 22nd Khordad event, secular feminists began to stress the need for collective action. According to Ardalan, ‘we learned that in order to achieve nonviolent activism, collaboration with other groups [and] synchronisation of demands and methodologies would strengthen the women’s movement’.
This realisation of the need for collective action provided the catalyst for the One Million Signatures Campaign. In late 2006, secular feminists began to explore the potential benefits of activism on a much broader scale than had previously been attempted. In a new round of dialogue with their Islamic counterparts, a general predilection emerged for a framework in which feminists of diverse ideological groundings could work together to call for an end to discrimination against women. Initially, there was no ‘solid agreement’ as to what this framework would look like. Just as secular women had modified their actions to investigate a more systematic approach to change, they also presented a challenge to the conventions of Islamic feminist methodology by emphasising the need to move away from a heavy focus on women in government. Women had learned from experience, argued Ardalan, that in order to ‘have room to manoeuvre in our patriarchal society, we have no choice but to create it ourselves’. One of the first official statements of the One Million Signatures Campaign was in line with Ardalan’s sentiments: ‘The true path to achieve equality will not be paved though the existing power structure or a dialogue solely with men and women in positions of power’.
According to Sotoudeh, however, religiously‐oriented women were initially hesitant to become involved in a project that took the focus away from women’s roles in government. Only gradually did Islamic feminists come to a point of collaboration, cooperation, and support. Ardalan attributes this coming‐together to a ‘minimal commonality’ agreed to by secular and Islamic women, namely, that in order for women to enjoy full quality of life in the Islamic state, all civil codes in which women are treated unequally to men would need to be changed. That is, an incremental approach to arguing for changes law by law was not enough. With gender equality as their goal, Iranian feminists started to focus on the overall picture of women’s status in the Islamic Republic, and in doing so demanded a comprehensive review of the state’s gender ideology. Under the One Million Signatures banner, this review would necessitate bringing all local laws into line with international standards on gender equality.
On the 27th of August 2006 a public seminar was held in Tehran to officially launch the One Million Signatures Campaign. The seminar was publicised throughout the city under the title ‘The Effect of Laws on Women’s Lives’. Almost immediately, security forces were deployed to stop people from entering the town meeting hall where the seminar was scheduled to take place. But this time the women were ready. With loudspeakers and makeshift lecterns, they held the seminar in the street outside the meeting hall. Shirin Ebadi held the floor in her legal expertise, while other members of the women’s movement distributed pamphlets on the campaign. The pamphlets contained information in lay terms about civil laws and the unequal status of women in the Iranian legal code. Providing numerous anecdotes and examples of the disproportionate weight placed on women’s shoulders under the existing laws, the pamphlets became prime tools for activism. With the setting‐in‐motion of the One Million Signatures Campaign, the Iranian women’s movement was, by many accounts, ‘given new life’.
The One Million Signatures Campaign is characterised by one overarching goal: the removal of all discriminatory laws against women in Iran. Campaign guidelines are clear on what the basis of new laws should be. The petition of the campaign states:
The Iranian government is a signatory to several international human rights conventions, and accordingly is required to bring its legal code in line with international standards. The most important international human rights standard calls for elimination of discrimination based on gender, ethnicity, [and] religion … The undersigned ask for the elimination of all forms of legal discrimination against women in Iranian law and ask legislators to review and reform existing laws based on the government’s commitments to international human rights conventions.
This excerpt reveals a key strategy of the One Million Signatures Campaign, which emphasises the Iranian government’s existing commitments to international human rights treaties. While Iran has rejected the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women on the grounds that it is ‘un‐Islamic’ and ‘un‐Iranian’, the state is already signatory to a number of other human rights documents that precede CEDAW in calling for equality of the sexes. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is clear on this point: in the preamble, Member States of the United Nations affirm ‘faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women’, and Article 2 specifies that ‘everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind’, including sex. The International Covenants on human rights follow suit. Pursuant to Article 3 of both the ICCPR and the ICESCR [International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights], as a signatory to these documents, Iran has pledged to ‘undertake to ensure the equal right of men and women to the enjoyment of all civil and political rights set forth’ in each respective treaty. In addition, Iran was one of the 189 states to unanimously adopt the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action in 1995, signalling its commitment to ‘take all necessary measures to eliminate all forms of discrimination against women and the girl‐child and remove all obstacles to gender equality and the advancement and empowerment of women’.
According to Ebadi this shift, from focusing on CEDAW to highlighting the government’s existing human rights commitments, was a deliberate strategic move on behalf of the women’s movement. Indeed, it is advantageous in a number of ways. Although CEDAW may be more specific and deeper in scope than other human rights documents, it is not the only avenue in the international treaty system available to redress gender inequality and discrimination against women. Within the One Million Signatures Campaign, Iranian feminists focus on the immediacy of their situation, while at the same time maintaining CEDAW as a long‐term goal. By calling on the state to live up to its current commitments in the international framework – the UDHR, ICESCR, ICCPR and Beijing Platform for Action – the women behind the campaign are laying the groundwork for future adoption of CEDAW. Furthermore, by highlighting Iran’s status as signatory to various human rights documents, Iranian feminists challenge the state’s logic that internationally defined women’s rights are inapplicable to the Iranian context because of a supposed incompatibility with Islam. What is at issue is not Islam per se, but desires of the conservative elite to maintain societal control via pre‐modern patriarchal practices. The Iranian legal code is derived from traditional Islamic jurisprudence. Yet interpretations of shari’a have been debated and challenged for decades, not only by secular‐minded Muslims, but also senior Islamic clerics. Both religious and secular members of the campaign have stressed the congruence between the demand to remove all discriminatory laws against women, and principles of the Islamic faith. This sentiment is expressed clearly in the following statement by campaign activist Fatemah Nejati:
Talking about the Campaign among family and friends resulted in a variety of questions regarding its goals … Of course, I defended the women’s rights movement of my country, as well as the inalienable rights of Muslim women … Since I believe that Islam is a religion that defends justice and equality … why should Muslim women be quiet in the face of injustice? Are we less deserving than other women? Since we are Muslims, does this mean we should be without rights?
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Under the One Million Signatures banner, this broadening of feminist outreach has been matched by a broadening of the women’s rights agenda. Before the launch of the campaign, Iranian feminists across secular and religious boundaries tended to lobby for the reform of individual laws. The Stop Stoning Forever Campaign is a good example of issue‐specific activism. By calling on the state to remove all discriminatory laws on women, in line with its existing obligations to international human rights treaties, the One Million Signatures Campaign deals more comprehensively with the status of women in the public and private realms. Addressing the status of women through a human rights paradigm presents a systemic view on gender‐based discrimination. Ebadi is clear in describing the campaign as a demand for ‘complete equality’ between men and women – not limited equality expressed in separate and distinct legal clauses.