HRIA and Women’s Human Rights - Background Information

Across the world, civil society organisations are working to improve the lives of women. They know that rights of women are affected by many different factors; e.g. lack of access to care, lack of education, cultural norms, violence or even environmental pollution. There are several Human rights treaties in place that protect the rights of women. They contain obligations for states to respect, protect and fulfill the rights of women.

The Women Human Rights programme works on diverse factors that affect women’s lives and uses human rights as a starting point for improving their situation. The issues that are priorities right now are: health rights of women, domestic violence and working on anti-trafficking measures.   

However it is not easy to make the connection between what is written down in human rights treaties and what is happening in real lives of women. Therefore, the basis of our working method is the strengthening of knowledge and use of women’s human rights by our local partners. We develop methods that enable organisations to examine and check the implementation of women’s human rights by their governments conform their human rights obligations. These methods provide our partners with better information and stronger arguments to improve the rights of women in their country.

The Human Rights Impact Resource Centre offers our programme the opportunity to support our partners worldwide in their work. We provide online workspaces on our different issues, stimulate knowledge exchange between organisations & countries, have discussion via our discussion board, share best practices and case studies and provide essential resources.  

For more information on the Women's Human Rights Programme please visit: http://www.aimforhumanrights.org/themes/women-s-human-rights/