A move in the Right Direction? The Model Law against Trafficking in Persons and the ILO Operational Indicators

© 2018 The Author. International Migration © 2018 IOM While the Palermo Protocol sought to offer the global community the first-ever definition of trafficking and the parameters for who constitutes a victim, the result was an inaccurate, ill-defined and cumbersome definition that fails to match the realities of the phenomenon. Since 2000, two other international instruments were drafted: the UNODC Model Law against Trafficking in Persons and the ILO Operational Indicators on Trafficking in Human Beings. This article navigates through various hypothetical scenarios to demonstrate the limitations of the Palermo Protocol in accommodating the autonomy exercised by victims of trafficking in the process of migrating into exploitative work and the more accurate picture of the victim offered by these newer instruments. By identifying the strengths in international law when it comes to trafficking and the problems that remain, this article offers potential solutions to how international law can better reflect trafficking and victimhood

What is gender-responsive legislation? Using international law to establish benchmarks for labour, reproductive health and tax laws that work for women

For decades, the world has seen legal, policy and practical interventions to advance women’s rights. Yet there is no country in the world where women and men are equal. In pursuit of such equality, this article promotes the relatively obvious and simple strategy of embedding international women’s rights norms into domestic legislation. While acknowledging the limitations of the binary approach to the rights of men and women as reinforced by the CEDAW Convention, the article draws from international law to offer standards for domestic legislation in three areas: reproductive health, labour law and taxation. Across those areas, concrete benchmarks for gender-responsive legislation are provided, as well as examples of what constitutes neutral, blind and regressive provisions. While acknowledging the limits of the law in disrupting the political and economic structures of society, this article offers a framework that can enable legislators and legal systems to utilise international law to deliver domestic laws that work for women

Women's absence in Sri Lankan politics: Lessons on the effectiveness and limitations of quotas to address under-representation

© 2020 Elsevier Ltd After decades of resistance to quotas – or reserved seats – as a means of addressing women's lack of representation in politics, Sri Lanka introduced a highly complicated and little-understood series of electoral laws to establish a quota for women at the local government level (LGL). Local government elections in February 2018 marked their inaugural implementation. Drawing on nearly five decades of global academic literature analysing quotas and utilising a five-pronged framework for understanding the goals that quotas are designed to achieve, this paper assesses the LGL quota against those objectives. Based on key-informant interviews and data from the 2018 election, I consider (i) the extent to which we might expect an increase in the space and respect for women politicians in Sri Lanka; (ii) the likelihood that elected women can deliver a gender-responsive political agenda for their female constituents; and (iii) the extent to which the quota can help redefine political norms in Sri Lanka

Fast Fashion for 2030: Using the Pattern of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to Cut a More Gender-Just Fashion Sector

Abstract The 2013 collapse of the Rana Plaza in Bangladesh brought global visibility to the human rights abuses experienced by women workers in the garment sector. As the spotlight on this incident dims, the need to hold the fashion sector accountable remains. In this article, we suggest that greater accountability could be achieved through the application of a human rights-informed understanding of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to promote gender justice in the sector. By drawing on international women’s rights law and sustainable fashion, we demonstrate how sustainability and gender justice are intimately connected, and illustrate what role the SDGs can play in promoting sustainable outcomes that are gender-just. The article unpacks concepts such as sustainability, the circular economy, social responsibility, and ethical fashion, and places the experiences of women workers within this context. Its principal contribution is a set of six requirements to ensure a gender perspective to the fashion industry’s role in implementing the SDGs.</jats:p

Assessing the Reach, Scope and Outcomes of Government Action on Women’s Health and Human Rights: A Protocol for the Development of an International Women’s Rights Dataset

Background: The UN Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) represents an international commitment to equality in the enjoyment of human rights. International human rights scholars posit that, in facilitating constructive dialogues between states and human rights experts, the near-universally ratified Convention is a powerful tool for achieving global health goals, such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Yet, the performance of such rights-based approaches in achieving gender equality, and empowering all women, has not been systematically measured and evaluated on a global scale. This study seeks to address the urgent need to support data-driven analyses to hold governments to account through the development of a global dataset measuring state action on women’s health and human rights. Methods: Standard systematic review methods will be used to review CEDAW periodic review reports produced by United Nations (UN) Member States, civil society organisations and the CEDAW Committee. Global participation with the review mechanism, the scope of health inequities covered by Committee recommendations, the nature of reported government action and the extent of implementation of each program will be extracted from each report. Only data from the two most recent reporting cycles will be analysed. Descriptive statistics will be used to analyse quantitative data, and all qualitative data will be analysed using policy mapping techniques. Discussion: Using these data, the study will navigate the nature and the extent of state action to address these issues including by increasing women’s leadership and participation, data collection, strengthening health systems, governance and coordination and establishing new human rights infrastructure. It will use the diversity of health and human rights issues affecting women to reframe traditional conceptualisations of global women’s health which have largely focussed on sexual and reproductive health, to the exclusion of other aspects of women’s lives through the life course. In addition, the study will aid the development of authoritative guidance on how each of these areas of state action and inaction contribute to health inequities, and a framework for designing interventions to address discrimination against women as it relates to health