Intersectionality and Human Rights Law

Description

This collection of essays analyses how the diversity in human identity and disadvantage affects the articulation, realisation, violation and enforcement of human rights. The question arises from the realisation that people who are severally and severely disadvantaged because of their race, religion, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation, class etc, often find themselves at the margins of human rights; their condition seldom improved and sometimes even worsened by the rights discourse. How does one make sense of this relationship between the complexity of people’s disadvantage and violation of their human rights? Does the human rights discourse, based on its universal and common values, have tools, methods or theories to capture and respond to the difference in people’s lived experience of rights? Can intersectionality help in that quest? This book seeks to inaugurate this line of inquiry. Foreword Acknowledgements Contents List of Contributors Table of Cases Table of Statutes Introduction: Intersectionality from Equality to Human Rights 1. Beyond Universality: An Intersectional Justification of Human Rights Introduction I. Universality II. Non-discrimination III. Intersectionality Conclusion 2. Harnessing the Full Potential of Intersectionality Theory in International Human Rights Law Lessons from Disabled Children’s Right to Education Introduction I. Retracing Intersectionality inInternational Human Rights Law II. Disabled Children in Education Conclusion 3. The Potential and Pitfalls of Intersectionality in the Context of Social Rights Adjudication Introduction I. The Ambitions of Intersectionality II. The Emerging Intersectional Dimension to Human Rights Jurisprudence III. Intersectionality and Social Rights IV. What Intersectionality Contributes to Social Rights Adjudication: The Complex Interface between Poverty, Material Inequality and Identity Discrimination V. The Risks of Intersectionality When Applied in the Context of Social Rights Adjudication Conclusion 4. The Right to Education and Substantive Equality: An Intersectional Reading Introduction I. Education: An Unequal Right II. Substantive Equality and the Right to Education: An Intersectional Analysis III. Separate Trajectories: The US Approach IV. South Africa V. Engendering Intersectionality:Excluding Pregnant Learners Conclusion 5. Class, Intersectionality, the Right to Housing and the Avoidable Tragedy of Grenfell Tower Introduction I. Class Discrimination: An Indefinable Concept or a Term Capable of Definition? II. Class, Socio-economic Rights and the Right to Adequate Housing Conclusion 6. Intersectionality, Repeal and Reproductive Rights in Ireland Introduction I. Repeal: The Referendum II. The Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Act 2018 and Incomplete Reproductive Justice III. The Referendum Form and Failures of Intersectional Praxis 7. The Distance Between Us: Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights of Rural Women and Girls Introduction I. Rurality Matters for Gender Equality II. Recognising the Significant Role of Rural Women III. The CEDAW Committee and Gendered Rurality Conclusion Epilogue Index