A report by a new UN agency for women called UN WOMEN has called on member states to endeavor  more for the justification and empowerment of women in  respect of their legal entitlements. The UN has emphasized that  such entitlements shouldn’t be only on papers but get transformed into equality and justice.

In its first report titled “Progress of the world’s women: In pursuit of justice”, the agency presents the fact that the past century has seen a tremendous rise and transformation in the women’s legal entitlements, but in many parts of the world the laws for women “laws that exist on papers don’t transform into reality”.

The recommendations of UN WOMEN include extending support to women’s legal organizations, implementing gender sensitive law reforms, putting women on the front line of law enforcement and increasing their access to courts during and after conflict.

Targeting of women for sexual violence is a hallmark of modern conflicts, the report adds. Balanced, well-informed and unbiased judicial-making is an essential part of ensuring that women going to courts will get justice. The report further adds that even where laws are in place to protect women from such kinds of atrocities and violence they  are not always properly or fairly applied by judges.

Quoting the Bhanwari Devi rape case of India that led to the formulation of Vishakha guidelines on prevention of sexual harassment at workplace, the report  says a gender-sensitive judicial decision-making had an important role.

In many aspects, the report adds that, the infrastructure of justice(the police, the courts and the judiciary) is failing women, which manifests itself in poor services and hostile attitudes from the very people whose duty is to protect their rights.

UN CALLS FOR WOMEN’S LEGAL RIGHTS

REPORT BY BIKRAM SINGH RANA