Bunch, Charlotte

This article explores both the importance and difficulty of connecting women's rights to human rights and outlines the four basic approaches that have been used in the effort to make this connection. In practice these approaches often overlap, and while each raises questions about the others, the author sees them as complementary. These approaches can be applied to many issues, but she illustrates them primarily in terms of how they address violence against women in order to show the implications of their differences on a concrete issue.

Taking the 1993 United Nations World Conference on Human Rights (the "Vienna Conference") as her starting point, the author notes that the women's rights movment has successfully exposed women's issues as separate concerns but is still struggling to show how women and gender issues pervade all aspects of human rights. The process of documenting and interpreting the meaning of violence against women is another step. In this short note, the author suggests areas which need attention in the field of women's international human rights.