HUMAN RIGHTS QUARTERLY

This article discusses issues relating to the detection, treatment and measurement of maternal morbidity from the public health point of view. Second, the article explains how the United Nations Guidelines can be translated into law, as binding standards which judge state parties' compliance with the provisions of international human rights treaties relating to women's healthcare. Part II describes the scope of maternal morbidity and discusses the reasons for using the United Nations Guidelines.

The authors argue that there is evidence that women experience armed conflict in a different way than men, and that armed conflict can exacerbate existing inequalities. They assert that international humanitarian law, intended to protect victims of armed conflict, also operates in a discriminatory fashion towards women. The authors examine these two phenomena and suggest possible ways to mainstreaming gender perspectives into international humanitariam law. [Descriptors: Armed Conflict, International]

The authors explore the structure of the concept of jus cogens: "fundamental legal norms from which no derrogation is permitted". They argue that the concept is not properly universal, as its development has privileged the experiences of men over those of women, and it has provided a protection to men that is not accorded to women.

This article discusses the social and political significance of access screening for reproductive services. The author argues that access screening lacks a defensible rationale, and is inconsistent with the notion of equality and self-determination. She argues that access screening for reproductive services violates individual and group human rights. The article makes the case that no community for whom individual and group human rights are important should allow access screening, even where it purports to be for a benign use. Given that

This article examines the human rights atrocities that took place during the Liberian civil war from 1990 to 1997. The article includes a section about systematic rape of women as a means of instilling terror in civilian populations. In addition to detailing human rights abuses, the author also examines the international attention that the situation attracted, how this compared with similar situations occurring in Yugoslavia, and how international institutions reacted to this tragedy.

This article traces the evolution of thought and activism over the centuries aimed at defining women's human rights and implementing the idea that women and men are equal members of society. The author concludes that "over the centuries, tremendous progress has been made in defining, demanding, and implementing women's human rights. Women have moved from the private sphere of home and family into the public sphere as citizens and workers. In many respects and in many countries, women are now considered equal humans, legally if not socially or economically.

It is now well-established that structural adjustment and stabilization policies (SAPs) undertaken in developing countries to receive condition-based loans from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have exacerbated conditions of poverty and deprivation for large sections of the population. This article examines the disparate impact of SAPs on women and the resulting unacceptable feminization of poverty in many countries with economies in transition.

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.

The author of this article argues that if economic, social, and cultural rights are to be taken seriously, a change is needed in the paradigm for evaluating compliance with the norms established in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). This article reviews the problems that the current performance standard of"progressive realization" entails for monitoring economic, social, and cultural rights, and proposes a "violations approach" as a more feasible and effective alternative. The violations approach advocated by the author focuses on three types of

The primary purpose of this article is to develop an index with which to measure and evaluate women's realization of their economic and social rights. This study utilizes the index to quantify the pervasive and persistent inequality between men and women in the realization of their rights under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.