Rights, Reservations, and Religion; International Human Rights Law and the Status of Women

While human rights law in its current form is less than fifty years old, the issues that it grapples with are much, much older. People oftentimes dismiss religion or religious norms as being out of date, close-minded, or old-fashioned, and label religious views as discriminatory in theory or even in practice. In reality, religions have been dealing with human rights issues since ancient times, and in some ways have laid the groundwork for modern discussions. The answers that religions give deserve a respectful analysis before they are cast aside or labeled as one-dimensional and discriminatory towards any particular group. For example, this article examines the State of lsrael's controversial qualifications to CEDAW (the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women), and attempts to cast them in a new light of understanding i.e., in light of feminist critiques of the structure of CEDAW itself.