PEACH.TXT Metanexus: Views 2002.04.08 7756 words Last week began a somewhat informal series on the ethical, political, and moral offshoots and implications of the science and religion dialogue. As several readers have observed, ethics and/or moral action is the hotspot in this dialogue. It is the greatest source of tension, a kind of blister-in-waiting. This week we continue with this series beginning with a column by Lucinda Peach, Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at American University. The column, Human Rights Law, Religion, and the Gendered Moral Order, speaks to the conflict that arises when religious law and human rights law conflict over the "nature" and roles of women. Peach begins by asking whether "freedom of religion [is] compatible with the recognition of human rights for women? International law, as embodied in treaties and other documents of the United Nations, prohibits discrimination based on religion as well as sex. These documents reflect an assumption that governments can protect both women's human rights and traditional religious and cultural practices. But how valid is this assumption that religion is compatible with other human rights, especially those of women? When we consider reproductive rights as a central feature of women's human rights, as United Nations documents clearly and repeatedly have done, and then consider how reproductive rights are denied by the manner in which others 'manifest their religion or belief in practice and teaching,' this assumption can be seen to be in error." And, in error it is. If you have been following VV Raman's Science and Religion Calendar, you will have noted the many women mathematicians, physicians, and scientists he has profiled. And, as he has noted, the freedom for women to pursue something other than their "biological destiny" is a phenomenon in the West of the last 100 to 150 years or so. Was it a matter of religion or was it a matter of "science" that women were, and still so often are, kept back? Consider a lovely quote from a medical text of the late 1800's that is one of my particular favorites: "Isn't it miraculous how God took a womb and created a woman around it?" No one ever asks a man merely to pursue his "biological destiny" or praises God that from around a testicle or two a man was created. Scientifically speaking, this is odd, given that the human male is, by and large, the more ephemeral expression of the human species, and is, moreover, individually somewhat more incidental to the survival of the species than the female. After all, it takes one male and 15 or so females to repopulate an area, not the other way round. But we come here today to speak not of the perchance social construction of scientific theories but of the legal and moral ramifications that arise when science, law, religion, and human rights conflict. So, read on to explore their intersection. And, please note, an extremely thorough bibliography on this subject follows the 3400-word article itself. Prof. Peach holds a Ph.D. in ethics from the Department of Religious Studies at Indiana University, a J.D. degree from New York University School of Law, and a B.A. degree from the program in International Education at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She conducts research and teaching in moral philosophy, applied ethics (including bioethics, feminist ethics, and legal ethics), religion and politics, and gender and religion. She is the author of Religious Lawmaking in a Secular State: Philosophical, Legal, and Feminist Perspectives on a Persistent Dilemma (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2002), and the editor of Women and World Religions (Prentice Hall, 2002) and Women in Culture: An Anthology (Blackwell Publishers 1998). In addition, she has published a number of articles on gender and violence and women's human rights, including the trafficking of women for the sex trade as a human rights violation. Her current research is focused on the implications of globalization for the corporate social responsibilities of multinational and transnational corporations for human rights violations. -- Stacey E. Ake =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Subject: Human Rights Law, Religion, and the Gendered Moral Order From: Lucinda Joy Peach Email: INTRODUCTION: Is freedom of religion compatible with the recognition of human rights for women? International law, as embodied in treaties and other documents of the United Nations, prohibits discrimination based on religion[1] as well as sex.[2] These documents reflect an assumption that governments can protect both women's human rights and traditional religious and cultural practices. But how valid is this assumption that religion is compatible with other human rights, especially those of women? When we consider reproductive rights as a central feature of women's human rights, as United Nations documents clearly and repeatedly have done, and then consider how reproductive rights are denied by the manner in which others "manifest their religion or belief in practice and teaching," this assumption can be seen to be in error. In this paper, I will demonstrate that government support for religious freedom frequently undermines or obstructs protection for women's human rights by considering the significant role that religious institutions have had in restricting women's reproductive rights to abortion in a number of countries that have partially signed on to the Platform for Action established at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China in 1995. Although this sample is far from comprehensive, it helps to illuminate some dimensions of the larger problems of religious influences on women's human rights.[3] These cases reveal how the relationship between Church and State correlates in consistent ways with the extent to which women's reproductive rights are recognized and protected as human rights. The restrictions and outright denials of reproductive rights for women in several countries where religion has influenced lawmaking, when contrasted with the protection for reproductive rights in countries which have a strong separation of Church and State, suggest the difficulties of according full protection to both religious freedom and women's human rights, as the international human rights system currently purports to do. In this paper, I will describe how international law as currently formulated in U.N. treaties embodies an unacknowledged tension between respect for religion and protection of reproductive rights that serves to weaken, if not completely undermine, the goals of establishing reproductive rights as human rights, and thus of women's rights as human rights. I will argue that the tension between women's human rights and unrestricted religious freedom is significant and irresolvable. I will conclude that a genuine commitment to the well being of women necessitates that in cases of tension or conflict between women's human rights and the religious freedoms of lawmakers, the former must be given priority. I will provide a rationale for resolving such conflicts based on principles of justice as fairness. II. CONFLICTS BETWEEN RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AND WOMEN'S HUMAN RIGHTS OVER REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS One locus of conflict between international human rights to religious freedom and to freedom from sex and gender discrimination has revolved around issues of reproduction. The linkage of reproductive rights and women's human rights has been consistently endorsed in United Nations' sponsored reports, conferences, agreements and conventions.[4] The dangers that pregnancy and childbirth present to women's right to life, the infringement of the rights to liberty and security of the person that government interference with women's reproductive choice represents, the right to privacy and family life, including women's right to plan, time, and space the births of children to maximize both their health and her own, the right to health care, and the view that protection of reproductive rights is a precondition for the enjoyment of other human rights, have all increasingly been recognized under international law as supporting the indispensability of reproductive rights as human rights (see, e.g. UN 1993: 5; David and Tikow 1994: 241; Hoff 1994: 643; Sullivan 1994: 161; Hosken 1993c: 9; Hosken 1993d: 10; Tomasevski 1993: 18; Cook 1994; Cook 1991; Law 1984: 1028). [5] Most recently, the Platform for Action, drafted at the UN Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing in 1995, explicitly states: "The human rights of women include their right to have control over and decide freely and responsibly on matters related to their sexuality, including sexual and reproductive health, free of coercion, discrimination and violence" (United Nations 1995: para 96), and that "the right of all women to control all aspects of their health, in particular their own fertility, is basic to their empowerment" and "forms an important basis for the enjoyment of other rights" (United Nations 1995: para 97).[6] Yet the reality is that as many as 300 million women throughout the world are denied the right to adequate family planning resources, including contraception and abortion. Statistics indicate that approximately one quarter of the world's population (one third of the developing world) lives in nations where abortion is either completely prohibited or allowed only to save the life of the mother (see Frame 1990: 32).[7] Prohibiting or severely restricting legal contraception and abortion in effect coerces many women to become mothers against their will. Women often die as a result of such coercion; statistics indicate that at least a million women died in 1992 of reproductive causes, one-quarter of them attributable to unsafe abortion (Jacobson 1993: 34; see UN 1994c: 5-6; Cook 1991: 646; Dixon-Mueller 1990). In addition, forcing women to bear unwanted children frequently results in denying them basic education and employment. It often relegates them to a life of poverty, without any realistic possibility of improving the life chances of either themselves or their offspring. International law itself facilitates religious restrictions on women's reproductive rights around the world by failing to establish clear limitations on the extent to which religious principles will be permitted to restrict women's reproductive rights. For example, the Programme of Action states: The implementation of the recommendations . . . is the sovereign right of each country . . . with full respect for the various religious and ethical values and cultural backgrounds of its people, and in conformity with universally recognized international human rights. (UN 1994a: 6; see Aeschliman 1994: 82). By allowing domestic law and cultural values to override international protections for women's human rights, the UN in effect condones nations that accord priority to religious freedoms over women's rights. While the Platform for Action also states that: "While the significance of national and regional particularities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds must be borne in mind, it is the duty of States, regardless of their political, economic and cultural systems, to promote and protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms" (United Nations 1995: para.9),[8] suggesting some advances over earlier international law documents, there are a number of problems with this language in the Platform. First, it continues to overlook potential conflicts between religious freedoms and women's human rights in obligating states to "promote and protect all human rights" (emphasis supplied). It ignores potential conflicts between full protections for women's human rights and existing laws regulating reproduction. In addition, the Platform language fails to acknowledge that protecting some religious and ethical values, etc., will not only fail to contribute to women's enjoyment of their human rights, but will actively function to obstruct and prevent such enjoyment. This is especially likely at the level of individual versus community values. The Platform's language fails to take adequate account of religious and cultural diversity and the differential impacts that religious and cultural values may have within a single community, depending on an individual's gender, race, sexual orientation, etc. Further, when conflicts between religious values and women's rights are present, the Platform fails to indicate how the tension between them is to be resolved.[9] In fact, the tension between religious rights and women's rights has actually not been eliminated in the Platform, but, instead, simply has been sent underground. Although the official teachings of many world religions support the principle of human rights generally, their official positions on women's human rights, especially reproductive rights, are frequently contrary to that of the United Nations. During the United Nations World Health and Population Conference held in Cairo, Egypt in 1994, for example, members of the Vatican Delegation attempted to eliminate all references to abortion in all Conference documents, [10] and lobbied fundamentalist Muslim groups to join them in opposing a draft of the Programme on the basis that it could be interpreted to endorse abortion (see Linden 1994: 64; Ruby 1994: 2; Kirshenbaum 1994: 15; Christian Century Editorial Staff 1994: 847; Doerr 1994: 35).[11] The teachings of most world religions that women are divinely ordained to be child bearers and rearers help to perpetuate traditional essentialist ideologies that women are mothers, primarily if not exclusively, and thus not entitled to social, political, and economic equality. Such ideologies undermine respect for women's human rights. The influence of such religious teachings is enhanced when they are given official state sanction, backed by the coercive power of law to deny women access to the means to control their reproduction. Yet the UN endorses this result by according sovereignty to governments to determine how to implement the relevant U.N. treaties in accordance with their local cultural and religious traditions and norms. Such religious influences on government undermines religious freedoms for all citizens. The negative results for women's human rights in particular is evident in the cases of the several countries mentioned above. III "AUTHORIZED" RELIGIOUS RESTRICTIONS ON WOMEN'S HUMAN RIGHTS Elsewhere I have examined how official state policies regarding religion have resulted in the restriction or denials of women's reproductive rights in several different countries. Here, I will look only at how the results of such state policies are evident in international law. Chapter Five of the official UN Platform document contains the reservations and interpretive statements of a number of countries which impose limitations upon their full adoption of the principles of reproductive rights enunciated in that document. Several of these, virtually all predominantly Catholic or Muslim countries or constituencies, reject abortion as part of the right to control one's sexuality or as part of reproductive rights (see, e.g., United Nations 1995, Ch. V, para. 5 (Argentina); para. 7 (Dominican Republic); para. 11 (Holy See); para. 21 (Malta); para. 26 (Peru); para. 31 (Vanuatu); para 32 (Venezuela). Other member nations expressly cite religion as the reason for restricting their adoption of the Platform's principles regarding reproductive rights. Several of these are officially or predominantly Islamic countries. For example, the Egyptian delegation states that Egypt's compliance with the Platform's recommendations are conditional upon "the rights of national sovereignty and various moral and religious values . . . and with the divine guidance of our true and tolerant religious law" (United Nations 1995, Ch. 5, para. 8). The Iraqi delegation issued reservations regarding paragraph 96 of the Platform which concerns reproductive rights, 'because it is incompatible with our social and religious values" (United Nations 1995: Ch. V, para. 15). Similarly, the Libyan delegation's adoption of the Platform's recommendations is limited, "in keeping with its religious beliefs, local laws and priorities for social and economic development," to "what is permitted by our beliefs and the laws and traditions which shape our behaviour as a society" (United Nations 1995: Ch. V, para 19). Several of the countries filing reservations or otherwise restricting their willingness to be bound by the terms of the Platform are officially or predominantly Catholic. For example, Guatemala specifies that its implementation of the Platform will be "in accordance with the development priorities of our country, in full respect for the diverse religious, ethical and cultural values and philosophical beliefs of our multi-ethnic, multilingual and multicultural people" (United Nations 1995: Ch. V, para. 10(a)). Honduras rejects abortion as part of family planning on the basis that it is a signatory to the American Convention on Human Rights, which recognizes the right to life from conception, "on the basis of the moral, ethical, religious and cultural principles that should govern human behaviour" (United Nations, Ch. V, para. 12). Although such reservations and limitations on women's reproductive rights are inconsistent with protection for the rights and ethical values of all persons, regardless of gender, the "loopholes" for religious and cultural values in UN documents enables governments to avoid fulfilling their obligations to protect the human rights of all women. Thus, in many cases, the full recognition of and protection for women's human rights is denied by governments on the basis of religion. Religious influences on government which result in restricting women's reproductive rights frequently restrict women's lives in other respects as well, through traditional gender ideologies that subordinate women to men. In sum, while international law recognizes that reproductive rights are human rights that are especially integral to the fulfillment of women's rights, its simultaneous license to member nations to accord full recognition and respect to indigenous cultural and religious values undermines the actual protection accorded to women's human rights. In the following and final section, I will suggest a strategy for remedying this inconsistency in international law. V. RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS The preceding discussion illustrates the tension in international human rights law between upholding women's rights as human rights and according "full respect" for religious values. In many nations, religious influences on government have resulted in seriously restricting women's reproductive rights, contrary to the explicit protections for women's human rights in international law. A review of the relationship between a nation's protections for women's reproductive rights and the extent of religious influence on public policy making suggests that there is a correlation between the extent of a religion's influence on government and the status of women's human rights. This correlation is starkly evident with respect to reproductive rights. If women's reproductive rights are to be fully recognized and respected as human rights in international law, then the current policy to uphold the sovereignty of local cultural and religious traditions and practices must yield when those traditions and practices function to deny women their human rights. Several aspects of justice support the conclusion that women's rights should have priority in conflicts with religious freedoms. Since international law does not provide any explicit priority for religion over women's rights, we must assume that they are entitled to equivalent weight. But because certain actions taken under the rubric of religious freedom are antithetical to women's human rights, as amply documented above, in order for both sets of rights to actually receive equal consideration, it is necessary in certain cases to restrict religious freedoms. A further reason for curbing religious freedoms when they violate women's rights, rather than allowing women's rights to be violated, is that religious freedom can be limited with less loss of individual freedom than can limits on women's human rights. Since it is group instantiations of religious belief and practice that are most capable of restricting women's human rights, especially in the form of restrictive laws, limiting the force and effect of such influence can be accomplished by interpreting religious freedoms as individual rather than community rights. So limiting religious rights would still protect the right to all individuals to freely practice their religion, regardless of gender and regardless of whether or not it is sanctioned by the state. This restricted interpretation of religious rights would also protects religious minorities against the overzealousness of the majority religious group within a particular community. It would also help to protect against the problems of religious influences on government, whether that influence results from a formal establishment of religion or an informal relationship. Furthermore, even in cases of a direct conflict between an individual women's human right and an individual claim to religious freedom, protecting women's rights should take priority. In general, the denial of women's rights historically has been systematic and widespread, whereas the denial of religious freedoms has been more limited and selective. Thus, according priority to women's rights is justified as a matter of compensatory justice, a kind of "affirmative action," if you will. Traditional religions, those that have most frequently been institutionalized and had an influence on government have accorded women secondary and inferior roles and generally limited (at least normatively) their status to those of wives and mothers. Religious beliefs and prescriptions relating to gender are frequently based on outdated patriarchal and sexist understandings of the appropriate roles between men and women in society. Given women's exclusion from the formulation and application of most religious prescriptions, it is unfair to allow such tenets to operate in ways that obstruct or deny women their human rights. This is especially important where the women's rights at stake are those established by religious authorities acting without the participation or consent of women. Since the human rights of women are especially vulnerable to being overridden by the institutionalization of religious values in law and social practice, this form of religious expression should be subject to limitation when it infringes on women's rights. As we have seen, the Platform for Action drafted in Beijing takes a step in this direction, but does not go far enough to mandate that governments ensure that their laws foster rather than restrict women's human rights. Such a resolution is unlikely to be welcomed by staunch advocates of religious freedoms, since it requires restricting religious freedoms when they infringe upon women's rights, rather than treating religious rights to be inviolate. However, if the religious values and tenets that are the basis for the restriction of women's rights do not represent the beliefs of the women to whom they are being applied, it is especially unfair to allow such values to "trump" women's rights where the two conflict. Thus, according priority women's rights at this juncture in history serves to correct centuries of gender injustice and ensure that women can fully participate in all aspects of social and spiritual life. International law itself recognizes the importance of this progress. As a source of transcultural and religious norms, human rights law represents as close to a global consensus as is currently possible. All governments should recognize this progress by refusing to allow inconsistent religious values to be perpetuated in law and public policy. Limiting religious freedoms to the level of the individual would go a long way towards accomplishing this end. In those cases where this restriction cannot resolve the conflicts, according priority to women's rights is in greater accord with the consensus of the international community than allowing religious tenets of particular faiths to dictate a government's laws and public policies. Under the proposed strategy, the priority given to protecting women's human rights only would apply in a very narrow sphere--to religious influences on laws and public policies that operate with the effect or result of limiting or denying women's human rights. The intent of the proposed principle of priority is to insure that a government's laws and public policies do not undermine women's human rights, it is not to restrict or deny religious freedoms. Implementation of the proposal thus would leave unaffected the religious rights and freedoms of most citizens around the world. Some governments currently have established principles and procedures in place that make implementation of this proposal easier than in others, especially those that guarantee the separation of church and state. But as the examples of Japan and the U.S. illustrate, even in these situations, religious influences on government may succeed in limiting women's rights, especially in the absence of a government's commitment to recognizing and enforcing women's rights. Implementation of the proposed priority principle is more problematic in countries with governments that have established religions, either as a formal matter such as in Bangladesh or Afghanistan, or de facto, such as in Ireland, Poland, and Israel. In such countries, the denigration of women's rights is more in evidence. Nonetheless, implementation of the proposed priority principle even in these countries would not require fundamental restructuring of government, but only its application in a limited number of instances as specified above. This could be accomplished by the application of international law as the normative standard by judges and other legal personnel vested with jurisdiction to adjudicate cases of alleged human rights violations. In conclusion, according women's rights a priority over religious rights when the two conflict serves to ensure that women's rights will genuinely be recognized and protected as human rights. Previous efforts to accord "equal time" to women's rights and religious rights in international law, as we have seen, have resulted in unjustly restricting women's human rights. If women truly are to be regarded as "human," their reproductive and other human rights must take priority when religious influences on government and lawmaking would operate to undermine or deny them. ENDNOTES 1. The principle of protecting human rights for all, "regardless of religion" is contained in almost all major human rights documents of the United Nations, including the United Nations Charter (United Nations 1945), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations 1948), the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (United Nations 1965)(ICCPR), and several subsequent treaties and other documents. Article 18 of the Universal Declaration, for instance, states: Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance (UN 1948: Art. 18). The relevant language of the ICCPR is similar, and additionally states: "No one shall be subject to coercion which would impair his freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice. 3.Freedom to manifest one's religion or beliefs may be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary to protect public safety, order, health, or morals or the fundamental rights and freedoms of others (UN 1965: Art. 18)." 2. Although framing women's rights as human rights is fairly recent, the U.N. has prohibited discrimination based on sex since the U.N. Charter was ratified (see U.N. 1945: arts. 1(3), 13(1)(b), 55(c),and 76(c), and this prohibition has been repeated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (U.N. 1948), the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, arts. 2(2), 3 (U.N. 1966b), and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, arts. 2(1), 3, 23(4), 26 (U.N. 1966a). The Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action adopted in June 1993 by the World Conference on Human Rights ("Vienna Declaration") specifies that "human rights of women and of the girl-child are an inalienable and indivisible part of universal human rights" (U.N. 1993). United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing China in 1995 (Women's Conference) saw the fruition of years of campaigning by women's rights and human rights activists to identify women's rights as human rights. Similarly, the Platform for Action ("Platform") drafted at the Women's Conference frames women's rights "as indivisible, universal, and inalienable human rights" (United Nations 1995). 3 It must be noted, however, that a comparison of the official positions of governmental and religious institutions regarding abortion in a limited sample cannot provide a complete understanding of either women's reproductive choices or a particular state's recognition of women's human rights. In addition to the dominant discourses of law and religion, there will inevitably be unofficial (perhaps subjugated) discourses operating as well which influence the extent to which women's reproductive rights are recognized and protected in any given locale. These more local and private discourses may very well provide resources for women's agency and resistance to the official regime, such as access to illicit methods of reproductive control. In addition, a complete analysis would need to consider a multiplicity of other factors, including, especially, women's own understandings of the relationship between their reproductive capacities and religion, the State, and their social status. 4. A series of resolutions sponsored by the United Nations in 1966 endorsed the concept of freedom of choice in family planning as a human right. In 1968, at the Teheran International Conference on Human Rights, member nations of the United Nations unanimously recognized as a human right the decision to choose the number and spacing of one's children (Jacobson 1993: 34; Tomasevski 1993: 18). This right was amplified in the World Population Plan of Action (1974) (see UN 1993b). The explicit connection between reproductive rights and women's human rights was recognized in the U.N.'s Report of the Special Rapporteur: Study on the Interrelationship of the Status of Women and Family Planning as "the ability to regulate the timing and number of births [a]s one central means of freeing women to exercise the full range of human rights to which they are entitled" (U.N. 1973). Article 16 of the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (UN 1979) makes both rights over procreative decisions and the means to exercise such decisions a matter of "equality of men and women." 5. Establishing reproductive rights for women as basic to their human rights had become a goal of women's rights activists by the time of the United Nations Decade of Women Conference in Nairobi in 1985. The Vienna Declaration drafted at the United Nations Conference on Human Rights in 1993 states clearly that the human rights of women throughout the life cycle are an inalienable, integral and indivisible part of universal human rights" (UN 1993a), and reaffirms women's right to accessible and adequate health care, including "the widest range of family planning services," as necessary to equality between men and women (see UN 1993b). The affirmation of reproductive rights as women's human rights made in the Programme of Action of the United Nations International Conference on Population and Development, held in Cairo, Egypt in September 1994 was endorsed almost unanimously by the conference delegates (see United Nations 1995: para. 216). While not explicitly endorsing contraception and abortion as basic to human rights, Principle 8 of the Programme affirms that States should take all appropriate measure to ensure, on a basis of equality of men and women, universal access to health-care services, including those related to reproductive health care, which includes family planning and sexual health. Reproductive health-care programmes should provide the widest range of services without any form of coercion. All couples and individuals have the basic right to decide freely and responsibly the number and spacing of their children and to have the information, education, and means to do so (UN 1994a: 8; see Hosken 1994: 1). This language is readily subject to a reading that abortion and contraception are included in the phrase "the widest range of services." However, the Programme explicitly states that abortion is not a means of population control, although it should be safe where legal, and should be an important health issue of government concern where "unsafe." 6. The Platform further defines reproductive rights as "embracing certain human rights that are already recognized in national laws, international human rights documents and other consensus documents" (United Nations 1995: para. 95). The section of the Platform on "Human Rights of Women" claims that "The universal nature of these rights and freedoms is beyond question" (United Nations 1995: 10, para. 211). 7. Rather than showing an improvement in this situation in recent years, statistics indicate the contrary--that fewer women are able to obtain access to adequate family planning, especially to safe, legal abortions. 8 The paragraph continues: The implementation of this Platform, including through national laws and the formulation of strategies, policies, programmes and development priorities, is the sovereign responsibility of each State, in conformity with all human rights and fundamental freedoms, and the significance of and full respect for various religious and ethical values, cultural backgrounds and philosophical convictions of individuals and their communities should contribute to the full enjoyment by women of their human rights in order to achieve equality, development and peace (United Nations 1995: para. 9). 9. Similarly, the Declaration specifies that women's human rights also requires "the eradication of any conflicts which may arise between the rights of women and the harmful effects of certain traditional or customary practices, cultural prejudices, and religious extremism," yet it lacks any principles or procedures for determining how conflicts between women's rights and a state's "cultural practices" should be resolved (see Sullivan 1994: 158). 10. Even prior to the Conference, members of the American Catholic clergy stated publicly that the proposed Programme for Action was nothing more than a tool of the wealthy nations to control the Third World. This claim is contradicted by the women who held a press conference in response to the Catholic announcement. These women "described their struggles against religious fundamentalism of various kinds and other obstacles to women's empowerment in reproductive matters" (UN 1994b: 6). 11. 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