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Multi-Directionality and Universality: Global Feminisms and International Law in the Twenty-First Century

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Abstract

Advancing the goals of feminist international law in the twenty-first century requires renewed commitment to universality, and a deft multi-directionality. The iconic 1989 demonstration organized by British Asian women in support of the writer Salman Rushdie, condemned to death by a fatwa from Ayatollah Khomeini, provides a helpful metaphor. Campaigners from Southall Black Sisters and Women Against Fundamentalism led the protest carrying signs proclaiming: “A Women's Place Is in the World,” and “Our Tradition Is Struggle, Not Submission.” ¹ The women stood between two groups of men: a phalanx of British Muslim fundamentalist demonstrators denouncing Rushdie and calling for blasphemy laws, and white far right National Front protestors who opposed those fundamentalists with racist rhetoric. The women human rights defenders (WHRDs) challenged both groups of men, were threatened by both. Though encircled, they were determined to create their own space for multi-directional resistance.
FEMINIST APPROACHES TO INTERNATIONAL LAW
MULTI-DIRECTIONALITY AND UNIVERSALITY: GLOBAL FEMINISMS AND
INTERNATIONAL LAW IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
Karima Bennoune*
Advancing the goals of feminist international law in the twenty-rst century requires renewed commitment to uni-
versality, and a deft multi-directionality. The iconic 1989 demonstration organized by British Asian women in support
of the writer Salman Rushdie, condemned to death by a fatwa from Ayatollah Khomeini, provides a helpful metaphor.
Campaigners from Southall Black Sisters and Women Against Fundamentalism led the protest carrying signs pro-
claiming: A Womens Place Is in the World,and Our Tradition Is Struggle, Not Submission.
1
The women
stood between two groups of men: a phalanx of British Muslim fundamentalist demonstrators denouncing
Rushdie and calling for blasphemy laws, and white far right National Front protestors who opposed those fundamen-
talists with racist rhetoric. The women human rights defenders (WHRDs) challenged both groups of men, were threat-
ened by both. Though encircled, they were determined to create their own space for multi-directional resistance.
Today, any meaningful feminist international legal analysis must recognize and navigate such complex dynamics.
It should be infused with Mari Matsudas foundational reminder that multiple consciousness . . . is. . . a deliberate
choice to see the world from the standpoint of the oppressed.
2
But, it also must take seriously the problem that
people may suffer different kinds of oppression along different axes at the same time. The same people may be
oppressed and oppressors. Hence, multi-directionality is a sine qua non for defending womens human rights in the
twenty-rst century. It also remains vital to avoid undercutting dissident feminist voices around the world, includ-
ing through fashionable irting with selective cultural relativism.
The Roots of Feminist International Law
Scholars and advocates in the early 1990s made tremendous, revolutionary achievements that laid the founda-
tions for feminist approaches to international law in this century.
3
Todays diverse feminist international lawyers
owe them a debt of gratitude. Recognizing that silence strengthens inequality and injustice,
4
these 1990s
* Lewis M. Simes Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School, Ann Arbor, MI, United States. Former UN Special Rapporteur in the eld of
cultural rights.
1
Salil Tripathi, Women Who Fought for Salman Rushdie,MINT (Feb. 21, 2019). Many of these women issued a statement condemning the
August 2022 attack on Rushdie, a declaration exemplifying their multi-directional approach. They were equally committed to anti-racist
politics that opposed the demonisation of all Muslims as fanatical, as . . . to challenging fundamentalism in all religions. . . .Rushdies Right to
Write,FEMINIST DISSENT (Aug. 12, 2022).
2
Mari Matsuda, When the First Quail Calls: Multiple Consciousness as Jurisprudential Method,2WOMENSRTS.L.REP. 9 (1989).
3
José Alvarez, Book Review, The Boundaries of International Law: A Feminist Analysis, 95 AJIL 460 (2001).
4
TOVE STANG DAHL,WOMENSLAW:ANINTRODUCTION TO FEMINIST JURISPRUDENCE 12 (1987).
doi:10.1017/aju.2022.46
© Karima Bennoune 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The American Society of International Law. This is
an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is
properly cited.
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https://doi.org/10.1017/aju.2022.46 Published online by Cambridge University Press
pathnders broke the disciplines silences about women/sex/gender. They built on earlier work by feminist schol-
ars in other disciplines, and by advocates from every corner of the globe who fought to ensure that early interna-
tional instruments guaranteed womens equality. The latter included Hansa Mehta of India, without whom the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights would have conrmed the equal rights of all menrather than all
human beings.
5
The 1990s work opened the eyes of most English-speaking international lawyers to the gen-
dered boundaries of international law.
6
However, there remains a long way to go to achieve womens equality in
and with international law. Progress has been made on many issues in many contexts since, but discrimination
against women remains one of the most pervasive human rights violations around the world. As a 2017 statement
by UN human rights experts asserted: Womens rights are facing an alarming backlash in many parts of the
world . . . . We need more than ever to protect the fundamental principle that all rights are universal.
7
Denial of Womens Everyday Struggles
Meanwhile, within the academic eld of feminist international law there is an increasing problem of ideological
gatekeeping. The growing predominance of what are called criticalperspectives, especially in elite academic set-
tings, limits whose voices can be heard and which concerns may be raised. One feminist scholar from the Global
South recently stressed to me the difculty of being published if one takes a different view. This is paradoxical since
predominant critical perspectives seek to challenge the discipline, inter alia, for being insufciently inclusive.
8
This
essay offers a counter-critical critique that should be understood as a (partially) friendly amendment since I share
some of the underlying concerns that motivate some of what are called critical views.
However, some of the critical literature is in some ways problematic. Feminism is often cast as Westernand
whitein ways that are meant to deconstruct power, but instead risk disappearing the struggles of women else-
where and become a back-handed assertion of power and patriarchal norms. As Farida and Ayesha Shaheednote,
there is
a misconception that the contemporary womens movement is exclusively rooted in European and North
American concepts and womens struggles in these locations. . . . [T]he myth can . . . impede womens asser-
tions for their rights and for justice. The truth is that women have taken steps to assert their rights and have
intervened to bring about a more just society in every era and in every location.
9
Reecting upon diversities and inequalities among women has added essential layers to feminist international
law, but those differences may now be over-inscribed, diminishing the strategic sense of commonalities among
many women. Numerous global womens movements have continued to emphasize the latter,
10
understanding
that diverse women may be differently situated, but everywhere face inequalities with many men. In this regard,
twenty-rst century feminist international law needs a balanced approach, taking on board the insights of
Jamaican-British cultural theorist Stuart Hall, who wrote about the extraordinary diversity of subjective positions,
5
Gita Sahgal, Who Wrote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?,OPEN DEMOCRACY (2012).
6
Alvarez,supra note 3, at 459.
7
OHCHR Press Release, UN Experts Call for Resistance as Battle for Womens Rights Intensies (June 28, 2017).
8
What is called critical theory in international law includes a range of perspectives difcult to adequately reference in this short essay,
from critical legal theory informed by post-modernism to critical race feminism. Fleur Johns, Critical International Legal Theory,in
INTERNATIONAL LEGAL THEORY:FOUNDATIONS AND FRONTIERS 133 (Jeffrey L. Dunoff & Mark A. Pollack eds., 2022).
9
FARIDA SHAHEED WITH AISHA L.F. SHAHEED,GREAT ANCESTORS:WOMEN ASSERTING RIGHTS IN MUSLIM CONTEXTS (2004).
10
See, e.g., The Mediterranean Womens Fund, Our Vision.
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social experiences and cultural identitieswithin any group,
11
but also suggested exploring the construction of a
politics through and with difference which is able to build those forms of solidarity and identication which make
common struggle and resistance possible.
12
Such strategies are needed in view of the complex, interlocking violations and multiple opponents that WHRDs
face today. Consider the perspective of anti-racist feminist human rights lawyer Pragna Patel, former director of
Southall Black Sisters in the UK. The organization responds to multiple forms of discriminatory treatment of
migrant and minority women in a context infused with xenophobia and constriction of the welfare state, as
well as the rise of multiple forms of extremism exacerbated by reciprocal radicalization.
13
Patel notes that,
the needs and demands of these women compelled us to challenge state laws and community norms that
have perpetuated inequality and powerlessness amongst minority women.
14
The daughter of an immigrant airport worker, Patel assesses the most signicant challenges she and colleagues
faced. They involve a complex intermingling of factors:
The most difcult aspect of this work has concerned the patriarchal contract that emerged post-Rushdie
between the British state and minority communities which depends on gate keeping by (increasingly fun-
damentalist and ultra-conservative) religious leaders. That contract resulted in enactment of policies which
reinforce the idea of women as subjects of religious leaderships rather than autonomous actors with rights
as citizens. In the face of a consequent growth in gender segregation in schools, the imposition of discrim-
inatory religious personal laws, and strict dress codes, it has become increasingly difcult and risky to
engage in internal critiques of minority culture and religion.
15
Yet, even as WHRDs like Southall Black Sisters attempt to locate effective responses, their work is undercut by
increasingly dominant analyses that highlight only one set of factors.
Much of so-called progressive and feminist academic analysis (and activism) today is dominated by a sim-
plistic, one dimensional view whichin the name of anti-racism, anti-imperialism and post-colonialism
legitimates a focus on state-generated terror and authoritarianism from above, but allows little or no room
to critique cultural relativism and authoritarianism from below.
16
For a frontline WHRD like Patel, these thin analyses have had a range of deleterious consequences: [s]uch a denial
of womens everyday struggles for freedom, secularism and human rightsrooted in their material realities
spells profound danger, not only for the lives of individual women, but for the survival of feminism itself.
17
The Multi-directional Stance of Global Feminisms
Western theorists often overlook the growing critiques of some critical approaches by feminists in and
descended from the Global Souththose critiques are often reactions to failures to reect precisely
such multi-directionality. Feminist writers and scholars from a variety of disciplines like Sadia Abbas,
18
Fatiha
11
Stuart Hall, New Ethnicities,in BLACK FILM,BRITISH CINEMA (Kobena Mercer ed., 1989).
12
Id.
13
See Julia Ebner, How Far Right and Islamist Extremists Amplify Each Others Rhetoric (TEDx Vienna Talk, Oct. 2016).
14
E-mail Interview with Pragna Patel (May 5, 2022) (on le with the author).
15
Id.
16
Id.
17
Id.
18
SADIA ABBAS,ATFREEDOMSLIMIT:ISLAM AND THE POSTCOLONIAL PREDICAMENT (2014).
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Agag-Boudjahlat,
19
Marieme Hélie-Lucas,
20
Mariz Tadros,
21
and Aya Zia,
22
and the journal Feminist Dissent,
argue against paradigms that they view as distorting the complex realities and minimizing the suffering of
women in the contexts they are from, and study or advocate about. Their work deserves wide consideration
among feminist international lawyers. One version of a decolonial perspective is increasingly seen to cover the
eld. Yet, there are many writing from stances deeply critical of colonialism and its legacies who occupy different
positionalities, including universalist, modernist, and secular anti-racist feminists, who are being erased in elite
academic discourse.
Yemeni-Egyptian-Swiss scholar Elham Manea has written about this in Women and Sharia Law: The Impact of Legal
Pluralism, arguing that a paradigm of thinking that has become characteristic of Western academic post-colonial
and post-modernist discourse . . . insists on treating people as homogeneous groups,essentialising their cultures
and religions . . . [and] underestimating the human rights consequences of their academic discourse.
23
Though faced by diverse constituencies, these problems are particularly intense for those from or working on
Muslim-majority contexts or diasporas. Concepts like Orientalism and Islamophobia, originally responding to
realities of past and present subordination, are now sometimes used by Western critical intellectuals to discipline
those who exercise their equal right to be critical of their own contexts, while deeply committed to those contexts.
Iranian WHRD Masih Alinejad, who campaigns against the imposition of the hijab in Iran, and who experienced
imprisonment and corporal punishment before being forced into exile, recounts that, in the West I am told that if
I share my stories then I will cause Islamophobia. I am a woman from the Middle East and I am scared of Islamic
laws. . . . Phobia is an irrational fear but my fear . . . is rational, so let us talk.
24
In a similar vein, Cherifa Kheddar, president of the Algerian Observatory on Violence Against Women explains
that
what is shocking is all the resistance to accepting freedom of expression related to the right of a Muslim
woman to protect her physical and psychological well-being using the universal means available. What
shocks me are attempts to prevent Muslim women from enjoying their universal human rights so as to
defend themselves.
25
She notes that she speaks as a victim from Algeria from the 1990s who suffered violence at the hands of other
Muslims, a victim who could not count on the support of Western intellectuals who were busy defending religious
and cultural specicities.
26
There is indeed a strange dynamic afoot across disciplines in the English-speaking acad-
emy when Lila Abu-Lughod, leading light of Middle East Studies in the United States, criticizes male Palestinian rap
artists who seek to challenge honor crimes, on the grounds that this is a Western, UN-funded agenda.
27
19
FATIHA AGAG-BOUDJAHLAT,LE GRAND DÉTOURNEMENT:FÉMINISME,TOLÉRANCE,RACISME,CULTURE (2017).
20
Marieme Hélie-Lucas, What Is Your Tribe? Womens Struggles and the Construction of Muslimness,in WOMEN LIVING UNDER MUSLIM LAWS,
DOSSIER 23/24,at2122 (Harsh Kapoor ed., 2001).
21
Mariz Tadros & Ayesha Khan, Challenging Binaries to Promote Womens Equality,3FEMINIST DISSENT 1, 4 (2018).
22
AFIYA ZIA,FAITH AND FEMINISM IN PAKISTAN:RELIGIOUS AGENCY OR SECULAR AUTONOMY (2018).
23
ELHAM MANEA,WOMEN AND SHARIALAW:THE IMPACT OF LEGAL PLURALISM IN THE UK 2 (2016).
24
Masih Alinejad, @AlinejadMasih,TWITTER (Jan. 18, 2022, 8:32 a.m.).
25
E-mail Interview with Cherifa Kheddar (May 13, 2022) (on le with and translated by the author).
26
Id.
27
Tamer Nafar, Suhell Nafar & Mahmood Jrery, DAM Responds: On Tradition and the Anti-politics of the Machine,JADALIYYA (Dec. 26, 2012).
The musicians riposted: We are . . . secureenough to take on occupation and domestic violence, racism and sexism. . . . We believe we can,
and we must, tackle these issues with openness, bravery, and honesty.Id.
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It is misguided to suggest that because of the history of colonialism and its sequelae, people in and descended
from the Global South must not ask hard questions about their own societies or collectives today. Why are only
certain people deemed to have the right to be critical of their own contexts, in which they are deeply invested?
Being of Algerian descent, this is a very personal question for me.
28
Will the suffering of earlier generations of
my family at the hands of colonial forces be allowed to justify or minimize the challenges faced by those in younger
generations in the country?
Demanding The Privilege of a Sponge
The right to dissent is a basic human right. There is no Global South exception. During the 1990s, my Algerian
fathers life was at risk from fundamentalist armed groups that targeted the intelligentsia
29
and WHRDs like
Kheddarall in the name of an extremist interpretation of religion. My father turned for succor to the writing
of twelfth century Arab-Andalusian philosopher Ibn Rushd that described a synthesis of faith and reason, and
simultaneously to the U.S. play Inherit the Wind.
30
The latter is an all-too-timely depiction of the U.S. Scopes
Monkey triala 1925 prosecution for teaching evolution. In the play, the defense lawyer representing the teacher
gets the prosecution to concede that, [i]f the Lord wishes a sponge to think, it thinks.
31
In response, the defense
lawyer asserts of his client: [t]hen this man wishes to have the same privilege of a sponge, he wishes to think!
32
Dissident feminist voices from many regions also demand the privilege of a sponge.Yet, in some theoretical
approaches, including in some versions of feminist international law, formerly colonized people have no internal
politics of their own, becoming tropes in ideological battles elsewhere. It is, after all, all about the West. The over-
writing of the colonial past onto the complex present in simplistic ways disappears the reality of contemporary
challenges. According to Senegalese feminist sociologist Fatou Sow, “‘we need to think about the impact of colo-
nialism and neo-colonialism, but there are times when I want to get out of this box . . . to recognize that I have all
the rights in the world to have critical denitions of who I am myself.’”
33
Today in the Western academy, including in certain feminist circles in international law, if you are principled in
taking seriously threats to womens human rights and lives in the Global South or in minority contexts, just as you
would such threats anywhere else, and if you call for effective solutions in accordance with international law that
might be taken for granted elsewhere, you risk your work being labeled as carceral feminism,”“victim feminism,
or governance feminism,usually by elite academics far removed from the rights struggles in question.
34
You
may also be accused of being a militarist or of having a savior complex. Perhaps it is time to create a few terms to
respond to this labeling that may silence dissident feminist voices, including those from and descended from the
Global South. Here are some possibilities:
28
KARIMA BENNOUNE,YOUR FATWA DOES NOT APPLY HERE:UNTOLD STORIES FROM THE FIGHT AGAINST MUSLIM FUNDAMENTALISM
(2013).
29
Karima Bennoune, Algeria Twenty Years on: Words Do Not Die,OPEN DEMOCRACY (June 24, 2013).
30
JEROME LAWR EN CE &ROBERT E. LEE,INHERIT THE WIND:THE POWERFUL DRAMA OF THE GREATEST COURTROOM CLASH OF THE
CENTURY (1955).
31
Id. at 94.
32
Id.
33
Quoted in Cultural Mixing and Cultural Rights Report of the Special Rapporteur in the Field of Cultural Rights, Karima Bennoune,
UN Doc. A/76/178, Annex, para. 36 (July 19, 2021).
34
See, e.g., GOVERNANCE FEMINISM:NOTES FROM THE FIELD (Janet Halley, Prabha Kotiswaran, Rachel Rebouché & Hila Shamir eds.,
2018).
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(1) Minimization feminism.This applies to work which contextualizes away the horrors of extreme
forms of persecution of women because there is violence against women everywhere.
(2) Apologist feminism.This describes theorizing that questions the authenticity of WHRDs in or
descended from the Global South who make similar claims to WHRDs elsewhere, the apotheosis
being the purported defense of their culturefrom their own feminist critiques by Western feminist
theorists.
(3) Selective cultural relativist feminism.This characterizes the willingness to relativize the rights of
women in other contexts in the name of various academic theories, while never countenancing the
same approaches being applied to ones own rights.
I am in a category of people with anti-colonialist convictions, one generation away from victims of systematic
imperialist repression, who should be deeply sympathetic to post-colonial theory. I share its outrage at the near
total impunity for colonial abuses. There is much wisdom in some earlier iterations of post-coloniality, which rec-
ognize the hybridity, and complexity of all regions.
35
However, I often do not recognize the womens worlds I work
on as portrayed in some of todays decolonial and critical approaches. Just as what is called feminist international
law is not the only way of talking about womens human rights, post-colonial and decolonial theories are not the
only way of talking about the diverse situations and struggles of women in and descended from the Global South.
Toward Global Feminist International Law
Today, the task before feminist international lawyers, in my view, is to respond to complex contemporary chal-
lenges by building on diverse global feminist traditions and listening to their advocates around the world. It is vital
to nd multi-directional stances, recognize a multiplicity of concerns and axes of power, challenge local and global
power-holders, and reconstruct an unwavering commitment to the universality of womenshumanrights
everywhere.
35
See, e.g.,THE POST-COLONIAL STUDIES READER (Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Grifths & Helen Tifn eds., 2d ed. 2006).
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The Boundaries of International Law: A Feminist Analysis
  • José Alvarez
  • Book Review
Who Wrote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?
  • Gita Sahgal
Inherit the Wind: The Powerful Drama of the Greatest Courtroom Clash of the Century
  • Jerome Lawrence
  • Robert E Lee