Resources

Women Living under Muslim Law’s major programme Women’s Empowerment and Leadership Development for Democratisation (WELDD) ended at year-end 2015, and reporting on the programme completed in June 2016. WLUML did not have any major collective field programmes in 2016. However, it continued to have discussion groups, carried on networking and make the existing WLUML and our sister organization’s resources available to those who requested them, as well as making these available on site. It continued with Publications, Communications, and had one key advocacy campaign.

Women’s bodies have long been a site of cultural, religious, legal, and political struggles. Recognized as a potent medium of ideological communication, women’s clothing has interested both conservative and liberal states. Historical accounts have often presented women as passive objects of these political struggles waged through and on their bodies. Filtering these histories through a feminist lens we see that women have adopted, adapted, resisted, or subverted imposed regulations of their dressed bodies, asserting their autonomy and fighting for social and political rights.

Building on her previous report on diverse forms of fundamentalism and extremism as threats to cultural rights, the Special Rapporteur elaborates on their grave impact on the cultural rights of women. She stresses that a human rights-based response to fundamentalism and extremism must by fully gender sensitive, centering the cultural rights and equality of women, and defending universality. Women’s human rights, including cultural rights, are an essential part of the fight against fundamentalism and extremism, without which it cannot succeed.