ABSTRACT
Recognition of women’s human rights has been a focus for international activism for over 30 years. Political campaigns, such as those to confront tolerance of myriad forms of violence against women, have been successful in forcing the position of women on to the international stage. These battles were hard fought and fraught with tensions but nonetheless the ‘culturally sensitive’ universalism (Engle 2005) that emerged laid the cornerstones for creative use of rights by women’s activist groups throughout the world. The positive momentum of this movement was reflected in the UN conferences of the 1990s, a period of optimism. However, the rights framework emerged against the backdrop of the profound economic, social and political changes associated with the collapse of the Soviet system and the triumph of neoliberal economic development, which has resulted in the contemporary forms of globalization of the twenty-first century.
