Promoting Human Rights Across Cultures

Good morning. It's a real pleasure to be here with all of you today, and it’s a true honour to be with a group of such distinguished experts. I thank High Commissioner Pillay and her Office for inviting me.

I am extremely happy to speak about the integral link between human rights and culture because it is a theme that is very dear to me both professionally and personally. Though many think it is an oxymoron to talk about culture and human rights, it is really not so, and today I will talk about how we have addressed this within the agency I head, UNFPA. We have found that to internalize human rights, cultural values and beliefs must be clearly identified, contested, negotiated and eventually reconciled from within.

Like my friend and colleague, High Commissioner Navi Pillay, my life history opened ny eyes to diversity and universality. Personally, I would not be standing here today if I had not enjoyed equal justice, equal opportunity and equal dignity in my own home, when I was a little girl in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. My parents wanted to ensure that being a female in a patriarchal society would be free from fear and want.

Back then, in 1951, there were no schools for girls in my home country, but my parents, as devout Muslims, took very seriously the first surah in the Quran, the command to read. By deciding to educate me along with my brothers, they believed they were doing their duties as committed believers. But in fact, they were asserting my right to education and to a better life as a girl and eventually as a productive woman.

My father, supported by my mother, had a dream for me, and so they decided to send me to a girls’ boarding school in Cairo when I was seven. And it was not just any school, but a Presbyterian missionary school. As a devout Muslim, my father believed his utmost goal was educating me, and he felt comfortable with having me receive my education from women who were “People of the Book”, as Christians are called in the Koran.

My father, who along with my mother was the light of my life, sacrificed a great deal to ensure that I received the best education I could because they saw it as the only valuable wealth that outlasts all others.

I was fortunate and remain grateful. But today, almost 60 years later, in a new century, many young people, and especially young women, are not so fortunate. They do not have the opportunities that I was afforded, and they are unable to achieve their dreams.

Today, too many women and girls face discrimination and violations of their human rights, beginning with the basic right to health and education. And, sometimes, this situation is justified erroneously on the basis of cultural traditions and interpretation of religious texts. I want to be clear that traditional values cannot be an excuse for violating human rights. But culture does have to be taken into account to effectively promote human rights.

Professionally, I remember that back in the year 2000, in the pre-appointment interview for the post of UNFPA Executive Director, Secretary-General Kofi Annan asked me what I would bring to UNFPA. I told him that I do not bring a new agenda because the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development that guides the work of UNFPA is holistic visionary as such; my duty is to ensure quality implementation.

But, I also told him that I would bring a new way of thinking about how to deal with the controversial issues that are the heart of the ICPD Programme of Action, and that is through culturally sensitive approaches to human rights. I explained that the international debate on reproductive health and rights and gender equality is rarely technical; it is about values and beliefs.

There is no disagreement about the three interventions to decrease maternal mortality, but certainly there is heated debate, for example, about women’s right to access family planning, or women’s right to deliver her baby outside the home or by a modern trained health attendant. And all these issues are influenced by cultural values and religious beliefs.

The Nobel prize-winning economist Amartya Sen, who, defined development as freedom, said in an essay:

"The issue is not whether culture matters…That it must be, given the pervasive influence of culture on human life. The real issue, rather, is how—not whether—culture matters. What are the different ways in which culture may influence development? How can the influences be better understood, and how might they modify or alter the development policies that seem appropriate?"

Professor Sen and I agree that culture is critical to development.

We all know that change that contributes to universal human rights in diverse cultural settings cannot be imposed from the outside; to be lasting, it must come from within.

I know this theme is of increasing concern to all of us working in development and human rights. Culture matters because cultural traditions and beliefs are often stronger than laws and to get to the roots of human rights issues we need to engage at a cultural level.

As an example, discrimination and violence against women and harmful practices such as female genital mutilation and child marriage are illegal in many countries—they are against the law—and yet they persist. They persist because they are deeply rooted within the culture. Violations of human rights happen in families and communities while systems of justice are often at the national level, far away from the violations. It is the mechanisms of the local value system that recognize or ignore such violations.

So while laws are absolutely necessary, they are not always sufficient. Laws need to be supported by outreach efforts. To be effective we have to engage at a deeper level to promote human rights in the context of individuals, families and communities at the local level. This requires listening and promoting dialogue within communities.

The debate on reproductive health and rights and gender equality still is really about beliefs and values. It is about the role of women and the role of the family.

The role of culture in our thinking about development has undergone a remarkable change in the last four decades. In spite of occasional declarations to the contrary, early thinkers (from the North and South) found traditional cultural attitudes and practices only as obstacles to development. The implication was that, unless people in developing countries adopted the norms and standards, and thus the behaviours of the developed countries (all Western in culture), there was no hope of their developing.

The pendulum has since swung in the opposite direction. The move from condemning to celebrating cultural diversity, both among and within cultures, has been an illuminating change. It reminds us that development can take many forms and that approaches to development can differ. But all our efforts aim at ensuring human dignity for all and human rights to each individual.

We are beginning to recognize that cultural globalization is not necessarily a win-win contribution for sustainable development and that cultural diversity and identity are critical contributions to development.

Today, I am very proud to speak about UNFPA's legacy of promoting human rights, and especially women’s rights and health, across diverse cultural and religious settings, because we have made real progress.

With the support of the Government of Switzerland, UNFPA was able to introduce culture within the gender and human rights branch in our Technical Division. It was Swiss Ambassador Walter Fust, who was the first official to believe in my Culture Matters ideas, and to provide UNFPA with the necessary support to take the first action for the initiative.

However, when I introduced the gender, culture and human rights initiative, I knew that it would draw scrutiny and doubt both within and outside of UNFPA. Some said that we don’t deal with cultural values or religious beliefs in the UN. Many said we do not want to open a “can of worms”. Others said any discussion of culture is relativism, and there is no way culture and human rights can meet.

But, we know that the debate on cultural values and religions first entered into this vast area of human rights in Cairo at International Conference on Population and Development, and there is no way to ignore it. We had to face two taboos: one within the United Nations and development community – the taboo of addressing culture and religion openly – and the other within the countries where we work – the taboo of addressing sexual and reproductive health.

During the last ten years, I have worked with wonderful, committed colleagues in UNFPA to deliberately, systematically and strategically institutionalize a culturally sensitive, gender responsive and human rights based approach to our humanitarian and development work. We have done so based on the knowledge that sustainable social change must be deeply rooted. It is still work in progress for sure but it is also taking root.
We, at UNFPA, have realized the strategic priority and urgency to promote human rights principles through positive values that exist in all countries and in all cultures.

Our work on culture is based on eight principles:

• Principle 1 is that cultures are the realities within the contexts in which development takes place and that people seek religious leaders and institutions for guidance, comfort and support.
• Principle 2 is that people are the products of their culture and also its creators. As such, they are not simply passive receivers but active agents who can reshape cultural values, norms and expressions.
• Principle 3 is that cultures are neither static nor monolithic. Every culture is characterized by diversity, contestability and private and public space for mediation and negotiation and diverse interpretations. This also includes interpretations of religious texts that are made by “men” and I mean “men” and that can be changed by the engagement of both men and women of faith.
• Principle 4 is that cultures have a strong impact on the social sectors and on social relations, but especially on gender power relations.
• Principle 5 is that it is through change from within societies and communities that cultural norms, traditions and expressions are changed.
• Principle 6 is respect for cultural independence and cultural diversity with the acknowledgement that change can be mediated in favour of human rights and gender equality.
• Principle 7 is that cultures and religions share common denominators with universal standards, such as human equality, compassion and tolerance and that their manifestation and/or interpretations can be a force to promote or obstruct human rights.
• Principle 8 is that human rights can be recognized and internalized through a culturally sensitive approach that gives social basis and support to the legal approach and that builds on positive cultural values and religious interpretations that strengthen human rights principles.

All this is a product of ten years of consistent advocacy, discussions, programme delivery, capacity development, and, most of all, finding a safe space to discuss this taboo subject freely and openly.

I know that there is still opposition and skepticism. But, I believe that the development community has no choice but to pursue this road if we really are serious about our collective response to scale up implementation of the MDGs and the other internationally agreed goals.

Success, we have learned, requires patience, a willingness to listen carefully, a respect for cultural diversity, and a commitment to develop innovative ways to express culturally-loaded issues. Success is also about inclusiveness of the other in a safe space that allows contestation and negotiation of all views.

The point is that we cannot achieve human rights for people; achieving human rights is the responsibility of the people themselves, but we can support their efforts in this process.

We see this clearly in several cases:

• in improving women’s health and reducing high rates of maternal death and disability,
• in working to end violence against girls and women,
• in supporting communities to abandon female genital mutilation,
• in preventing HIV infection, and
• in providing humanitarian assistance in societies suffering from natural or man-made emergencies.

All these issues are related to culture in many ways, for example:

• in some places, families insist on daughters-in-law giving birth at home despite the high risks of complications,
• in some places, people believe that sex with young girls can cure AIDS,
• in some places, there is a belief that a woman must have her genitals cut to protect her status and prospects for marriage, and
• we also see that in many cases there is a lack of appreciation for women’s health needs as refugees and internally displaced persons.

Because these cases are often justified through reference to culture, we have to be culturally knowledgeable to deal with such claims, and we are making progress.

Today, communities in Ethiopia, Gambia, Guinea and Senegal are abandoning the harmful practice of female genital mutilation and cutting. Social norms and laws are changing towards protecting the rights of women and girls.

In many countries, maternal death rates are declining, and one success comes from Ecuador where a law was passed in 1994 to provide free quality care for pregnant women. Efforts were aimed at empowering women, and combining indigenous knowledge and expertise with western health services. As a result, the maternal death rate in Ecuador has been cut in half since the early 1990s.

I also see success when colleagues from a large number of United Nations partner agencies form an interagency taskforce on Faith-Based Organizations working on the Millennium Development Goals. I see success when we are able to establish Global and regional networks of Faith-Based Organizations on Population and Development and reaching agreement on how we can work together and how we can respect our differences. I see success when the Staff College at Turin, in cooperation with UNAIDS and UNFPA, is providing a workshop for colleagues across the UN system on this specific subject so that we can reach mutual understanding.

The point is that positive values exist in all countries and in all cultures, and there is a clear need to support communities as they work together to examine, contest, and negotiate around their own values and practices as they relate to human rights. It is not an easy process but it must be supported in order to achieve results on a large scale.

At UNFPA, we believe that this requires a culturally sensitive, gender responsive and human rights based approach to reach those most in need. Whether we are talking about improving women’s health, or reducing maternal mortality, or preventing HIV infection, we cannot achieve success by focusing on the health sector alone.

Women’s health is much more than health. We must support communities to identify and address persistent inequities, stigma and discrimination. And to do this, we need equitable laws and policies and we also need community engagement. We need to go to the grassroots and get to the root of the problems.

We know we still have a long way to go, but we have witnessed how solidarity and partnership propel us forward.

Let me conclude be repeating my key message: Change that contributes to universal human rights in diverse cultural settings cannot be imposed from the outside; to be lasting, it must come from within. The principles of human rights must be internalized by the communities and the individuals. And the key to this is to find the positive values and agents of change that exist in all cultures.

Culture is created by people and people can change culture. They can build on the positive and transform the negative aspects of their culture. There are people within every culture who oppose harmful cultural practices and violations of human rights.

Development is about change; it is about change in our living environments but it is also about change in the ways we think and what we value. As international actors in the field of human rights, we must be able to view the field from cross-cultural perspectives. By doing so, we are able to engage in a dialogue with cultures and mobilize cultural agents of change for development and human rights.

I look forward to our discussions today. Thank you.