The Violence Is Not Our Culture Campaign is an initiative of Women Living Under Muslim Laws to eliminate all forms of 'culturally-justified' violence against women.
Report of the South Asia Plus Consultation on Culture, Women and Human RightsSeptember 2-3, 2010, Nepal With culture being such a contested terrain, particularly as it relates to equality claims of women and minorities, the development of cultural rights offers new understandings on culture and cultural diversity that reinforce the indivisibility of cultural rights with other human rights.
On November 9, 2010, the 2nd international “One Day One Struggle” Campaign to promote sexual and bodily rights in Muslim societies will take place in 12 countries across Middle East, North Africa, South and Southeast Asia.
This report documents diverse strategies adopted by community groups in Bangladesh, India, Indonesia and Nepal to negotiate women’s rights in the context of culture, while grounding the strategies in the specific political - historic local and national contexts. It looks at secular strategies along with the more recent responses to fundamentalism, that use cultural identity and religious/ cultural resources. The report provides a rich account initiatives that promote culture as relational, transforming, plural and accommodating of women’s rights, and in doing so, challenges dominant static and fundamentalist assertions of culture. This documentation assumes significance in relation to human rights with the creation of the new mandate of the Independent Expert in the field of Cultural Rights in 2009, in that it gives content to the term cultural diversity and participation and contribution to cultural life, both integral part of Cultural Rights.