Millions of women throughout the world live in conditions of abject deprivation of, and attacks against, their fundamental human rights for no other reason than that they are women.

Violence and discrimination against women are global social epidemics, notwithstanding the very real progress of the international women’s human rights movement in identifying, raising awareness about, and challenging impunity for women’s human rights violations.

Women from Burma and other countries are bought and sold, trafficked to work in forced prostitution, with insufficient government attention to protect their rights and punish the traffickers.

Combatants in conflicts have raped women as a weapon of war with near complete impunity. Men beat women in homes at astounding rates, while governments refuse to intervene to protect women.

Abuses against women are relentless, systematic, and widely tolerated, if not explicitly condoned.

Women are unable to depend on the government to protect them from physical violence in the home, with sometimes fatal consequences, including increased risk of HIV/AIDS infection. 

Women in state custody face sexual assault by their jailers. 

Women are punished for marriage with a person of their choosing (rather than of their family’s choosing). 

Husbands and other male family members obstruct or dictate women’s access to reproductive health care. 

Our duty as activists is to expose and denounce as human rights violations those practices and policies that silence and subordinate women. 

We reject any political, cultural, or religious practices by which women are systematically discriminated against, excluded from political participation and public life,  segregated in their daily lives,  raped in armed conflict,  beaten in their homes,  denied equal divorce or inheritance rights,  forced into arranged marriage, assaulted for not conforming to gender norms,  and sold into forced labour or prostitution. 

The Women’s Rights Division of Human Rights Watch fights against the dehumanization and marginalization of women. 

We must promote women’s equal rights and human dignity. 

The realization of women’s rights is a global struggle based on universal human rights and the rule of law. 

It requires all of us to unite in solidarity to end traditions, practices, and laws that harm women. Ultimately, the struggle for women’s human rights must be about making women’s lives better everywhere all the time. In practice, this means taking action to stop discrimination and violence against women.