Improving women’s rights is important across the globe, but it is of utmost importance in countries like Pakistan. Even though Pakistan was the first Islamic country to have a female head of the state (Benazir Bhutto) and is the home of the youngest female Noble Laureate (Malala Yousafzai), it was recently ranked 143 out of 144 countries for gender equality by the World Economic Forum. Women in Pakistan not only regularly experience threats to their safety in the form of rape, assault, and domestic violence, but they are also frequently murdered by their own relatives in so-called “honor killings”.
One of the primary goals of the international human rights movement is to eliminate this kind of violence.
One of the primary goals of the international human rights movement is to eliminate this kind of violence; indeed, the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) was created to outline countries’ obligations to women, and the United Nations (UN) regularly issues reports on the ways that countries need to change their policies to live up to their treaty commitments.
