Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Human Rights and Women's Rights in Bhutan

People in different countries belong to different cultures. Despite these differences, they have one thing in common. All human beings are born free and equal and enjoy certain unconditional rights. The idea of Human Rights has become one of the most cherished in the history of human kind.

Human Rights are those rights which every person enjoy simply by the fact that he/she is a human being. Human Rights are universal regardless of a person‘s race, religion, sex and ethnicity. Bhutan is also a signatory to the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Subsequent to UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and UN Treaty on Women's Rights, we also talk about women's rights in Bhutan, particularly about empowering them and eliminating any form of discrimination against them. While it is generally said that there is no gender inequality in Bhutan, low women participation in the democratic process has created seroius concerns. The idea of reservation of seats for women has been one of the ideas floated as means for consideration to address this issue.

Asked what the Parliament, Government, institutions and individuals could do to encourage women participation in politics, one of the common answers is advocacy and education. Most of the people think that education and advocacy for women‘s right and opportunities in society would encourage them to participate in political process.

However, I feel that education and advocacy could be taken into consideration only if women in question are either illiterate or semi-literate. Advocacy and education would stimulate women to take proactive role in society. On the contrary, we have a lot of highly qualified and educated women in Bhutan. An advocacy strategy for such women would not make sense.

If learned and experienced women do not take the initiative to participate in political process, it will take decades before we see women in leadership. Unless it is for their genuine interest or a wise policy, strategies such as reservation of seats, advocacy, education and other incentives have negligible value to encourage them participate in the democratic process. Hence, we need to think of more than just advocacy and education to encourage women‘s participation in political process.