Lidská práva žen na prahu 21. století: světová a evropská perspektiva

The efforts to improve the situation of women are a part of the wider emancipation process aimed at the preservation and development of human society in the changing conditions of the civilization. In the contemporary international law and especially in the international law of human rights this relation and interaction are reflected through a legal doctrine, through the process of creating standards and by the effectivity of the accepted legal instruments. The international legal protection can be understood as an open system integrating into its sphere, besides traditional forms, new forms of discrimination and inequality due to sex. Thus it reflects the social demand, based on experiences and mediated by gender studies, on the factual and legal situation of women in individua! countries as well as in whole regions. This information increases the competency of the control mechanisms in judging the practices of states in relation to women in the sphere regulated by international obligations. The aim of the study is to stress the above mentioned aspects of the international legal protection of human rights of women such as they express themselves in the world-wide and European scale in the perspective exceeding the 20th century. First of all the conceptual development has to be mentioned which passes from the equal status of women to elimination of all forms of discrimination of women. The Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination of Women represents a new legal strategy since it determines the elimination of women’s discrimination as a legal norm. The Convention detaches itself from the non-discrimination based on the neutralization of sex. On the contrary, it emphasizes different characteristics of women which expose them to discrimination in a way requiring a special legal expression. The duty of states, to identify and eliminate all forms of discrimination, justifies the existence of gender women studies as well of a gender sensitive analysis of law, on international as well as on domestic levels. Both contribute, besides other, to a critical evaluation of the dichotomy of the public and private spheres which has serious consequences from the point of view of the women’s situation. Every way forward requires most of all improvement of the state practice. The direction of such efforts has been indicated by the final documents of the 4th World Conference on Women in 1995 which declare human rights of women as a non-separable, integral part of the fundamental human rights and freedoms, and women’s rights as human rights. There is, however, another question: to what extent the international legal protection of women has the force to change the discrimination practice. The Convention is a base for creating structures and mechanisms which would secure both safety and space for women’s universal self-realization in the domestic sphere. Effective monitoring of the accepted obligations, which is in the competence of CEDA W, has a non-replacable role in this sphere. The quality of the control mechanisms can be largely improved by the activities of non-governmental organizations which are able to be more critical than state organs designed to control the Convention. The international law of human rights is a product of a collective vision of states and their coinciding practice. This is testified by the European system of the protection of human rights. The equality of men and women is declared as democratic value and as the European variant of the parity democracy. The required standard of equality of men and women is a matter of a legal strategy which has its international and national levels. The unification of the domestic legal regulations and harmonization of the procedures of attaining the required aims is a precondition for including the rights of men and women into the category of rights protected by the Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. Both legal and conceptual aspects testify the suitability of this procedure. For the new member states the concept of equality of men and women represents a challenge which they cannot marginalize or ignore unless they would get into the undesirable position of infringing the European democratic priorities and obligations in the sphere of human rights. Even the obligations, which are included in the recommendations, have a function in effective securing the obligations of international conventions on human rights and as such they have to be realized in good faith.