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6 Harv. Hum. Rts. J. 87 (1993)
Women as Aliens: A Feminist Critique of the Public/Private Distinction in International Human Rights Law

handle is hein.journals/hhrj6 and id is 93 raw text is: Women as Aliens: A Feminist Critique of the Public/Private Distinction in International Human Rights Law Celina Romany* I. INTRODUCTION Human rights discourse is a powerful tool for condemning state acts and omissions that violate basic principles of civility and citizen- ship. I Violence is an egregious affront to the core and basic notions of civility and citizenship. Violence assaults life, dignity, and personal integrity. It transgresses fundamental norms of peaceful coexistence. Women are subjects of a system of familial terror with diverse mo- dalities of violence, yet human rights discourse has been inaccessible to women. Women are the paradigmatic alien subjects of international law. To be an alien is to be an other, an outsider. Women are aliens within their states and aliens within an exclusive international club of states which constitutes international society. This Article critiques the human rights discourse in an attempt to make it responsive to the most basic rights of women. It condemns a human rights framework which construes the civil and political rights of individuals as belonging to public life while neglecting to protect the infringement of those rights in the private sphere of familial relationships. It condemns such a framework for not holding the state accountable for the state's systematic failure to institute the necessary political and legal protections to ensure the basic rights of life, integ- rity, and dignity of women. Part II elaborates a critical approach to the international law frame- work into which human rights are inserted. By genealogizing the structural foundations of international law, this part exposes how * Professor of Law, City University of New York Law School. This Article is part of a joint project with Professor Rhonda Copelon, who addresses gender-based violence as an egregious human rights violation. The author wishes to thank the Ford Foundation and the Schell International Human Rights Fellowship Program at Yale Law School for their generous support of this project. She is especially grateful to Michael Deutsch for his encouragement and valuable insights. 1. To assert that a particular social claim is a human right is to vest it emotionally and morally with an especially high order of legitimacy. Richard Bilder, Rethinking International Human Rights: Some Basic Questions, 1969 Wis. L. REv. 171, 174.

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