Human Rights of Women
Professional Certificate – 8 sessions
Online Classes
Date
Time
Provided by
The University of London (QMUL & UCL) and the American University of Technology LLM support program.
Course Description
This course is engaging and fascinating. Many of the issues and examples you will explore on this course are contemporary human rights issues, such as female cutting (female genital mutilation), global domestic violence, rape and sexual assault and the role international human rights law and international criminal law can play in addressing these atrocities. This subject largely investigates international human rights law as it applies to women’s lives. It is important to consider the language used in this course – the focus is on women and women’s lives, the course is not called ‘gender and human rights law’, however you are encouraged to reflect on this and consider issues of gender and sexual violence that may affect not only women. Everyone is encouraged to take this subject, if you haven’t studied human rights before there will be enough material to work on which will allow you to gasp the topic.
The Course Is Composed of 4 Modules
Module A: Is the theory underlying human rights law male?
Module B: Feminist critiques of human rights
Module C: Institutional framework, institutions and documents relating to the human rights of women
Module D: Sovereign governments, non-state actors and individual responsibility for human rights violations: linking theory to practice
About Module A ‘Is The Theory Underlying Human Rights Law Male?’
Module A examines if women’s rights are covered in the traditional canon of human rights documents such as the Universal declaration of human rights and the 2 International covenant of 1966 (the international covenant for civil and political right and the International covenant for economic, social and cultural rights).
Can we speak of women’s rights in contradiction to ‘human rights’?
The ideal answer to this question is NO.
Actually women’s rights are the human rights of women. All the international human rights documents are based on a gender-inclusive understanding. But there is a gap between the articulation of human rights as universal and non-discriminatory on the basis of gender and their implementation in certain circumstances.
That’s why this module will examine the human rights from a feminist perspective and will aim to demonstrate how the general human rights norms have to be understood and applied to all women in the earth.
It will give an idea of what is the human right law and the international mechanism to protect and promote these basic rights for all human being. It will examine the history and philosophy of human rights discourse and who is the ‘human’ of human rights law.
Speaker
JUDGE NAZEK EL KHATIB
Judge El Khatib is currently Prosecutor Judge at Mount of Lebanon, Baabda, Lebanon Specialized in domestic violence cases against women and family members, with main duties to resolve complaints and intelligence reports related to crimes committed in Mount of Lebanon against women and bring perpetrators to justice for trial, and to oversee crimes that fall within jurisdiction including crimes of intellectual property protection, literary, commercial, information, and financial crimes. Judge El Khatib started her judicial career as a district penal judge in Tripoli in 2009 and has been ever since an activist in promoting, protecting and strengthening human rights. As a district penal judge, Judge El Khatib handled many sensitive cases related to the freedom of speech, violence against women, and rights of Syrian refugees, and for such she won in December 2013 the human rights award given by the Foundation for human and humanitarian rights in Lebanon. In august 2015, Judge El Khatib was nominated by the ministry of justice to act in charge of the human right’s legal issues and environmental crimes. Since 2015, Judge El Khatib represented the Lebanese Ministry of Justice in the Human rights counsel at the United Nations and the treaties committees such as the UPR for Lebanon, CERD, CAT, and ICCPR, and also acted as a member in the Inter-Ministerial Committee which reports and follows up on the recommendations related to the International human rights instrument. In March 2017, Judge El Khatib was appointed for a yearly mandate as an legal adviser to the Ministry of Justice, responsible of providing legal support to the Minister of Justice on all legal issues, including day to day legal responsibilities, and investigating and drafting processes of legal documentations such as draft Laws and studying and giving weekly legal observations on the agenda on the Lebanese Counsel of Ministers. Judge El Khatib was also part of the parliament’s administration and Justice sub-committee responsible for elaborating and reforming all the proposed law projects and in the Human Rights sub-committee and which culminated in the amendment of the law 293/2014 aiming to protect women and all the family members from domestic violence, the criminalizing of sexual harassment, of child marriage, the constitution of the national commission for fighting corruption, the amendment of the code of criminal procedures (article 47- the safeguards during the preliminary investigation), and the criminalizing of torture (article 402 of the penal code). In June 2020, Judge El Khatib was appointed by the Lebanese government as a member of the National commission for Lebanese women (NCLW) and also as the Head of the legal committee working on law projects aiming to abolish all forms of discrimination against women in the civil, economic, political fields. Finally and in April 2021, Judge El Khatib was appointed as an International expert for drafting a law project for Libya on protecting Libyan women from all forms of violence (A joint project between UNFPA, UNWOMEN, UNSMIL). Judge El Khatib is indeed an expert in the field and an added value to the course.
We will provide you with the required study guides written by eminent UoL professors and researchers, leaders in the field, with up to date reading materials, including articles and case law. Students registered in the LLM program will receive additional textbooks and will be assisted with additional sessions focusing on past UoL-LLM examinations.
Lawyers, academics interested in human rights, members of national and international institutions involved in human rights issues.
Understanding Contemporary Human Rights Issues
Focus on Women’s Lives and Gender Issues
Application of International Human Rights Law
Feminist Perspective on Human Rights
Addressing Atrocities through International Human Rights and Criminal Law
History and Philosophy of Human Rights Discourse