Women's Action Network Women are in double jeopardy. Discriminated against as women, they are also as likely as men, if not more so, to become victims of human rights violations. Few countries treat their women as well as their men. Despite moves to introduce equality for women on the legislative and political front, discrimination on grounds of gender remains an international reality. An Inter-Parliamentary Union Survey of 96 national parliaments, published in 1991, found that just 11 percent of their members were women.
Discrimination is a deadly disease.
Every year, because of discrimination, millions of women are mutilated, battered to death, burned alive, stripped of their legal rights, and bought and sold in an unacknowledged but international trade in slaves for domestic or sexual purposes. Because of their gender women are at risk of a range of violent abuses by private organisations and individuals. Human Rights are Women's Rights, AI, March 1995. Campaigning for Women's Human Rights Amnesty International's goal is to contribute to the observance throughout the world of the human rights set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In pursuing this goal Amnesty International works to promote in general all the human rights enshrined in the UDHR and other international standards, through human rights education programmes and campaigning for ratification of human rights treaties.