September 1992, contains report on a consultation of lawyers from different countries of Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Australia and shows the multiplicity of problems and perspectives linked with efforts to have human rights instruments applied correctly in order to repair the gender based injustice experienced by women. The second part, entitled 'Challenges', contains five contributions that offer a series of thought provoking observations. First, Radhika Coomaraswamy states that effective implementation of women's rights as human rights fails in South Asia because of the lack of proper implementation instruments and because of ideological obstacles.
Major barriers are family and personal law, which vary greatly from the secular state law.
As Hilary Charlesworth points out, 'the international prohibition on sex discrimination promises equality to women who attempt to conform to a male model, and offers little to those who do not'. It in fact allows subordination of women, whose sphere of activities is mostly considered as private. This mechanism covers, among others, the lack of state intervention in case of harm caused to women, as the state is expected not to violate privacy. Thus the rights of women are largely left unprotected and the state rightly considered, according to Celina Romany, a party to maintaining patriarchy. The third part presents international and regional approaches, covering the Islamic world, the Americas, and Africa.