Amnesty International is campaigning to raise awareness of the rights enshrined in this 50 year old document and to encourage people and governments to do everything in their power to ensure these rights become a reality. However, despite commitments by governments to equality, the progress in making the rights enshrined in the UDHR a reality for women has been slow. Two years later, the Fourth UN World Conference on Women in Beijing adopted strong and detailed recommendations for the promotion and protection of women's human rights. In the many armed conflicts raging around the world, women are particularly vulnerable to abuse, death, maiming and displacement. It is estimated that more than 80 per cent of war casualties are now civilians, many of them women, and the overwhelming majority of refugees and displaced people are women and children.
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. 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. In March 1999, we will be holding a conference about women in detention.