Legislative frameworks relating to the rights of women require an evaluation to understand their real effects on women, said Paula Wachter, Executive Director of Red por la Infancia in Argentina, on behalf of ISHR.
Speaking at the interactive dialogue with the UN Working Group on discrimination against women in law and practice, Wachter highlighted that advances in the defense of the family as a social value is often occurring at the expense of the rights of family members. ‘The openly misogynist patriarchal concepts about the sacralisation of the family are guaranteeing the impunity of perpetrators of abuse’ said Wachter.
In particular, Wachter highlighted that courts in Argentina continue to issue rulings which criminalise women who want to end incest within the family. ‘This concept of Parental Alienation Syndrome forces children to keep in touch with their aggressor and if they refuse, the mothers are often blamed and lose parental care of the child’, said Wachter.
Criminalisation and stigmatisation of women who defend human rights is a reality of her work, says Wachter, as threats are made by both State and non-State actors.
Paula Wachter was a participant in ISHR’s Human Rights Defenders Advocacy Programme in June 2017.
Watch the statement here:
ISHR joins 22 human rights organisations in strongly condemning the Hong Kong government’s escalating repression of activists in exile and the targeting of relatives of prominent activist Anna Kwok.
On 5 and 6 May 2025, during its 83rd Ordinary Session, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACHPR) held the second joint forum of its special mechanisms. It serves as an opportunity to bring actors from various backgrounds to discuss the possibility of converging human rights and sustainable development for the benefit of Africans.
At the 83rd ordinary session of the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, held in Banjul (The Gambia) from 2 May to 22 May, ISHR delivered an oral statement calling for peace in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the continuation of the process toward a human rights defenders protection law in Zambia, reparations for Africans and people of African descent, and a binding treaty on environmental rights in Africa.
