Arabs at Home and in the World Human Rights, Gender Politics, and Identity Routledge Research in Human Rights Law Series

This volume brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars from the United States, the Middle East, and North Africa, to discuss and critically analyze the intersection of gender and human rights laws as applied to individuals of Arab descent. It seeks to raise consciousness at the intersection of gender, identity, and human rights as it relates to Arabs at home and throughout the diaspora. The context of revolution and the destabilizing impact of armed conflicts in the region are used to critique and examine the utility of human rights law to address contemporary human rights issues through extralegal strategies. To this end, the volume seeks to inform, educate, persuade, and facilitate newer or less-heard perspectives related to gender and masculinities theories. It provides readers with new ways of understanding gender and human rights and proposes forward-looking solutions to implementing human rights norms.

The goal of this book is to use the context of Arabs at home and throughout the diaspora to critique and examine the utility of human rights norms and laws to diminish human suffering with the goal of transforming the structural, social, and cultural conditions that impede access to human rights. This bookwill be of interest to a diverse audience of scholars, students, public policy researchers, lawyers and the educated public interested in the fields of human rights law, international studies, gender politics, migration and diaspora, and Middle East and North African politics.

Foreword

Adrien Wing

Part 1: The Intersection of Gender and Human Rights Norms for Individuals of Arab Descent

1. Introduction. Gender, Identity and Human Rights

Karla McKanders

2.Hijab as a Human Right

Louise Cainkar

3. The Accession of Palestine to CEDAW: Quo Vadis?

Mutaz M. Qafisheh

Part 2: At Home: Arab Spring, Gender and Human Rights

4.The Sources of Patriarchal Authority in the Maghreb

Fatima Sadiqi

5. Media Representations of Palestinian Women

Halla Shoaibi

Part 3: Impact of Gender on Arab Migration and Human Rights Norms

6. Reframing Violence Against Male Asylum Seekers from the Region as Gender-based Persecution

Valorie Vojdik

7. Gender, Islamophobia and Refugee Exceptionalism

Karla McKanders

8. Moroccan Women’s Migration to Europe as a Transformative Experience

Moha Ennaji

Karla M. McKanders is a Clinical Professor at Vanderbilt University, School of Law in Nashville, Tennessee, USA.