Abstract
By most measures, the impact of international human rights law ratification in the Arab Gulf region primarily in the 1990s and 2000s has been minimal. Scholars have found little evidence of correlation between ratification of the core human rights conventions with the minimal improvements in human rights practice in the region. Ratification of most human rights instruments Arab Gulf states in recent decades has, however, offered new cases from which to explore the impact of international human rights law in countries where human rights monitors find protections to be most limited. Using the case of Kuwait’s ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), this article examines the impact of ratification in 1994 on discourses on discrimination against women in national press on human rights in the country. Through analysis of reporting in national newspaper Al-Anba, the article identifies how ratification has shaped the language used in national press reporting on women’s rights to increasingly reference the convention and frame rights violations in the language of “discrimination.” In tracing these connections between the convention and related content in local press, the article identifies new avenue to explore the “impact” of human rights treaty ratification, even when formal changes in laws and policies so far have been limited.
Highlights
When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was introduced at the United Nations in 1948, proponents of a global human rights agenda entered an era of optimism
The findings firstly reveal a clear increase in the usage of the phrase al-tamyīz or close variations) in Al-Anba articles supportive of reforms to advance women’s rights between the period of 2006–2010 to advocate for reforms in Kuwait
Through the analysis presented on reporting in Al-Anba, women’s rights discussions in Kuwait sometimes incorporate a global women’s rights language, which, among many factors, is supported by the country’s commitment as party to CEDAW
Summary
When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was introduced at the United Nations in 1948, proponents of a global human rights agenda entered an era of optimism. I illustrate the use of CEDAW and its language in Kuwaiti human rights discourse by demonstrating the increased use of the phrase “discrimination against women” [al-tamyīz ḍidd al-mar’ah] alongside the growing use of direct references to the CEDAW in Al-Anba, a prominent, conservative, and progovernment Kuwaiti Arabic-language newspaper, to reflect some shift in domestic framing and understanding of women’s rights issues over time This is observed primarily since 2006, a period of greater press freedom in Kuwait, and as such, this time period is the focus of analysis for this article to view how a generally more free press has shaped and covered the topic of women’s rights in new and changing ways. The GCC states’ ratification of core human rights treaties such as CEDAW has, as Simmons would suggest, helped raise the domestic salience of some of the norms enshrined in these treaties, even if the norms broadly contained in these treaties are not fully internalized and enforced in the Kuwait and its GCC neighbors
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