AN EXERCISE IN WORLDMAKING 2009 - ISS

202 CHANTELLE DE NOBREGA
know exactly what we are dealing with: which violation or crime, against
whom, by whom and when. And yet, the experience of violence, oppression
and social exclusion is different for each individual and community
depending on their location in this nexus of discrimination and identity.
Thus, improving labour rights on paper, while important, does little to
address women’s rights if it does not take into account the way women
experience institutional gendered discrimination and how this intersects
with class or ethnicity. The importance we place on these categories
means that they support a particular system as they
are the pathways, the mechanisms though which societies assign and attribute
identities… They determine the way we think, the way we frame
the world, and the way the world perceives and treats us. Thus categories
exert a profound influence on our lives because some categories are given
more importance than others; some categories wield more influence and
are more powerful than others and some categories marginalize other
categories and silence their points of view (Raj 2003: v).
Raj’s latter point about the impact of categorisation on influence and
power goes to the heart of Crenshaw’s characterisation of political intersectionality.
Political, legal and social practices directly and discursively
create and recreate frameworks through which we understand identity,
oppression, discrimination and victimhood, and often “erase” marginal
voices, such as those of women of colour. Institutions and processes
which address racism, sexism and other forms of oppression as separate
and mutually exclusive, can create exclusionary practices as they embrace
what Crenshaw calls “monocausal frameworks” (1993: 112). This is the
trap that some human rights lawyers, activists and treaty bodies have
fallen into. The prioritisation of human rights issues is strongly influenced
by the dominant voices within the global human rights community.
Thus, how a problem is framed, and hence the solution, are often
the result of how those with access have understood a particular issue.
The impact of this monocausal approach, as well as how it shapes political,
legal and social discourses on any particular issue, has multiple dimensions.
Firstly, the value of interventions or “solutions” that are
adopted at the international level (in conventions, law and practice) is
diminished by the lack of an intersectional understanding and approach.
For example, undocumented migrants (as a whole) struggle to ensure
that their human rights are fully recognised and protected. This can be
made far more difficult and complex, however, if the migrant is a woman