AN EXERCISE IN WORLDMAKING 2009 - ISS

17 Intersectionality and Human Rights: Law, Theory and Praxis 203
from an ethnic, religious or cultural group in which her marital status is
an integral part of her survival (more so than in many secular societies),
or if she is disabled or cannot speak the dominant language/s of the
country in which she currently resides. Conventions which are aimed at
providing protection to undocumented migrants, but which fail to recognise
the particular positioning of a woman migrant, perhaps a woman
who is not heterosexual, not married, or not young, for example, become
documents which offer procedural justice but little substantive protection.
The same can be said of programmes, civic organisations or international
multilateral agencies, which aim to provide assistance to survivors
of sexual violence. The way a woman experiences violence not only differs
from the way a man may experience it, but factors like economic
status, sexual orientation, race and ethnicity all play a significant part in
how she experiences the violence, as well as the causal factors that led to
it (such as “corrective” rape for lesbians as opposed to the systematic
sexual assault of women during violent conflicts). The way that these
programmes and organisations approach violence and the survivor, how
they frame solutions to the problem and which strategies they adopt to
promote victim empowerment, can be significantly improved through
the application of an intersectional framework, as services and support
can recognise and accommodate her specific needs based on her particular
location.
Secondly, intersectionality has the potential to highlight the multiple
dimensions of political and social exclusion by asking the right questions,
such as: how do the multiple identities of individuals or communities
emphasise or intensify the way that they experience injustice? How do
reformist politics on one issue (such as gender) (re)enforce the subordinating
and exclusionary aspects of another issue (such as race)? How do
current human rights theories and practices exacerbate social exclusion
through their denial of intersectionality?
The multiple positioning of identity results in a multi-dimensional experience
of exclusion. If identity politics and theory fail to take this into account,
they relegate the identity and the differing experiences of exclusion
to a place of irrelevance or complete denial. In other words, it is not only
that human rights praxis can be improved through a clearer understanding
of the nature of oppression, but it is also true that theory and praxis that
fail to employ an intersectional framework runs the risk of excluding some