Universal-Womens-accesss-to-justice-Publications-Practitioners-Guide-Series-2016-ENG

24 PRACTITIONERS GUIDE No. 12
because “honour” has been transgressed; and
The availability and accessibility of remedies, and
difficulties in securing a remedy, for example, difficulties
for women in accessing legal remedies because of lack
of legal aid, need of male family member support, need
to concentrate on care of dependents and lack of
appropriate healthcare.” 37
‘Intersectionality’: protecting women’s rights for all
women in all their diversity
‘Intersectionality’ is a term developed in international human
rights discourse to express the fact that individuals may be
subjected to discrimination or treated unequally in a variety of,
or compounded, ways according to various facets of their
identity. These multiple forms need to be taken into account in
order to design methods of implementing rights obligations.
Some of the characteristics that have been identified as
amounting to grounds for intersectional or compounded
discrimination, which may increase the difficulty of women from
these groups to access justice, include:
Ethnicity/race;
Indigenous or minority status;
Colour;
Socio-economic status and/or caste;
Language;
Religion or belief;
Political opinion;
National origin;
Marital and/or maternal status;
Age;
Urban/rural location and geographical remoteness;
Health status;
Disability;
37
Amnesty International, “Making Rights a Reality: The Duty of States
to Address Violence Against Women”, AI Index ACT/77/049/2004,
page 12.