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Racing populations, sexing environments: the challenges of a feminist politics in international law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Doris Buss
Doris Buss*
Affiliation:
Keele University
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Abstract

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In 1994, feminist activists made headlines at the United Nations Cairo Conference on Population and Development for their highly organised and influential lobbying. The final agreement negotiated at Cairo reflected this involvement by specifically referring to women's reproductive rights, and by recognising the complex relationship between population policy, environmental security and economic growth. International population policy, defined broadly as the array of international projects and actors involved in efforts to curb population growth, is an increasingly important arena for the contestation of social values and the meaning of global community. In this paper, I offer a re-reading of the 1994 Cairo agreement, and population policy more generally, in the context of colonial discourses around race and gender, which articulate with constructions of the population ‘problem’. Focusing on the language of environment and economic growth, I examine how racialised conceptions of ‘dangerous’ fertility are reinforced rather than challenged by the Cairo agreement. Through this analysis, I attempt to first, make explicit the international inequality that structures international law and policy, and secondly, outline some of the challenges facing feminist engagement with international law.

Type
Research Article
Information
Legal Studies , Volume 20 , Issue 4 , November 2000 , pp. 463 - 484
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Legal Scholars 2000

References

1. See eg F Anthias and N Yuval-Davis Racialized Boundaries: Race, Nation, Gender, Colour and Class und the Anti-Racist Struggle (London and New York: Routledge, 1992).

2. The Cairo Programme was subject to a five-year review in 1998 (Cairo +5) resulting in a United Nations General Assembly resolution outlining gains made since 1994 and scope for further improvement. As that review was not intended to rewrite or reconsider agreement reached at Cairo, this paper focuses on the 1994 agreement as the current international framework. For a discussion of some aspects of Cairo +5, see D Buss “’ How the U.N. Stole Childhood”: The Christian Right and the International Convention on the Rights of the Child’, forthcoming in J Bridgeman and D Monk Feminist Perspectives on Child Care Law (London: Cavendish, forthcoming).

3. G Sen ‘The World Programme of Action: A New Paradigm for Population’ (1995) 37 Environment 10, 11.

4. This is not to suggest that feminists have completely overlooked the racial dimension of population policies. See eg A Bandarage Women, Population and Global Crisis: A Political-Economic Analysis (London and New Jersey: Zed Books, 1997); J Alexander ‘Mobilizing against the State and International “Aid” Agencies: “Third World” Women Define Reproductive Freedom’ in M G Fried From Abortion to Reproductive Freedom: Transforming a Movement (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1990); L Briggs ‘Discourses of “Forced Sterilization” in Puerto Rico: The Problems with the Speaking Subaltern’ (1998) 10 Differences 30. However, within the feminist literature concerning the Cairo Conference very little comment or analysis is made of race or economic inequality in the context of population policy.

5. Sen, above n 3; B B Crane and S L Isaacs ‘The Cairo Programme of Action: A New Framework for International Cooperation on Population and Development Issues’ (1995) 36 Harv Int LJ 295; C A McIntosh and J L Finkle ‘The Cairo Conference on Population and Development: A New Paradigm?’ (1995) 21 Population and Development Rev 233; R Petchesky Commentary: ‘From Population Control to Reproductive Rights: Feminist Fault Lines’ (1995) 6 Reproductive Health Matters 152.

6. My use of ‘Third World women’ in this context is taken from Chandra Talpade Mohanty, who argues that “Third World” retains a certain heuristic value and explanatory specificity in relation to the inheritance of colonialism and contemporary neocolonial economic and geopolitical processes’: ‘Women Workers and Capitalist Scripts: Ideologies of Domination, Common Interests, and the Politics of Solidarity’ in M J Alexander and C T Mohanty Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures (New York and London: Routledge, 1997) p 7.

7. An exception to this are aboriginal and some poor communities within Western countries that are often treated as ‘other’ to the dominant population and have a status akin to Third World or developing countries. For these groups, demographics and related issues such as child custody have been subject to intervention by the dominant population. See M Kline ‘The Colour of Law: Ideological Representations of First Nations in Legal Discourse’ (1994) 3 4 Social and Legal Studies 451. Because the Cairo process is overtly directed at populations in the Third World, this is the focus of my analysis.

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23. Thanks to my colleague Michael Thomson for making this connection for me and for his assistance with this section more generally.

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31. b hooks Black Looks: Race and Representation (Boston, MA: South End, 1992) pp 61–77.

32. McClintock, above n 9, pp 352–389.

33. Hartmann, above n 19, p 57; see also Crane, above n 19, pp 351–393.

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39. above n 37, pp 127–131.

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50. Above n 49, p 20.

51. M Davies ‘Taking the Inside Out: Sex and Gender in the Legal Subject’ in N Naffine and R Owens Sexing the Subject of Law (London: Sweet & Maxwell, 1997) p 32.

52. Douglas and Wildavsky, above n 49, p 8; Hajer, above n 49, p 17; Mcnaghten and Urry, above n 49, p 15.

53. Mcnaghten and Urry, above n 49, p 14.

54. Above n 49, p 14.

55. Above n 49, p 15, Richard Grove, however, argues that the colonial relationship with colonised land was more complex than simple imperial exploitation. He maintains that the roots of some Western environmentalism can be traced back to early efforts to protect colonial lands from environmental destruction: Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion Tropical Island Edens and the Origins of Environmentalism, 1600–1860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) p 6.

56. Mcnaughten and Urry, above n 49, p 30.

57. Douglas and Wildavsky, above n 49, p 8.

58. Purity and Danger, An Analysis of Conceptions of Pollution and Taboo (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966); Risk and Blame: Essays in Cultural Theory (New York and London: Routledge, 1992).

59. Above n 49, 37.

60. Above n 49, p 162.

61. Hajer, above n 49, p 14; Furedi, above n 18, p 143.

62. Above n 49, p 214. See also: Union of Concerned Scientists ‘World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity’, distributed at the International Conference on Population and Development, 1994, available electronically through the Population Information Network.

63. Douglas and Wildavsky, above n 49, p 8.

64. K Strom ‘Population and Habitat in the New Millenium: A Handbook for the Environmental Activist (Boulder, CO: Population & Habitat Campaign, National Audubon Society, 1998) p 1.

65. Union of Concerned Scientists, above n 62.

66. United States Agency for International Development ‘Making a World of Difference One Family at a Time’ (1998) 3 Global Issues: Population at the Millenium, the US Perspective 32 at 32.

67. Above n 62.

68. ‘Interrelationships between Population, Sustained Economic Growth and Sustainable Development’.

69. Furedi, above n 18, p 162.

70. Strorn, above n 64, p 22.

71. Above n 62.

72. Comaroff and Comaroff, above n 22, p 109.

73. R Braidotti Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory (New York: Columbia University Press); M Thomson ‘Legislating for the Monstrous: Access to Reproductive Services and the Monstrous Feminine’ (1997) 6 Social and Legal Studies 401.

74. Thomson, above n 73, p 419.

75. McClintock, above n 9, p 48.

76. See above at nn 24–32.

77. Above n 4, p 53.

78. The public sphere is defined in para 4.3(b) as ‘production, employment, income-generating activities, education, health, science and technology, sports, culture and population related activities’.

79. G Chowdhry ‘Engendering Development? Women in Development (WID) in International Development Regimes’ in M H Marchand and J L Parpart Feminism/Postmodernism/Drvelopment (London and New York: Routledge, 1995) p 33.

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81. See also C Chinkin ‘Feminist Interventions into International Law’ (1997) 19 Adelaide LR 13 at 23.

82. Otto, above n 80, p 21.

83. Mohanty, above n 6, p 5.

84. Above n 6, p 5.

85. Above n 6, p 8.

86. Above n 6, p 6.

87. Above n 16, p 161.

88. Furedi, above n 18, p 162.