Article 23(1) International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966)
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/08/11
Article 23.
1. The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.
The right of men and women of marriageable age to marry and to found a family shall be recognized.
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966)
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights speaks to two major domains of rights for women. One is the civic life of a country. Another is the political rights, e.g., presumably the right to vote and take part in the levers of power in some way. The basic premise of a lot of the Covenant is devoted to those two aspects of the rights to equality.
In regards to Article 23(1), the stipulation has a specific statement about women and a marriageable age. It stipulates the fundamental group unit in the society as the family; by implication, the basic non-group unit in the society is the individual. This does provide an argument for collectivism at the level of the family, and for individualism at the level of the – ahem – individual.
That seems as if a tacit assumption within the human rights document in civic and political life. This natural, group, and fundamental unit of the society, in the family, deserves and reserves the right to protection by not only the society at large but also the government at the helm of the society. No preference or bias given to either a conservative, centrist, or liberal government.
In that, we have arguments for a layered individualist-collectivism intended for the protection of the family as a right for the family, but then a responsibility of the society and the government to protect the family. For men or women, without statement one way or the other about the sexual orientation of the individual, they hold the right to marriage at marriageable age.
Of course, this may differ from state to state, province to province, and territory to territory; however, the fundamental right to marriage at or above the marriage age and then to have the marriage recognized is an important fundamental right of both men and women. We can, obviously, see many instances in either general statistics nationally and internationally or in individual news coverage the violation of both the rights of the child and the best interests of the child in the cases of child marriage.
–One can find similar statements in other documents, conventions, declarations and so on, with the subsequent statements of equality or women’s rights:
- The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the Preamble, Article 16, and Article 25(2).
- Convention Against Discrimination in Education (1960) in Article 1.
- The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) in Article 3, Article 7, and Article 13.
- International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966).
- Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979).
- Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984).
- The Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (1993).
- Beijing Declaration(1995).
- United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000).
- Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children (2000).
- The Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa or the “Maputo Protocol” (2003).
- Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence or the Istanbul Convention (2011) Article 38 and Article 39.
License
In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
Copyright
© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.
In-Sight Publishing 