The Women's Rights Project was established in 1990 to work in conjunction with Human Rights Watch's five regional divisions to monitor violence against women and discrimination on the basis of gender worldwide. The Project grew out of Human Rights Watch's recognition of the epidemic proportions of violence and gender discrimination around the world and of the past failure of human rights organizations to hold governments accountable for abuse of women's basic human rights.

The Project monitors the performance of specific countries in securing women's human rights, highlights individual cases with international significance, and serves as a link between the women's rights and human rights communities at both a domestic and international level.

In 1991, the Women's Rights Project undertook investigations in two countries. The first mission, in collaboration with Americas Watch, documented violence against women in the home in Brazil and the failure of the Brazilian government to prosecute such abuse and guarantee its female citizens equal protection of the law. The report of that mission, Criminal Injustice: Violence Against Women in Brazil, was released in November.

The report found that it is still possible for a man to kill his wife in Brazil and be acquitted by the courts on the grounds of honor. It also found that while reports of domestic violence greatly increased as a result of the creation of police stations specifically designed to address crimes of violence against women, efforts to impose criminal penalties for such abuse remain woefully inadequate. Of over two thousand cases of violence against women reported to the main women's police station in Rio de Janeiro in 1991, none resulted in punishment of the accused. The report called on the Brazilian government to apply the law fully and fairly in Brazil, to disavow publicly the honor defense, and to train both the police and judges in the importance of applying criminal sanctions to domestic abuse. (For more on the report, see the chapter on Brazil.)

In November, the Women's Rights Project, together with Asia Watch, traveled to Pakistan to investigate violence against women in police custody and the role of gender discrimination in the incarceration of women. The delegation found that over seventy percent of women in police custody report sexual abuse by police officials. It investigated several cases of rape and sexual torture of women by police officials and found no case that had resulted in criminal penalties for the accused officers. Basic protections--including requirements that all detainees are charged with a specific crime and are produced before a magistrate within twenty-four hours and that women detainees are interrogated in the presence of a female officer are routinely violated.

The delegation found that over sixty percent of women in Pakistani jails are there for offenses under the Hudood Ordinances, which were introduced by General Zia ul-Haq in 1979 as part of an "Islamization" campaign designed to consolidate his support from an increasingly powerful fundamentalist minority. The ordinances enforce punishments for adultery, fornication and rape; all three crimes are defined as "sexual intercourse outside of marriage," with rape requiring the added element of a lack of consent.

Women are often imprisoned in Pakistan because they were unable to prove a rape charge (lack of consent) and were thus themselves charged with adultery or fornication. This bizarre transformation occurs largely because evidentiary laws are explicitly biased against women and, in the absence of evidence other than the female victim's own testimony, male defendants find it easy to deny the charge. In such cases medical reports introduced by the victim in support of her rape charge (pregnancy or signs of forced penetration) are often used against her to prove that impermissible sex occurred. As no such medical evidence exists regarding the accused rapist, he is often released for lack of evidence while female rape victims are charged with fornication or adultery and sent to prison pending trial.

The delegation also found increasing numbers of Bangladeshi women in Pakistani jails. According to a recent nationwide survey in Pakistan, some 150 to 200 Bengali women are brought by traffickers each month from Bangladesh to Pakistan. These women are often lured across the border by promises of work and find themselves forcibly sold into prostitution or domestic servitude. If discovered by the police, they are arrested as illegal immigrants and imprisoned. The survey estimated that 1,400 Bangladeshi women are currently in Pakistani jails.

The delegation's report on the mission to Pakistan is scheduled for release in early 1992.

In addition to these completed missions, the Women's Rights Project is working with Helsinki Watch on two additional reports on women's rights in Czechoslovakia and Poland and with Middle East Watch on gender discrimination under the Family Code in Algeria.

The Women's Rights Project also has begun to investigate individual cases of international significance. The Project's first effort in this area involved a collaboration with Middle East Watch to protest the closing by the Egyptian government of the Arab Women's Solidarity Association (AWSA). The Egyptian authorities closed the Association, known in Egypt and worldwide for its work on women's rights, without warning or justification. The legality of the closing is being challenged by AWSA in court. The Women's Rights Project together with Middle East Watch and the Urban Morgan Institute for Human Rights of the University of Cincinnati College of Law filed an amicus curiae brief protesting the closing on the grounds that it violated international guarantees of freedom of expression and association.

Another important objective of the Women's Rights Project's is to build ties between domestic and international human rights and women's rights groups to raise the visibility of violence against women and discrimination on the basis of gender as human rights violations, and to strengthen the mechanisms for making governments accountable for such practices. In addition to the Project's field work, which often involves linking women's and human rights groups, the Project has participated in and sponsored several meetings designed to bring the women's rights and human rights communities together. For example, in November 1991, the Women's Rights Project hosted a meeting between international women's rights monitors and representatives of several international human rights organizations as a step toward improved collaboration in the future. The report from this meeting was released in December.

The Women's Rights Project is directed by Dorothy Thomas and staffed by Dionne Morris. For the academic year 1991-1992, Michele Beasley, having received a Women, Law and Public Policy Fellowship from the Georgetown University Law Center, has joined the Project as staff attorney. The Women's Rights Project is based in Human Rights Watch's Washington office.