Resource Library

State of World Population 2008

Reaching Common Ground: Culture, Gender and Human Rights

Publisher: The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)

Place of Publish: USA, New York

Year: 2008

Page Numbers: 99

Acc. No: 3216

Class No: 305.3 STA

Category: Books & Reports

Subjects: Social Processes

Type of Resource: Monograph

Languages: English

ISBN: 978-0-89714-889-4

As a starting point, this report by the UNFPA focuses on the universal validation of the international human rights framework. It discusses and showcases how culturally sensitive approaches are critical for the realisation of human rights in general and women’s rights in particular. This report gives us an overview of the conceptual framework as well as the practice of development, by looking at everyday events that make up people’s experience of development. Cultural sensitivity approaches require familiarity with how cultures work and how to work with them. This report presents some of the cultural challenges and dilemmas of culturally sensitive strategies and suggests how they should be addressed. Cultures influence and are influenced by external circumstances and change in response. They have varied norms, customs, behaviors and attitudes and it is risky to genaralise and dangerous to judge one culture based on the norms of another. This report explores such cultures and their variations, influences and perceptions based on them.