Forgotten Architects: How Women Shaped the Foundation of International Human Rights Law

The history of international human rights law is often told through the lens of statesmen, diplomats, and post-war political maneuvering. Yet this narrative overlooks a critical truth: women were not merely participants in this endeavor — they were its architects, drafters, and most persistent advocates. From the peace movements of the early 1900s to the drafting of landmark treaties, women pressed for a vision of human rights that was inclusive, enforceable, and responsive to the realities of gender-based discrimination. Understanding their role is not simply a matter of historical correction; it reveals how international law itself was shaped by the struggles, strategies, and sacrifices of women across continents and generations.

The story of women in international human rights law is one of strategic persistence. Facing exclusion from formal diplomatic channels, women built parallel institutions, formed transnational coalitions, and used every available platform — from peace conferences to UN commissions — to embed gender equality into the DNA of international law. Their legacy is visible in every major human rights instrument adopted since 1945, yet their contributions remain underappreciated in mainstream legal scholarship.

Early Foundations: Women’s Activism and the Birth of International Human Rights

The Peace Movement as a Rights Platform

Long before the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was drafted, women were linking peace, justice, and human rights in ways that would later become foundational. Bertha von Suttner, the first woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1905, used her international platform to argue that militarism and the subjugation of women were twin evils that required a universal legal framework to address. Her novel Lay Down Your Arms inspired a generation of women to see peace not as an abstract ideal but as a precondition for human rights. Similarly, Jane Addams, the founder of Hull House in Chicago and later a Nobel laureate, organized the International Congress of Women in 1915, bringing together women from warring and neutral nations to demand an end to hostilities and the creation of a lasting peace based on justice and equality.

These early activists understood something that formal diplomacy often ignored: that war and gender inequality were structurally connected. The resolutions passed at the 1915 Congress called for universal suffrage, equal rights for women in all spheres, and the establishment of international mechanisms to resolve disputes peacefully — presaging many of the provisions that would later appear in UN human rights treaties.

The Interwar Period: Women and the League of Nations

When the League of Nations was established in 1920, women’s organizations immediately mobilized to ensure that gender equality would not be overlooked. The Inter-Allied Women’s Conference in 1918 had already produced a declaration demanding equal rights for women and men, which was presented to the peace negotiators at Versailles. Although the League’s Covenant did not explicitly include gender equality in its founding text, women’s persistent lobbying led to the inclusion of provisions addressing trafficking in women and children, as well as labor protections for women workers. The League established several expert committees — such as the Committee on the Traffic in Women and Children and the Committee on the Status of Women — that created precedents for international monitoring of women’s rights.

Aleksandra Kollontai of the Soviet Union and Helene Lange of Germany were among the women who used these platforms to push for recognition that women’s rights were human rights. Their work, though often marginalized by male-dominated diplomatic circles, created the institutional memory and legal vocabulary that would prove indispensable during the founding of the United Nations.

Women at the Creation of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration

The San Francisco Conference: Writing Equality into the UN Charter

The 1945 San Francisco Conference, which established the United Nations, might have produced a charter that ignored gender equality entirely — had women not intervened. Minerva Bernardino of the Dominican Republic and Bertha Lutz of Brazil were among a small but determined group of women delegates who insisted that the Charter explicitly affirm equal rights. Bernardino, who had helped found the Inter-American Commission of Women, argued forcefully that the phrase "equal rights of men and women" must appear in the purposes of the new organization. Lutz, a biologist and feminist who had been active in the international women's movement for decades, organized women delegates into a caucus that coordinated strategy across national delegations.

Their success is visible in Article 1 of the UN Charter, which declares as one of the UN's purposes "promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion." This was the first time an international treaty explicitly prohibited sex-based discrimination, and it set the stage for every subsequent human rights instrument.

Drafting the Universal Declaration: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Global Women’s Caucus

The drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) between 1946 and 1948 is often associated primarily with Eleanor Roosevelt, who chaired the UN Human Rights Commission with remarkable diplomatic skill. Roosevelt's leadership was indeed indispensable — she navigated sharp ideological divisions between Western, Soviet, and non-aligned states, kept the drafting process on track, and used her enormous public visibility to build global support for the Declaration. However, she operated within a network of women who collectively shaped the document's language and content.

Hansa Mehta, the Indian delegate and vice-chair of the Commission, is credited with the single most important change to the Declaration's text. The original draft used the phrase "All men are born free and equal," following the tradition of Enlightenment-era declarations. Mehta objected that this would exclude women from the Declaration's scope and proposed "All human beings are born free and equal" — language that was adopted and that has since become the standard formula in human rights instruments worldwide.

Other women who played critical roles included Lakshmi Menon of India, who pushed for explicit protections against discrimination based on sex; Marie-Hélène Lefaucheux of France, who advocated for economic and social rights; and Bodil Begtrup of Denmark, who chaired the Commission on the Status of Women and ensured its recommendations were incorporated into the UDHR. The final text, adopted in 1948, contains multiple provisions that bear the imprint of women's advocacy, including Article 2's non-discrimination clause, Article 16's recognition of equal rights in marriage, and Article 25's guarantee of protection for motherhood and childhood.

The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)

If the UDHR established the principle of gender equality in international law, CEDAW translated that principle into binding obligations. Adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1979, CEDAW is often described as an international bill of rights for women. Its drafting was driven by women from across the Global South and North who insisted that discrimination against women required a comprehensive treaty, not merely aspirational declarations.

Leticia Ramos-Shahani of the Philippines chaired the working group that produced the Convention and ensured it addressed not only political and civil rights but also economic, social, and cultural dimensions of discrimination. Helvi Sipilä of Finland, who later became the first female Assistant Secretary-General of the UN, argued for robust enforcement mechanisms, including the establishment of an expert committee to monitor states parties' compliance. The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, established under Article 17 of the Convention, has since issued hundreds of recommendations that have shaped national legislation in areas such as equal pay, marital rights, and political participation.

The Convention's optional protocol, adopted in 1999 and championed by women's organizations worldwide, created a mechanism allowing individual women to bring complaints directly to the Committee — a significant strengthening of enforcement that has been used to challenge discriminatory laws in countries from Hungary to Burkina Faso.

The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action

The Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing in 1995, was the largest gathering of women in history and produced the most comprehensive policy framework for women's rights ever adopted by the international community. The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action identified 12 critical areas of concern — including violence against women, inequality in economic structures, and the persistent burden of poverty on women — and set specific targets for governments and international institutions.

The Platform's influence on international law has been profound. Its call for recognizing violence against women as a human rights violation contributed directly to the UN Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women (1993) and shaped the jurisprudence of international criminal tribunals. Its emphasis on women's participation in decision-making influenced the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace, and security. And its insistence on gender mainstreaming — the idea that gender perspectives should be integrated into all policies and programs — has become standard practice in UN human rights mechanisms.

Women, War, and Justice: Transforming International Criminal Law

Prosecuting Sexual Violence as a War Crime

One of the most significant contributions of women to international human rights law has been the recognition of sexual violence as a grave violation of international law. For most of the 20th century, rape during armed conflict was treated as an inevitable byproduct of war, a crime of opportunity that did not attract serious legal consequences. Women activists and lawyers changed this.

The International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), established in 1993, became a laboratory for gender-sensitive jurisprudence under the leadership of judges like Gabrielle Kirk McDonald of the United States and Rosalyn Higgins of the United Kingdom. The Tribunal's groundbreaking decision in the Furundžija case (1998) held that rape could constitute torture and a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions. The Kunarac case (2001) further established that sexual enslavement was a crime against humanity. These rulings created a legal framework that the International Criminal Court (ICC), established by the Rome Statute in 1998, inherited and expanded.

Women's organizations — including the Women's Caucus for Gender Justice, which mobilized during the Rome Conference — ensured that the ICC's founding statute included detailed provisions on sexual and gender-based crimes. Article 7 lists rape, sexual slavery, and enforced prostitution as crimes against humanity; Article 8 includes them as war crimes in both international and non-international armed conflicts. The Court's Office of the Prosecutor has made gender-based crimes a strategic priority, and the Trust Fund for Victims provides reparations that recognize the specific harms women suffer during conflict.

UN Security Council Resolution 1325: Women, Peace, and Security

The adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 in October 2000 marked a paradigm shift in how the international community understood the relationship between women and armed conflict. Resolution 1325 recognizes that women are not only victims of war but also agents of peace — and that sustainable peace requires women's full participation in conflict prevention, resolution, and post-conflict reconstruction.

The resolution's adoption was the result of years of advocacy by women's organizations, particularly the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom and the NGO Working Group on Women, Peace and Security. Namibia, which held a rotating seat on the Security Council and had a strong women's movement, introduced the resolution with support from countries including Canada, Bangladesh, and Jamaica. Since 2000, seven additional Security Council resolutions have built on 1325's framework, creating a comprehensive normative architecture that links women's rights to international peace and security. National action plans developed under Resolution 1325 have been adopted by over 100 countries, translating international commitments into domestic policies on women's protection and participation.

Institutional Legacy: Permanent Mechanisms for Women's Rights

The Commission on the Status of Women

The UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), established in 1946 as a subsidiary body of the Economic and Social Council, has been the primary intergovernmental forum for advancing women's rights within the UN system. Throughout the Cold War and beyond, the CSW produced legally binding conventions — including the Convention on the Political Rights of Women (1953) and the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women (1993) — and monitored their implementation through expert rapporteurs and working groups.

Women who served on the CSW, including Lakshmi Menon, Helvi Sipilä, and Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, used their positions to build coalitions that crossed geopolitical divides, ensuring that women's rights remained on the international agenda even during periods when other human rights issues were blocked by ideological confrontation.

Treaty Bodies and Special Procedures

The creation of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women in 1981 gave women's rights a permanent monitoring body comparable to the treaty bodies overseeing the ICCPR and ICESCR. The Committee's general recommendations — particularly General Recommendation No. 19 on violence against women (1992) and General Recommendation No. 35 on gender-based violence (2017) — have been widely cited by national courts and legislatures. The Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women, established by the Human Rights Council in 1994, has produced thematic reports on topics from femicide to domestic violence that have shaped national legislation in countries across all regions.

These institutional mechanisms reflect women's understanding that human rights are not self-executing — they require monitoring, reporting, and accountability structures to be effective. The women who designed these mechanisms understood that international law would only matter if it could be enforced.

Challenges That Persist Despite the Achievements

The story of women's contributions to international human rights law is not one of unbroken progress. Women faced systematic exclusion from formal decision-making throughout the 20th century. At the League of Nations, fewer than 5% of delegates were women. During the drafting of the UDHR, only three of the eighteen members of the Human Rights Commission were women. Women delegates in San Francisco in 1945 had to organize their own caucus because they were excluded from the informal negotiations that determined the Charter's key provisions.

Economic disparities compounded these structural barriers. Women's organizations operated with a fraction of the resources available to male-dominated diplomatic networks. The Cold War created additional complications: communist states promoted state-sanctioned equality narratives while suppressing independent women's movements, and Western powers sometimes used women's rights instrumentally to criticize adversaries rather than to advance genuine gender justice. Women from the Global South had to navigate both patriarchal traditions in their own societies and neocolonial dynamics in international forums, where their perspectives were often dismissed as parochial or insufficiently radical.

Contemporary challenges remain serious. As of 2024, women hold only about 43% of seats in UN human rights treaty bodies, and the International Law Commission has never had a female majority. The rise of anti-gender movements, budget cuts to UN Women and other gender-focused agencies, and the increasing use of disinformation to undermine women's rights advocacy all threaten the gains of the past century. The COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately affected women's human rights, increasing rates of gender-based violence, reducing access to reproductive health services, and pushing women out of the workforce in ways that will take years to reverse.

Continuing the Legacy: Present and Future Frontiers

Women today continue to expand and enforce international human rights law through new instruments and innovative strategies. The Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (the Istanbul Convention, 2011) sets the highest standards for state action on gender-based violence, including obligations to criminalize psychological violence, stalking, and forced marriage. The Maputo Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights (2003) guarantees comprehensive rights for African women, including reproductive rights and protections during armed conflict.

Women-led organizations such as Equality Now, the Center for Reproductive Rights, and Human Rights Watch have used strategic litigation to enforce existing treaties and push the boundaries of international law. The #MeToo movement and #NiUnaMenos have demonstrated the power of digital activism to hold governments and institutions accountable for sexual violence and discrimination, while also exposing the limitations of legal frameworks that were not designed to address systemic harassment.

Three frontier areas will define women's contributions to international human rights law in the coming decades. First, intersectional discrimination — the recognition that women face compounded disadvantages based on race, class, ethnicity, disability, and other factors — requires human rights frameworks that can address multiple forms of discrimination simultaneously. Second, climate justice implicates women's rights in profound ways, as women in the Global South bear the heaviest burdens of environmental degradation while having the least access to decision-making on climate policy. Third, artificial intelligence and digital technologies raise new questions about privacy, discrimination, and violence that existing human rights instruments were not designed to address, requiring women lawyers and activists to develop new legal approaches.

The women who built international human rights law understood that law is not static — it evolves in response to struggle, advocacy, and the persistent demand for justice. Their legacy is not only the treaties and institutions they created but also the recognition that human rights will never be fully realized unless women are equal participants in every stage of their definition, implementation, and enforcement.

Conclusion: Honoring the Architects, Continuing the Work

Women were not bystanders in the creation of international human rights law. They were its drafters, its advocates, its monitors, and its enforcers. From the peace activists of the early 20th century to the delegates who insisted on gender-inclusive language in the UN Charter, from the drafters of CEDAW to the prosecutors who secured convictions for sexual violence as a war crime, women embedded gender equality into the DNA of international law. Their contributions transformed how human rights are understood, how treaties are written, how violations are prosecuted, and how states are held accountable.

The history of women's role in establishing international human rights law matters not only for the sake of historical accuracy but because it reveals the conditions under which human rights progress occurs. Progress came not from benevolent states or visionary leaders alone, but from organized, transnational, persistent advocacy by women who refused to accept exclusion as inevitable. The lesson for the present and future is clear: human rights advance when women are at the table, when their voices are amplified, and when their demands are taken seriously. The work of the women who came before is unfinished, and the responsibility to continue it belongs to all who believe in the universality and indivisibility of human rights.