by SHILOH SOPHIA MCCLOUD LEWIS
A displaced refugee woman in South Darfur sits on the only bed she can find after running from devastating conflict in her home village. IMAGE/Albert Gonzalez Farran/UNAMID
It was when I began to have images of women from around the world who are suffering flash before my mind, that the reality of the state of the world started ‘sinking in’ after my trip to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women in March 2013.
It was a kind of spiritual epiphany, but not the good kind. To consider a girl child suffering from FGM being called a boy when referring to her rights. The ridiculousness of women basket weavers being called “men” who sell their wares for their living. Or in images where women and girls in their own cultural environments, one after the other, are being missed and denied by being called “HIM.”
In my mind these women had words used against them in humanitarian language; words that would leave them ‘out-of-the-picture’. Words like ‘mankind’ and ‘brotherhood’ seemed to be stamped across women who were not only misunderstood, but mislabeled.
“Language that uses the generic masculine – excludes women and renders them invisible,” says CEDAW – Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, the agency that works today within the UN to bring women across the world together to discuss and report marginalization and discrimination.
I began to wonder how could a girl-child feel welcome in a global world where she is being referred to as ‘him’? Especially in regards to her rights and by the very organization, the United Nations, which has pledged to fight for her justice.
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