From Rights to Women’s Rights: Malaysian Experience

This paper explores the philosophical idea of human rights to consider the meaning of the term ‘rights’. There are huge amounts of work being done in defining the term ‘rights’. ‘Rights’ is defined by most human rights scholars in a four-separate perspective, as a claim, immunity, a freedom and a power. These concrete meaning of ‘rights’ might be revealed from Hohfeld’s idea of ‘rights’ that may be used in a rigid sense of the right-holder’s claim to something with a correlative duty. The emergence of a new consciousness of the patterns of discrimination against women and a rise in the number of organizations committed to combating the effect of such discrimination in 1960s, called the Government of Malaysia to show its support not only by setting up organisations, but also by allocating funds. However, there are critiques that justice for women is impossible to be upheld in Malaysia because the Government reserves few articles of the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women due to its inconsistencies with Shariah. Therefore, it is critical to comprehend the Islamic ideals of human rights concept and principles and value the progress of women’s rights in Malaysia.