Introduction

The right to life is fundamental to the UN human rights system. Without it, all other rights would be ‘devoid of meaning’. In this chapter I examine how this right has been interpreted and applied by the UN treaty bodies in particular to respond to the context of violence against women. Like the other chapters, it draws upon jurisprudence from other international and regional courts where relevant. Of the three rights studied in this book, it has attracted the least attention and analysis by international feminist legal scholars, even though it is specifically relevant to women's lives. In many national jurisdictions, in contrast, the right to life has been and remains a site of feminist struggle.

This chapter begins with an overview of how the right to life is conceived under international law generally, with a specific focus on Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). I then consider how it has been extended to apply to particular issues of violence against women. Like the other rights studied in this book, I ask whether it has been an effective guarantor of protection for women against violence. I find that the traditional structure of the international prohibition of Article 6 of the ICCPR favours men's experiences to the extent that they are more likely than women to be subjected to the death penalty, military conscription, or arbitrary deprivation of their lives by the state: the traditional subject matter of the prohibition.