S05E06 (Int'l Women's Day) Virginia Bras Gomes on Remedies for Gender-based Human Rights Abuses

Virginia Bras Gomes chairs the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. She is also senior social policy adviser in the Ministry of Labour, Solidarity and Social Security in Portugal. She has been on the board of UN agencies in Portugal as well as a member of the Portuguese National Human Rights Commission.  In this conversation with IHRB's Salil Tripathi, Virginia speaks of the challenges companies face while operating in diverse environments, with different laws and different jurisdictions, in developing remedies for gender-based human rights abuses. Virginia recognises that states, whose primary responsibility it is to protect human rights, often plead inability to advance women's rights citing cultural relativist arguments and claiming exceptionalism. But she stresses the universality of human rights, and urges companies to do more. She cites two useful general comments from the committee - GC 23, on the right to just and favourable conditions of work, and GC 24, on state obligations under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in the context of business and human rights.