La intervención hace referencia al uso del lenguaje de los derechos en el debate público, centrando la atención en la connotación de imperatividad, carácter absoluto, inviolabilidad que la palabra ‘derecho’ implica. De una parte hay casos en los que todo interés es reivindicado como derecho, por otra hay casos en los que, alcontrario, derechos humanos fundamentales que no son unánimemente reconocidos, situación que afecta en particular los derechos humanos de la mujeres.

In this paper the author focuses on some of the topics in the debate on multiculturalism, applying them to the issue of immigration, particularly female immigration, in Europe. She then illustrates how the individual/group relationship is a particularly complex one where women are concerned. In this framework she considers the various roles of a multicultural law and the thorny relation between women immigrants and their official representatives. She concludes by asserting the need to place individual rights before group rights and (...) to ensure that women obtain autonomous access to both sets of rights. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the application of a particular conception of the rule of law to situations characterized by traditional local justice and legal pluralism. While in the twentieth century international rule‐of‐law programmes were directed almost exclusively at state legal system, they have recently begun to take into account traditional local justice, namely, those institutions which in many world regions represent the main form of effective justice. Starting with a review of the positive and negative aspects of traditional local justice (...) from a rule‐of‐law perspective, the paper underlines the widespread lack of protection of human rights, particularly of women’s rights. Discussing vertical rule‐of‐law functions in contexts of legal pluralism the paper stresses the advantages of an approach to the promotion of the rule of law based on mutual recognition and influence between different legal authorities and sources. It is argued that this “interactive” approach appears best suited to the complex frameworks of relations that characterize present‐day systems of deep legal pluralism. Finally, the paper underlines the correspondence between this approach and a conception of the rule of law as an ideal framework of plural interactions characterized by the limits imposed on the law by the law itself, and it discusses its advantages from the perspective of human rights and women’s rights promotion. (shrink)