The Throne Does Not Outweigh the Right: The Limits of Sovereignty is the Imperative of Women's Rights - By Sheila Mae P. Hornada

Written By: Sheila Mae P. Hornada

Category: Essay

Competition: Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026

Sheila Mae P. Hornada, writing as Ameng P., presents a compelling essay titled "The Throne Does Not Outweigh the Right: The Limits of Sovereignty is the Imperative of Women’s Rights." This powerful piece examines the crucial debate on whether the United Nations should prioritize the protection of women's rights over state sovereignty. As part of the Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026, Hornada's work delves into the complexities surrounding international law and women's rights, with a focus on pressing global issues like those in Afghanistan.

About the Work

Hornada's essay is a profound exploration of the tension between state sovereignty and the universal rights of women and girls. Through a rich tapestry of historical and contemporary examples, she crafts a persuasive argument for prioritizing human rights over political autonomy. Her eloquent prose and incisive analysis invite readers to consider the broader implications of international obligations and the moral responsibilities of global institutions. The work underscores the need for consistent international scrutiny and advocacy for gender equality.

The Throne Does Not Outweigh the Right: The Limits of Sovereignty is the Imperative of Women’s Rights

Original Submission by Sheila Mae P. Hornada

THE THRONE DOES NOT OUTWEIGH THE RIGHT: THE LIMITS OF SOVEREIGNTY IS THE IMPERATIVE OF WOMEN’S RIGHTS

Argumentative Essay on the Resolution:

“Resolved: The United Nations should prioritize protecting the rights of women and girls

over respecting state sovereignty.”

Authored by:

SHEILA MAE P. HORNADA (writing as AMENG P.)

Position:

Affirmative/For

Moses once stood before Pharaoh and demanded the freedom of the enslaved. He did not enter the palace to negotiate whether freedom was deserved. He entered because a power had made oppression lawful, ordinary, and defensible—and because the suffering of the people behind Pharaoh’s walls could no longer be treated as merely an internal affair. Centuries later, the United Nations (UN) faces a different political order but a similar confrontation: what happens when the power of a state becomes the reason its people are denied basic freedoms.

In Afghanistan (2026), women and girls have been pushed out of secondary schools and universities, excluded from much of paid work and public life, and subjected to restrictions on movement and participation. UNESCO reported in August 2026 that Afghanistan remained the only country in the world formally prohibiting girls and women from education beyond the primary level, with an estimated 2.4 million girls excluded from secondary education. Now the question is not whether sovereignty matters. It does. The question is whether sovereignty should outweigh the rights that the international system itself was created to protect. When sovereignty becomes the excuse for stripping women and girls of fundamental freedoms, the UN should prioritize the protection of human rights over deference to state sovereignty (UNESCO; UN Women, “Press Briefing”).

The Throne and the Border

Sovereignty deserves protection because it guards states against domination by stronger powers. The United Nations Charter recognizes the sovereign equality of its members and limits intervention in matters essentially within domestic jurisdiction. Those principles emerged from a world deeply familiar with conquest, occupation, and imperial control. Ignoring them would create another danger—powerful states could dress political interests in humanitarian language and impose their will on weaker countries. Respect for sovereignty therefore remains essential to international order (UN Charter art. 2, paras. 1, 7).

But sovereignty cannot be read as the only promise contained in the Charter. The same document identifies international cooperation in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms as one of the purposes of the organization. The Charter does not establish a world in which governments possess rights and individuals merely possess nationality. It establishes an international system in which states coexist while committing themselves to principles that reach beyond borders. The tension between sovereignty and human rights is therefore not a foreign problem inserted into the UN system; it is built into the system itself (UN Charter art. 1, para. 3).

That distinction becomes critical in Afghanistan. The restrictions facing the Afghan women are not simply disputes over administrative policy. They determine whether women can study, work, travel, receive certain forms of health care, and influence decisions that govern them. UNESCO’s 2026 reporting describes a country where girls remain barred from education beyond primary school and women remain excluded from universities, many jobs, and significant areas of public life. UN Women reported in 2025 that nearly 80 percent of young Afghan women were outside education, employment, or training, compared with 20 percent of young men. The result is not one isolated restriction but a system that narrows the choices available to women at nearly every stage of life (UNESCO; UN Women, “In Focus”).

This matters because rights are not made less fundamental by being exercised inside a particular country. A girl does not become less entitled to education because the government governing her territory rejects that entitlement. A woman does not lose her right to participate in public life because her government decides that her voice should be absent from political institutions. If a right is described as universal, its protection cannot depend entirely on whether a particular government chooses to recognize it.

Afghanistan’s own history within international law also complicates the claim that women’s equality is merely an external idea being imposed from abroad. Afghanistan ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) in 2003. By joining that treaty, the Afghan state accepted international obligations concerning discrimination against women. Afghanistan had also acceded decades earlier to the Convention on the Political Rights of Women. These commitments matter because they demonstrate that women’s political and civil rights were not suddenly invented by foreign governments after the Taliban returned to power. Afghanistan had already entered international agreements recognizing women as rights-bearing participants in public life (Convention on the Elimination; Convention on the Political Rights).

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights makes the principle broader still. It states that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights and prohibits discrimination, including discrimination based on sex. It also recognizes education as a right. Most importantly, the Declaration does not make a person’s rights dependent on the political or international status of the territory to which that person belongs. That implication is difficult to avoid. A border can determine jurisdiction, but it cannot determine human worth (UN General Assembly, Universal Declaration arts. 1, 2, 26).

The discussion should not be reduced to a choice between respecting countries and respecting women. The real distinction is between respecting a state’s political independence and treating every action taken by its authorities as immune from international scrutiny. The first is a legitimate principle of international order; the second would make human rights conditional on government permission.

The UN has already acknowledged that women’s rights cannot be separated from questions of peace and security. Security Council Resolution 1325, adopted unanimously in 2000, called for women’s participation in conflict prevention, peacebuilding, political decision-making, and post-conflict reconstruction. It also called for the protection of women and girls from gender-based violence and for respect for their rights under international law. Eight years later, Resolution 1820 recognized conflict-related sexual violence as a matter connected to international peace and security and called for accountability for perpetrators (UN Security Council, Res. 1325; UN Security Council, Res. 1820).

These resolutions show that women are not peripheral to the UN’s understanding of security. A political system cannot claim to address peace while ignoring the people most affected by conflict, exclusion, and violence; nor can the organization claim to protect international security while treating the rights of women as secondary whenever governments invoke sovereignty.

When the World Crossed the Border

History provides evidence of what can happen when women’s suffering is treated as an internal matter for too long. During the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Muslim women and girls in the Foča area were detained, raped, sexually enslaved, and subjected to other forms of abuse. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) prosecuted these crimes. While in the Kunarac, Kovač, and Vuković case, the Tribunal convicted defendants for rape, torture, and enslavement. The proceedings were significant not merely because individuals were punished, but because international law refused to treat sexual violence against women as a private consequence of war. The crimes were recognized as matters for international justice (Prosecutor v. Kunarac paras. 1–10).

The Foča cases demonstrate a clear point about sovereignty: waiting for domestic authority to protect victims can be disastrous when authorities are unwilling to do so. The ICTY record described situations in which local structures that should have protected women instead enabled or ignored their abuse. International accountability did not erase Bosnia and Herzegovina as a state. It established that certain acts committed within its territory could not be insulated from international legal scrutiny because they occurred behind a national border (Prosecutor v. Kunarac).

Myanmar provides another example. Following the military’s 2017 operations against the Rohingya, more than 700,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh. A UN fact-finding mission reported that military forces had used sexual violence against women and girls and concluded that many of these acts could amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, or acts of genocide. The mission called for accountability and urged the international community to respond (UN Human Rights Council paras. 22–30).

The Myanmar case exposes the danger of treating sovereignty as a shield after grave abuses have crossed the threshold of international concern. The issue was not whether another government liked Myanmar’s policies. Investigators documented patterns of violence directed at civilians. The international response therefore moved beyond diplomatic disagreement toward investigation, preservation of evidence, accountability, and protection. The existence of a sovereign state did not make the suffering of Rohingya women and girls less real, nor did it make international responsibility disappear (UN Human Rights Council).

While Iran offers a case where the central issue has involved women’s rights in a functioning state outside an armed conflict. The death in custody of Jina Mahsa Amini in September 2022 triggered nationwide protests under the slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom.” The UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran reported continuing violations connected to policies affecting women and girls, including restrictions on equality, freedom of expression, movement, participation, education, work, and bodily autonomy. The case demonstrates that the protection of women’s rights cannot be limited to situations where war crimes are occurring. Women can face rights violations through laws, policing, institutional discrimination, and restrictions imposed in political life (“Iran’s War on Women”).

Taken together, Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Myanmar, and Iran reveal different forms of the same underlying problem. In Afghanistan, exclusion is institutionalized through restrictions on education, employment, movement, and public participation. In Bosnia, sexual violence was used against women and girls during armed conflict and was later prosecuted internationally. In Myanmar, sexual violence accompanied military operations against a persecuted population and became part of an international accountability process. In Iran, women’s rights have been contested through state policies, enforcement, and repression surrounding the Woman, Life, Freedom movement. These cases are not identical, and they should not be treated as if they were; what connects them is the principle that the rights of women cannot disappear from international concern simply because violations occur within sovereign territory (UNESCO; Prosecutor v. Kunarac; UN Human Rights Council; “Iran’s War on Women”).

There is also a practical reason to reject the idea that sovereignty should always come first: governments do not operate in isolation from international legitimacy, resources, institutions, and relationships. International pressure can change the political cost of exclusion even when it cannot immediately change a decree. Documentation can preserve evidence that might otherwise disappear. International monitoring can make abuses harder to deny. Educational programs can keep opportunities alive for girls who would otherwise lose years of learning. Support for women-led organizations can preserve a channel of participation when formal political institutions exclude women. These measures do not substitute for Afghan agency; they can strengthen the space in which that agency survives.

The history of women’s rights at the UN also shows why protection cannot depend entirely on whether a crisis fits a narrow definition of armed conflict. The Convention on the Political Rights of Women, adopted in 1952, recognized women’s entitlement to vote and hold public office on equal terms. Afghanistan acceded to that convention in 1966. Decades later, Resolution 1325 expanded the international understanding of women’s participation by connecting it to peace and security. International institutions have repeatedly moved from treating women as people who need protection to recognizing them as political actors whose participation is itself necessary. Excluding women from public life therefore undermines not only individual rights but also the international commitments that states have repeatedly endorsed. A system that excludes women from decisions about their own lives cannot claim that their absence is proof that they have nothing to contribute (UN Security Council, Res. 1325).

What the UN Owes Beyond the Gates

The strongest objection to prioritizing human rights is not that sovereignty is valuable. Everyone can recognize that. The stronger objection is that humanitarian language can itself be abused. States have historically interfered in weaker countries for strategic reasons while claiming moral justification. If the UN were to treat every domestic rights violation as a license for coercive intervention, the result could be instability, hypocrisy, and further domination.

That concern should shape how the UN acts, not whether it recognizes the rights at stake. Prioritizing human rights does not require the UN to treat military force as its first or automatic response. There is a wide range of action between silence and invasion—diplomatic pressure, independent investigations, documentation, humanitarian assistance, support for local civil society, educational programs, international monitoring, targeted measures, and accountability proceedings. A serious human-rights policy should select its methods according to the circumstances while keeping the protection of rights as its objective.

The international framework known as the Responsibility to Protect reinforces this distinction. In 2005, UN member states affirmed that each state has the responsibility to protect its population from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. They also accepted that the international community has a responsibility to use appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian, and other peaceful means when states fail to meet that responsibility. The framework does not create a general permission to use force whenever women’s rights are violated. Its agreed scope is narrower, but it establishes an important principle: sovereignty carries responsibilities toward the people living under it (UN General Assembly, 2005 World Summit Outcome paras. 138–139).

That principle is useful in the discourse over Afghanistan. The UN does not have to choose between pretending that sovereignty does not exist and accepting that sovereignty makes criticism impossible. It can recognize Afghanistan as a sovereign state while refusing to treat the state’s authority as the final measure of whether women deserve rights. It can negotiate with Afghan authorities while continuing to document restrictions. It can support humanitarian and educational programs without endorsing discriminatory policies. It can create channels through which Afghan women’s organizations can speak directly to international institutions. It can demand that international commitments be respected without claiming ownership over Afghanistan’s political future.

UNESCO’s work illustrates what this middle ground can look like. While Afghan girls and women remain excluded from formal education beyond primary school, UNESCO has supported community-based education, literacy, skills development, and psychosocial programs to keep learning pathways open. Such efforts do not require the abolition of Afghanistan’s sovereignty. They work through communities and humanitarian structures while refusing to accept educational exclusion as an unchangeable fact (UNESCO).

The argument for prioritizing rights must also avoid speaking over Afghan women themselves. It would be another form of paternalism to portray Afghan women merely as helpless victims waiting for foreign governments to rescue them. Afghan women have continued to teach, organize, advocate, document abuses, support communities, and demand participation despite restrictions. UN Women has documented the continued work of women-led civil society organizations and Afghan women advocating for rights. Their agency strengthens rather than weakens the case for international action. The role of the UN should not be to replace their voices but to make those voices harder to suppress (UN Women, “In Focus”).

Consistency is as important. Human rights cannot become a principle applied only when the government involved is a geopolitical rival. If one state is condemned while another is excused because it is strategically useful, then human rights cease to function as a universal standard. The UN’s credibility depends on applying the same basic principle across different political systems: women and girls possess fundamental rights regardless of the power, ideology, alliances, or strategic importance of the government exercising authority over them.

This is also why the debate should not frame sovereignty and women’s rights as permanently incompatible. Properly understood, sovereignty can protect the political independence through which people determine their collective future. Human rights protect the individuals who make up that political community. The conflict arises when state authority is used to deny the very people whose lives give the state its purpose. At this point, the question is no longer simply who governs. It is what the government is allowed to do to the people it governs.

Moses returns here with greater force. Pharaoh had authority. That authority did not make slavery just. The existence of a palace did not make the people inside its walls less deserving of freedom. Moses did not deny that Pharaoh ruled his country; he challenged what Pharaoh’s rule was doing to human beings.

The UN faces no literal Pharaoh, and Afghanistan is not an ancient civilization. The comparison is a moral metaphor, not a claim that the two situations are identical. Yet the image clarifies the central conflict. A sovereign boundary can tell the international community where a government’s jurisdiction begins. But it cannot, by itself, answer whether a girl should be allowed to learn, whether a woman should be allowed to work, whether she should participate in decisions affecting her community, or whether violence against her should be investigated and punished.

The UN should not approach sovereignty as something to smash, but neither should it approach sovereignty as something to worship. Its responsibility is more difficult: respect political independence while refusing to let political independence become a hiding place for violations of fundamental rights. That requires diplomacy with a backbone, accountability with due process, and international pressure that is consistent rather than selective.

The Border is Not the End

The question ultimately comes down to what the word “universal” means. If human rights are universal only when governments agree with them, then they are not truly universal. If women’s rights stop at a border, then the border has become more powerful than the person. And if sovereignty can silence an entire population without meaningful international scrutiny, then the principle intended to protect political independence has been turned against human freedom.

Afghanistan makes that contradiction impossible to ignore. A girl who is denied secondary education does not experience sovereignty as an abstract principle of international law; she experiences a locked school door. A woman excluded from employment does not experience non-interference as a philosophical safeguard; she experiences the loss of income, independence, and choice. A woman shut out of political life does not experience territorial integrity; she experiences the removal of her voice.

That is why the UN’s obligation to protect human rights should outweigh its deference to state sovereignty when the two directly collide over fundamental freedoms. The goal is not to erase borders, dictate cultures, or replace governments. The goal is to ensure that state authority remains accountable to the human beings who live under it.

Moses stood before Pharaoh and demanded freedom. The UN now faces its own gates. It should not break them recklessly, and it should not pretend that every gate can be opened by force. But it should knock. It should speak. It should document. It should negotiate. It should pressure. And when international law provides lawful mechanisms for accountability, it should use them.

Pharaoh had a throne. The enslaved had a claim to freedom. The throne did not make the claim disappear. Neither should a border. For every woman, everywhere.

Works Cited

International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Prosecutor v. Dragoljub Kunarac,

Radomir Kovač and Zoran Vuković. Case No. IT-96-23-T & IT-96-23/1-T, Judgment, 22 Feb. 2001, www.icty.org/x/cases/kunarac/tjug/en/kun-tj010222e.pdf

“Iran’s War on Women.” United Against Nuclear Iran,

www.unitedagainstnucleariran.com/irans-war-on-women. Accessed 14 Oct. 2026.

Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. “UN Fact-Finding Mission

on Myanmar Calls for Justice for Victims of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence.” United Nations, 22 Aug. 2019, www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2019/08/un-fact-finding-mission-myanmar-calls-justice-victims-sexual-and-gender.

UNESCO. “Five Years on: UNESCO Calls for the Full Restoration of the Right to Education for

Afghan Girls and Women.” UNESCO, 11 Aug. 2026, www.unesco.org/en/articles/five-years-unesco-calls-full-restoration-right-education-afghan-girls-and-women.

United Nations. Charter of the United Nations. www.un.org/en/about-us/un-charter. Accessed

14 Oct. 2026.

———. Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-human-rights. Accessed 14 Oct. 2026.

United Nations, General Assembly. 2005 World Summit Outcome. Resolution 60/1, 16 Sept.

2005, www.un.org/en/conferences/environment/newyork2005.

United Nations, Security Council. Resolution 1325 (2000). 31 Oct. 2000,

docs.un.org/en/S/RES/1325(2000).

———. Resolution 1820 (2008). 19 June 2008, docs.un.org/en/S/RES/1820(2008).

United Nations Treaty Collection. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of

Discrimination Against Women. 18 Dec. 1979, treaties.un.org/pages/viewdetails.aspx?src=treaty&mtdsg_no=iv-8&chapter=4&clang=_en.

UN Women. “In Focus: Women in Afghanistan.” UN Women, 12 Aug. 2026,

www.unwomen.org/en/articles/in-focus/afghanistan.

———. “Press Briefing by UN Women, Four Years Since the Taliban Takeover of Afghanistan.”

UN Women, 11 Aug. 2025, www.unwomen.org/en/news-stories/press-briefing/2025/08/press-briefing-by-un-women-four-years-since-the-taliban-takeover-of-afghanistan.

About the Competition

The Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026 by Hashtag Kalakar is a prestigious platform celebrating diverse voices in literature. It invites participants from around the world to showcase their creative talents, fostering a rich dialogue on pressing global issues. The competition aims to inspire and engage writers and poets in exploring themes that resonate universally, encouraging a deeper understanding of our shared human experience.

We extend our heartfelt gratitude to Sheila Mae P. Hornada for her insightful essay, "The Throne Does Not Outweigh the Right: The Limits of Sovereignty is the Imperative of Women’s Rights." Her participation in the Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026 enriches the discourse on women's rights and state sovereignty. Thank you, Sheila, for your eloquent contribution to this critical conversation.

About Hashtag Kalakar

Hashtag Kalakar is a creative platform dedicated to providing artists, writers, singers and other creative talents with opportunities to showcase their work and reach wider audiences through competitions, features and creative initiatives.