Human rights of daughters-in-law (kelins) in Central Asia: harmful traditional practices and structural oppression

The familial position and social status of daughters-in-law (kelins) in ‘traditional’ Central Asian families can be characterized as low, subservient and marginalized. By adopting normative human rights discourse, this paper argues that it is an example of the relativist challenge of cultural authenticity towards the universality of human rights, specifically women’s human rights. By using participant observation which can also be qualified as experiential research, serial in-depth and informal interviews, and an analysis of posts published in social media, the forces driving the persistence of a relativist approach to kelins’ human rights such as retraditionalization, the revival of conservative Islam, an unawareness of the human rights and the patterns of authority-subordination are explored. Through a conceptual framework combining Iris Young’s concept of the ‘five faces of oppression’ and the notion of ‘harmful traditional practices’, elaborated by international human rights documents, the study conceptualizes the family position and social status of the kelins as one of structural oppression or systemic injustice, created and legitimized by informal, harmful traditional norms and practices.