wartime demographic policies and the use of rape as a tool of ethnic cleansing are two glaring examples of the use of women s bodies in ethnicnationalist struggles as markers between self and other women and nonhegemonic genders are highly exposed to human rights violations within conflict to provide insight into this complex relationship we analyse feminist critiques of the human rights framework and the impact of specific human rights claims individualcollective and inclusiveexclusive on securitization moreover activists from the south have also criticized the human rights discourse for its racial and class bias and its irrelevance to the struggles of women in marginalized communities ethnic minorities and developing countries who are subordinate in national as well as international power relations