E/CN.4/2002/73/Add.2 page 11 cultures and religions can in those circumstances enrich and be enriched by the universality of women’s rights. 32. The argument for universality is based not only on moral and ethical requirements but also on practical grounds. In some countries, women may face inextricable juridico-cultural situations. Laws defined as having a religious origin can vary from one country to another, sometimes radically. A number of ethnically and/or denominationally diversified countries have two or more conflicting legal systems (civil, religious or customary law) relating to the status of women, in particular their personal status. Each of those systems may grant or deny women different rights. Women whose religion is not that of the majority group may be subjected to the law or culture of a group to which they do not belong. In addition to formal laws, there are, in every society, informal customs and traditions which can, sometimes more than legislation, contribute to controlling women’s lives. This shows that only rationality—and thus universality of the rights of women—can enable all women in the world, and in some instances within the same society, to be united around an intangible nucleus whose substance is based on the notion of the dignity of the human person irrespective of the distinctive cultural features of a State, a group of States or ethnic and religious groups within one and the same State.30 33. Human rights are, by their very nature, capable of removing, albeit progressively, the distinction between the internal order and the international order. As rightly stated by the Secretary-General of the United Nations, they give rise to a new legal permeability and should not be considered either from the viewpoint of absolute sovereignty or from the viewpoint of political intervention. On the contrary, they call for cooperation and coordination between States and international organizations.31 With regard to women’s rights in the light of religion, beliefs and traditions, universality must be clearly understood; it is not the expression of the ideological or cultural domination of one group of States over the rest of the world.32 34. Moreover, as set forth in the Vienna Declaration of 1993, while the significance of national and regional particularities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds must be borne in mind, it is the duty of all States, irrespective of their stage of development, to promote all human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the rights of women and girls, which are “an inalienable, integral and indivisible part of universal human rights.”33 That document assigns a central place to the issue which concerns us, namely the contradiction between equality of the rights of individuals and religious or customary laws which conflict with that equality. The Vienna Programme of Action calls on States to eradicate any contradictions which may arise between the rights of women and discriminatory practices linked to religious intolerance and religious extremism.34 35. Many international and regional instruments espouse the same universalist concept.35 One may cite, in particular, the Beijing Declaration, adopted at the 1995 World Conference on Women, which reaffirms that women’s rights are human rights (para. 14) and that all the specific and particular elements which those rights entail are the entitlement of all women without distinction (paras. 9 and 23) and thus notwithstanding cultural or religious differences. 36. The same problem arises in relation to the equity-equality duality. The notion of equity appears to offer States greater scope, enabling them to depart from the principle of formal equality, restrict women’s rights and justify and perpetuate discrimination. For example, religious or customary norms which grant girls and women fewer rights in matters of inheritance