Annex I(25)-(28) of the Beijing Declaration
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/08/26
25. Encourage men to participate fully in all actions towards equality;
26. Promote women’s economic independence, including employment, and eradicate the persistent and increasing burden of poverty on women by addressing the structural causes of poverty through changes in economic structures, ensuring equal access for all women, including those in rural areas, as vital development agents, to productive resources, opportunities and public services;
27. Promote people-centred sustainable development, including sustained economic growth, through the provision of basic education, life-long education, literacy and training, and primary health care for girls and women;
28. Take positive steps to ensure peace for the advancement of women and, recognizing the leading role that women have played in the peace movement, work actively towards general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control, and support negotiations on the conclusion, without delay, of a universal and multilaterally and effectively verifiable comprehensive nuclear-test-ban treaty which contributes to nuclear disarmament and the prevention of the proliferation of nuclear weapons in all its aspects;
Beijing Declaration (1995)
With the Beijing Declaration, as with the innumerable areas of the international rights scene, we can see the increasing relevance of women’s rights alongside a concomitant increase in the pushback – quite explicit – against women’s rights. The purpose is to redirect attention and energy to irrelevant topics, enact sabotage to prevent social organization and community work for the movements needed for – for instance – reproductive health rights of women.
No matter how bold, how ignorant, how ahistorical, how irrelevant, or even illogical, the concerns are brought forward to attempt to, in essence, assault the civilian population’s minds, of which the money for these media come, at times, from the public coffers, so, as Noam Chomsky describes, they are paying to have their minds destroyed – correction: we are paying to have our minds destroyed at a crucial moment in the history of the world in which women are seeing unprecedented levels of equality.
The questions then arise about the relevance of the Beijing Declaration to this, where today we will also be looking, a little, into Annex I(25) to (28). In the first, the emphasis is on the encouragement of the men in the society in terms of their contributions to the nation and the family, and the community for equality.
One argument put forward may propose that women are a privileged class within our societies through the inclusion of the equality rights arguments, documents, and implementations; furthermore, this may coincide with the increase in arguments against face valuation and explicit intention of the two phrase “empowerment of women” and “advancement of women.”
Of course, the ahistorical note is the ignoring of the ways in which various societies have, in more ways than one, empowered men – sometimes white, or landowning, or rich, or royal blood, or higher caste, or religion leader men – at, quite often, the disadvantage of the women within the society.
This brings the sharp focus on the first statement to the bridge of our collective and proverbial noses. We cannot miss it; we look silly if we claim to have missed it, too, by the way.
Annex I(26) continues in a similar line with the economic independence of the women of a society. One of the best predictors of the health of a society is the degree to which women are empowered and their interests are advanced; it is not something to be taken lightly but, rather, an important core feature off the advanced industrial economies the nations that are beginning or have already started moving more in those directions have begun, apparently, to show some of the same positive trends with the minute changes dependent on the particulars of the country – history, dominant religious mythology, degree of post-colonial status, the degree of separation of place of worship and state, and so on.
The improvements in the economic livelihoods of women are no small feat and a necessary feature of the freedom of women as money permits individuals to do things that they would, otherwise, not be able to accomplish. The proposal in this second statement is in a restructuring of the associated mechanisms dealing with economic access and distribution within the society.
The emphasis is on the equal access including, and especially, the rural enclaves of the world without centralized access to some of the fundamental provisions more easily accessible in the metropolises and city centers of the world, the urban areas, and greater surrounding areas.
Women, in these stipulations, are seen as “vital development agents” in which the provisions of the nation aim at the women more than the men for the greater economic and social development of the society. Again, and this can not be understated, these are robust findings around the world on the level of development of a society. If women are more equal with the men, the society is, statistically speaking, more probably to be a developed nation.
Annex I(27) continues to state that the orientation of the society should be towards one of the people. One with the best interests of the people in mind, which remain almost universal and easily identifiable through survey data or some of the psychological-anthropological data too. It is in this sense the development of a society towards greater equality is not something to be taken lightly or trifled with in any way.
One of the key drivers of women’s advancement in the current era is the mandatory provision of basic education plus the ability to equitably access higher levels of education including secondary and postsecondary. It is within this framework that a Member State of the United Nations can grow more, faster, and more equitably because women have more choice in their lives. Men tend to not have these same barriers to access to the society compared to the women.
The other provision is for health care for both girls and women, where the giving of a proper and high-level healthcare for women and girls can assist in the work, for example, of family planning. Altogether, this is one of the bases upon which greater equality can be seen; the ability of girls to have safe sex if they choose to without coercion, with proper contraceptives, and then the provisions of reproductive health services in the society for the women to be able to plan their families if they want one.
Annex I(28) speaks more to the ways in which there are more positive steps in the society for the advancement of women through peace measures. It sounds vague because it is amorphous. But the more equitable societies tend to be less likely to engage in war, typically speaking.
The importance of women in peace and men in war, historically and at present cannot be understated as the long-term history of the world with a variety of justifications has been war with less than 10% of the recorded history of the world as in peace-time. This raises issues about human nature and the possibility of the emancipation of not only blacks in America, Indigenous in Canada, women around the world, and so on, but of every single human being now and into the future.
My extrapolation is a great promise if we can get past the issues of climate change and nuclear catastrophes – including wars and winters – then we have a bright life ahead for everyone. But these remain open questions and convergence problems. We need consensus and a real ethical framework to work through the problems now.
Women have a crucial role to place in not only the global peace movements but also the disarmament of the world arsenal with “strict and effective international” control, even as many countries seem to prepare more, and more, for an international or global conflict with declining hegemony and a post-primacy world possibly sooner than any of us may expect now.
The interesting, and rather nuanced consideratiions in this stipulation is the inclusion of the negotiations to be supported for “universal and multilaterally and effectively verifiable comprehensive nucelar-test-ban.” That is a stunning statement. It is something of note in terms of the firmness, according to those present for the Beijing Declaration in 1995, in which nuclear arsenals and testing are considered extraordinarily dangerous and needing immediate reeling and reining into control by the international control.
Women play a crucial role here or could more into the future. Any nuclear disarmament will work for a prevention of the proliferation of a weapon that could result in the near instantaneous extonction of the species. That is not an understatement. These remain some of the most dangerous problems in the current context.
Where can women play a role in all this, in an equitable way “without delay” regarding the immediate concern of nuclear disarmament, I would ask the women and then look into the ways in which men began – and then start there.
–One can find similar statements in other documents, conventions, declarations and so on, with the subsequent statements of equality or women’s rights:
- The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the Preamble, Article 16, and Article 25(2).
- Convention Against Discrimination in Education (1960) in Article 1.
- The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) in Article 3, Article 7, and Article 13.
- International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966).
- Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979).
- Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984).
- The Declaration on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (1993).
- Beijing Declaration(1995).
- United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000).
- Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children (2000).
- The Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa or the “Maputo Protocol” (2003).
- Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence or the Istanbul Convention (2011) Article 38 and Article 39.
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