Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter II: Global Framework – Paragraph 13
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/05
13. Excessive military expenditures, including global military expenditures and arms trade or trafficking, and investments for arms production and acquisition have reduced the resources available for social development. As a result of the debt burden and other economic difficulties, many developing countries have undertaken structural adjustment policies. Moreover, there are structural adjustment programmes that have been poorly designed and implemented, with resulting detrimental effects on social development. The number of people living in poverty has increased disproportionately in most developing countries, particularly the heavily indebted countries, during the past decade.
Beijing Declaration (1995)
The Beijing Declaration also speaks about the expenses of wars. The military travels into a variety of areas of the world. If we look at the recent history, we can see this. If we also observe the historical record, we can note the profound levels of waste and misery left in the wake of war and after war. There appears to be no question as to the often illegitimacy of war and the committing of war crimes against others around the world.
Often, the dominant powers of the time, the so-called “superpowers,” are the empires influential enough to commit atrocities without question and also the resources to divert the public at home, especially in the era of mass media and technological enchantment – or in more authoritarian setups with the threat of imprisonment or violence against the internal population by the hands of the state.
The resources diverted to war have created an unviable long-term situation for the species. We lie at a legitimate crossing point of whether or not we will choose to survive as a species from multi-variate problem with conflict, among others converging on a closing set of viable possible futures for humanity. But the debt and economic difficulties in the modern period have gone even farther since 1995.
Indeed, we can see the effects on social development and even on indicators of social trust in a society. Those societies with greater levels of development and faster ones tend to have better trust in the society among its citizenry. Things are on the up-and-up, so why not let this influence the perspective of other citizens. However, the costs of war take away funds from the possible investment in the families, the communities, and even the educational and cultural institutions of a nation.
The detrimental effects influence the ways in which we see one another but also show in the slower development relative to other countries. More people live in poverty. These precarious lives and forced-upon-people lifestyles create all of the attendant problems of poverty of a nation. The issues of poverty tend to affect women, especially single mothers, more than other populations.
Because of this, we also see the ripple effects in families and communities and future generations left with fewer resources: the broken homes, the drug abuse, the alcoholism, the domestic abuse, the addictions to pornography and video games in the children, the inappropriate age of first sexual encounter of the attendant children, the lower educational attainment, the elevated stress hormone levels of parent and child, and so on.
These create tremendous strains on individuals, on families, and on communities. The funds that could help pay for feeding the children, educating the next generation, re-educating the current generations, and upgrading the infrastructure of the nation’s communities get funneled into the pathways of militarization at home and abroad. These systems impact one another. It is one of the great ironies that those who harbor the most family values support the militarism abroad the most, where this drains the national funds and deprives potential funding for those at-home institutions intended for the benefit of the general public.
We can see this in numerous examples. It can be seen, especially and as per the final statement of the document, within the developing or non-developed nations without any of the programs in place. Or if they are present, then they are repealed rather rapidly. These are our problems. These create the issues of cycles of poverty and, in part, due to the wasteful spending on militarism and, oftentimes, exercises outside the nation’s borders in war for national pride or proud-boasting about the greatness of one’s own national identity. This is a poison, spiritual and otherwise.
As a result, women’s rights and livelihood are deprived too, as all these problems inflict women much more than men and those in charge making the decisions tend to be men – though the poor, men and women and children, become the main victims. Not to mention innocent casulties in the midst of wars.
–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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