Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter II: Global Framework – Paragraph 15
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/06
15. A world-wide movement towards democratization has opened up the political process in many nations, but the popular participation of women in key decision-making as full and equal partners with men, particularly in politics, has not yet been achieved. South Africa’s policy of institutionalized racism – apartheid – has been dismantled and a peaceful and democratic transfer of power has occurred. In Central and Eastern Europe the transition to parliamentary democracy has been rapid and has given rise to a variety of experiences, depending on the specific circumstances of each country. While the transition has been mostly peaceful, in some countries this process has been hindered by armed conflict that has resulted in grave violations of human rights.
Beijing Declaration (1995)
The global move towards more and more democratization may have been more clear in the past than in the present. Indeed, we appear to have more open societies and democracies than at any prior point in history. However, with some of the recent, conscious, chaos created in the wake the American 2016 presidential election, the Brexit vote, and so on, there have been fundamental challenges or at least relatively basic ones to the structures of democracy with the society – or the democratic organizational processes of nations.
This raises issues about the basic premise in this paragraph, about the long-term viability of democracies. Nonetheless, if we assume the premise of an optimistic future circa 1995, we can note the increased political processing opening of several nations in addition to the participation of women within the levers of decision-making power of our societies. These are tremendously hopeful and heartwarming developments in our societies.
They continue to demarcate the modern period in contrast to the past where women did not even have the right to vote, as far as I know, in any nation only two centuries ago, even, potentially, a century and a half ago. These make the strides in democratization real and palpable. The questions, in the present, may be the extent to which these may undergo a temporary reversal; the environment of 1995 would propose the ways in which these can be expanded, to further respect the rights of persons and the human rights of women in particular given the context of this series.
In the representation of the South African case, slowly dwindling in our societal memory banks, there was an institutionalized racism known as apartheid that was dismantled and then a democratic revolution began to sweep through the nation. This is something extended into the note of Central and Eastern European nations developing parliamentary democracies.
These were seeing “rapid” rises depending on the domain in question and the specific country to be considered. Nonetheless, most of the nations rose into formal democratic statuses, apparently, more or less peacefully while some were and remained in conflict in the process, which coincided with “grave violations of human rights.” Not a small detail but not the glaring issue if taken in a larger geographic and historical contexts, even now, we see more and more democracies or democratization and peaceful transition to them and peace amongst and between them.
–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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