Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter II: Global Framework – Paragraph 20
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/09
20. Macro and micro-economic policies and programmes, including structural adjustment, have not always been designed to take account of their impact on women and girl children, especially those living in poverty. Poverty has increased in both absolute and relative terms, and the number of women living in poverty has increased in most regions. There are many urban women living in poverty; however, the plight of women living in rural and remote areas deserves special attention given the stagnation of development in such areas. In developing countries, even those in which national indicators have shown improvement, the majority of rural women continue to live in conditions of economic underdevelopment and social marginalization.
Beijing Declaration (1995)
The degree to which a society’s women are provided advancement and empowerment can be, in good measure cross-culturally, a key indicator of the social development of the society and the economic well-being of its citizenry; the more advancement and empowerment of women, then the more flourishing of the society as a whole on a number of markers of social and economic health.
The 20th paragraph of the Beijing Declaration speaks to the big and small view of policies and programs set for the improvement of the economic functioning of the world’s national economic systems. This includes some of the prior conversations around the impacts of these structural adjustment programs not taking into account the hardships on the women and the “girl children” or girls of the world.
There are two common types of defined poverty. One is the absolute poverty metric. The other is the relative poverty measure. In both of these measurements, women who lived in poverty in 1995 in relation to prior periods had increased in most regions of the world. The same quite possibly holds true now. This is the basis for the exploitation, especially economic, of women by others.
The women who live in the urban settings are much more likely to be living in poverty, in the penurious and precarious circumstances unknown – by comparative standards – to much of the point of the developed nations’ views and experiences. Indeed, it can be a peculiar narcissism of culture, geography, and economic development of “The West” to view other peoples from the around the world as other and not deserving equal consideration.
The argument seems easy to make on the grounds of the same species. That is to say, if an individual were born in another place, would they not act and think almost the same as others in those circumstances? Quite possibly, the linguists state this about one of the fundamental features of being a member of homo sapiens.
The rhetoric from “The West” seems to provide cover to ignoring, in a practical sense, the moral obligation to help the least among us, with various forms of assistance, especially those rural women with fewer rights and resources to be able to assert themselves in life. It amounts to not fulfilling the moral or ethical duty, standing back, and then either ignoring or making harsh judgments about the plight of these women.
When the more rational approach would be to work on the projects and initiatives already ongoing for the advancement and empowerment of women at the time – 1995, and only built upon more now, these give a basis for furtherance of the economic, and so social, equality of women in these societies in the “developing” category.
Even with the nations that have begun to show, or in fact already do represent, large-scale changes in a short amount of time, the continued disproportionate provision of resources is typically for the rich and the men and not for the women and the poor – an often overlapping dual-set of populations.
These are issues that should be dealt with in an assertive way, and paragraphs such as these provide an explicit and clear description of the areas of needed improvement for the provision of the livelihoods of women in our societies.
–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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