Paragraph 12 of the Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter II: Global Framework
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/05
12. The maintenance of peace and security at the global, regional and local levels, together with the prevention of policies of aggression and ethnic cleansing and the resolution of armed conflict, is crucial for the protection of the human rights of women and girl children, as well as for the elimination of all forms of violence against them and of their use as a weapon of war.
Beijing Declaration (1995)
International peace and security remained tied to women’s rights issues in a number of direct and indirect ways. One comes in the maintenance, in the global security apparatus, international peace. If we think of the main ways in which conflicts start, they can be myriad. Same with the impacts. But some of the big outcroppings can be aggression and ethnic cleansing.
These can emerge from a hatred and seeing other people as “The Other.” The dreaded beings who have evil intent towards you. The protection of the rights of women and girls tend to fly out the window at these times. It is in these moments, of which comprise the vast majority of humanity’s time – with most of humanity at war in its history at around 5-10% of its recorded history; that we find the capacity for evil and the automatic, almost, deprivation of the rights and livelihood of women.
The forms of violence against women, as a fundamental violation of rights and freedoms, lies with mostly men. Good men do not make excuses or should not perpetrate these actions. Good men work together to reduce and ideally eliminate these actions while also working within the justice system for fairness in all parties involved to garner proper justice. There can be an excuse-making aspect to much of the violence perpetrated against women, or simply a pointing of fingers elsewhere in order to distract attention from a proper issue.
One of the main tools in war, for a long time, has been rape and other violence against women and girls for the purposes of demoralizing one’s enemies in war. In combat conditions, these innocent civilians, often women and girls, become subject to a variety of ill-treatment that, in any civilized society or set of them, would not take place at all. However, any society can crumble economically, socially, and morally.
The systems in place for the protection of the rights of women and girls and for the reduction and eventual elimination of violence against women are crucial in order to work for the proper “maintenance of peace and security at the global, regional and local levels.” Which, as acknowledged in the paragraph, amount to collective efforts, those long-term efforts to solve the problems of violence against women.
The issues lie with us. The concerns sit with us. Indeed, and as a “but,” the inflicted pain and misery goes with the women mostly, and potentially attendant children if no abortifacients available or if this stands against the ethical code of the woman who may have been raped and become pregnant as a result. These are difficult issues. They are not simple to solve, as they appear encoded into a violent human nature.
But the ease of modernity, breadth of current education, knowledge of the world through science, and formalization of thought with logic, we can move the dial, as we have with documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Our world is modern by many of these criteria. Our efforts to move more in this direction amounts to the move for modernization.
Inside of these efforts, also, we can note the improvement in the implementation of the rights of women as an important, integral aspect of the basic equality of the sexes and the efforts to reduce, at least in some domains to a relatively reasonable low level, violence and, in particular, violence against women as perpetuated through the cycles of violence and war.
The improvements in the material comforts of life may mask the violent tendencies of human beings, but the efforts for the consideration of the equal dignity and respect for all is a moral advance in some domains. One in which the regression could move backward faster than its move forward as our baser natures beckon onward to call us back to baseline, regression to the violent mean – where women and girls are barely people and more often than not property or chattel. The future of peace and prosperity is, in some fundamental sense, a human choice, one-by-one and collectively.
–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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