Paragraph 23 for 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): 2018/09/10
23. Recognizing that the achievement and maintenance of peace and security are a precondition for economic and social progress, women are increasingly establishing themselves as central actors in a variety of capacities in the movement of humanity for peace. Their full participation in decision-making, conflict prevention and resolution and all other peace initiatives is essential to the realization of lasting peace.
Beijing Declaration (1995)
The ability of the international community to work together through declarations such as the Beijing Declaration is an important marker of much of the common sentiments – though, at times, unwillingness – of the representatives of the global system to advance fundamental human rights for women, for equality with men.
This is both heartwarming and indicative oft he long-term trends in our societies. Where there has been a recognition of not only the moral strength in representing women more and more in the international system, and by implication the national ones, but also the economic and social development benefits of the inclusion of women into the world’s decision-maker apparatuses and power levers, whether these are political or economic, these stand the empirical test of outcomes.
Countries with more equality for women do better. Nations without these rights implemented tend to do worse. Indeed, and even in 1995 and still, women bear the brunt of the cuts to the social programs, which could benefit the least among us, including most often women. it is abundantly clear women are the world’s poor far more often than the men.
The facts about this can’t be confronted directly, so we’re seeing deliberate attempts at mockery, ridicule, caricaturing, and character assassinations to prevent direct discussion on the facts because, probably, those opposed to women’s equality for a variety of reasons simply do not have the arguments anymore.
The focus becomes purported cultural Marxists, postmodernists, and others deemed epithet worthy. Those purporting to represent rationality hurling epithets, resorting to magical thinking and appeals to emotion, and politically dismantling protections of human rights or the rights of the citizenry – again, probably because they do not have a proper response or an argument anymore, or the preponderance of evidence in most cases either.
Now, to paragraph 23 in particular, there has been a substantial achievement in the maintenance of peace and security around the world. This has come under some question, recently. However, we have seen both the achievement of peace and then the maintenance of it as well. Both substantial and laudable global achievements, broadly speaking though major crimes of the superpowers continue afoot.
The ability of nations and its citizenry to move forward in the quality of life and democratic ideals requires peace and security. The longer the period of peace and security, then the longer the timespan for economic and social progress, as indicated in paragraph 23. Women continue to become more and more central actors in the work to establish peace and security around the world.
This involves the work for further inclusion in “decision-making, conflict prevention and resolution” and the entire suite of associated peace processes. One can expect new voices and perspectives to impact the means by which peace is accomplished, and the ways in which the established power brokers cannot unilaterally decide on particular measures.
The inclusion of more voices will lead to a democratization of decision-making and the ways to deal with peace and security and how to maintain it, too. The world has more democratic institutions than at any other time in its history. But we stand at a precipice of a global, not shift but, decision if we want to move to magical thinking, hyper patriarchal institutions, and authoritarianism or further democratization and the development of more open societies; the former conforms to furthermore closed societies and fewer voices in the political arena and the latter accords with more open societies with more and more voices included more equitably in the decision-making processes and apparatuses of the societies.
We do not have a lot of time as a cascade of converging possible catastrophes are upon us, where we need to take immediate actions or face the possible consequences of the extinction of many species on the Earth, including ourselves as part of the natural order. Of which, the maintenance of peace and security and the prevention of conflicts and war is one, as modern weaponry is incredible precise and powerful in its destructive capabilities.
–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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