Paragraph 5 of the Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter I: Mission Statement
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/02
5. The success of the Platform for Action will require a strong commitment on the part of Governments, international organizations and institutions at all levels. It will also require adequate mobilization of resources at the national and international levels as well as new and additional resources to the developing countries from all available funding mechanisms, including multilateral, bilateral and private sources for the advancement of women; financial resources to strengthen the capacity of national, subregional, regional and international institutions; a commitment to equal rights, equal responsibilities and equal opportunities and to the equal participation of women and men in all national, regional and international bodies and policy-making processes; and the establishment or strengthening of mechanisms at all levels for accountability to the world’s women.
Beijing Declaration (1995)
The Platform for Action of the Beijing Declaration provides a basis for the consideration of the commitments of governments to work towards the equality of women with men through the cooperation and coordination of the international organizations and institutions at all levels. With these three working in alignment, not even all or necessarily well, the progress for a reduction in the inequality of the sexes can be substantial and continues to be important.
We are seeing a blatant pushback against the rights of women with the restriction on abortion access, reproductive health rights, economic freedoms, and the questioning of educational efforts in a variety of no-so-subtle ways. The mobilization of the national and international resources stipulated in paragraph 5, applied to a modern example, could be used to work in the defense of women rights in and freedoms in the aforementioned domains.
The nations wanting to develop should keep in mind the areas of development for women in a variety of ways. And the ways in which those developments provide for the overall flourishing of the society, non-zero sum thinking is necessary here, as the general thinking is that the inclusion of women into the workplace will create a lack of employment opportunities for men across the board.
But this isn’t necessarily true or the proper orientation, where this is simple and unremarkable with women and men competing on a more equal footing. The footings built through successive efforts for equality with a funding mechanism, multilateral and bilateral relationships and then private sourcing of resources for equality of the sexes. All this comes with the advancement and empowerment of women.
If one wants to make a direct or indirect argument against the efforts to fund and support women, it seems important to bear in mind the empirical findings. Does the work to advance and empower women to improve societal health and wellbeing? The answer is an almost unequivocal, “No.” Women with more rights and freedoms, so more equal with men in terms of access, produce more efficacious societal results. Equality works, bottom line.
This is in terms of the national, subregional, regional and international institutional analyses. It is the drumbeat reiteration of the evidence being found for greater equality leading to the more prosperous societies rather than the other way around, where the “equal rights, equal responsibilities and equal opportunities” for women tied to equal participation in the societies leads to healthier societies, so more just, fair, and, in religious terms, righteous – and not self-righteous, hopefully – nations.
Those countries that do not and continue to inherit the superstitions, injustices, inequalities, religious fundamentalisms, and oppression of women create countries where fewer people flourish and are education – and so understand less and less about the ways in which the real world works. The bodies of the world for policy-making are incredibly integral to these modernization practices, especially with the mechanisms built through the implementation of already-in-place policies for keeping men and women accountable to the rights violations and freedom restrictions of women.
It is important for the flourishing of those nations to get these rights and freedoms correct, as they open the window into the possibility of the Sustainable Development Goal of Gender Equality or the longer-term phrasing of the same initiative in equality of the sexes. And, again, the evidence is well on the side of equality, whether moderation of religious fundamentalism or more freedoms for women with the right to vote, earn money, own land, get educated, and control their own reproduction.
It is these international rights works that comprise a great deal of writing for me because the writing is on the proverbial wall. The benefits are clear. The morality is true insofar as the empirical truths represent the eudaimonic actualization in the real world without recourse to the otherworldly – other than, maybe, rights.
–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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