The Beijing Declaration’s Annex I(31) and (32)
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/08/27
31. Promote and protect all human rights of women and girls;
32. Intensify efforts to ensure equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms for all women and girls who face multiple barriers to their empowerment and advancement because of such factors as their race, age, language, ethnicity, culture, religion, or disability, or because they are indigenous people;Beijing Declaration (1995)
Looking through these sections of the text, we can see the continuous reiteration of the fundamental need to further implement women’s rights for the promotion of equality, dignity, respect, and so on; the Beijing Declaration is in line with the other rights documents seen throughout the historical record of the 20th century.This cannot be understated. Women have had an extraordinarily hard time compared to the men relative to their historical period and geographic area based on the records of the world. The places where women and girls are better treated, as equal members of the society; this shows in the socio-economic development of the countries.Investment in women and girls is, statistically speaking, a greater boon to the men and the society, the families and communities, more than the simple investment in the fathers of the families. The promotion and protection of the human rights of women and girls remain within this set of considerations. They produce concrete, positive, and lasting results.Annex I(32) speaks more to the efforts for equal enjoyment of the rights and freedoms of women and girls regardless of personal identity factors. A woman or a girl who is of a particular age. She should not be discriminated against or not provided the equal rights and freedoms. Same in the case of a woman being of any race or speaking any language. The same goes for a woman’s ethnicity or ethnic background.It is identical as a consideration to simply not discount a girl or woman based on their culture or religious background either. These are non-factors; same with disabilities, born or acquired. It is the same for Indigenous women and girls too. As we know in my own country, and several nations throughout the world, Indigenous women tend to be subject to more violence than the men.This is psychological, physically, and sexually. Where there are several international rights documents speaking to the need to work to achieve the reduction and eventual elimination of the prejudice and bias against women and girls, the ways in which men, and some women, see men, or other women, as simply less than enough to grant them the right to physical, psychologically, or sexually abuse them.Truly, the main word of emphasis in this last section for consideration today is the emphasis on “intensify.” The furtherance of efforts for women’s equality is not something to be delayed or done with a lackadaisical mindset. It requires a serious effort by the main movers and shakers of the world. By which I mean, the people who are dirt poor farmers, Indigenous women and girls, and those kept on the margins of the global system but who have a voice yet to be seen, felt, and only marginally heard in the global community in the recent past.Our collective effort should be to intensify efforts for these people to feel some form of empowerment and advancement, especially in regards to the rights of women. The benefits of an equitable society in the form of the outcomes and the lofty ideals preceding them. The ethical standards, high ones, set in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and associated documents decades ahead of it.These amount to negations of the history of the divine right of kings, religious oppression, and the absolute forms of monarchy. Rights for all rather than some, whether royalty or religious alone; these provide the transition from the right to rule doctrines of the past into the rights of all to determine their own lives, individually and collectively, apart from royal lineage and religious dominance.It is a good thing too, as we have seen the most rapid increase in the quality of life for people only in the periods since the rejection of religious oppression, absolute monarchies, and the divine right of kinds. The idea of all having the rights and freedoms decided upon by the international community and show in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other documents. These remain remarkable achievments in moral philosophy.–
- 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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