Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. A. Women and Poverty – Paragraph 61
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/01
Strategic objective A.2.
Revise laws and administrative practices to ensure women’s equal rights and access to economic resources
Actions to be taken
61. By Governments:
a. Ensure access to free or low-cost legal services, including legal literacy, especially designed to reach women living in poverty;
b. Undertake legislative and administrative reforms to give women full and equal access to economic resources, including the right to inheritance and to ownership of land and other property, credit, natural resources and appropriate technologies;
c. Consider ratification of Convention No. 169 of the International Labour Organization (ILO) as part of their efforts to promote and protect the rights of indigenous people.
Beijing Declaration (1995)
The importance of legal services for the poor is important to help them in the situations in which many people find themselves in the modern world. These can include the problems of the, well the obvious one of, lack of financial resources. The inability of the poor, because of poverty, to afford the legal services involved in some aspects of life.
If poor, what does this imply for their ability to afford the legal services? If this impacts life prospects in statistical terms and over the long term, what does this mean for the demographics of the poor? We can see the impacts on women, people of color, and, in particular, those in developing countries. These are the direct impacts of policies and social conditions that impact the lives of women of color disproportionately negatively compared to others.
The ability to get some knowledge about legal issues too. That is, the aforementioned legal literacy is important for the development of the livelihoods and life prospects of women. Not only this, we can see the legislative and administrative reforms to permit the ability of women to enjoy their “full and equal access to economic resources.”
Insofar as I know, no country has done this; although, there remains relatively pervasive smoke to cover this simple fact in a manner similar to those who wish to cover fundamental moral truisms about the world, often for economic or political gain, which is a basis for action among the general public.
Any public in most nations can rise up, make popular demands, and realize their democratic rights to self-governance and autonomy, e.g., take the cases of Indigenous missing and murdered women in Canada. At the very least, there is a greater awareness of the disproportionately negative impact on their lives and livelihood following the consequences of colonialism.
It is instructive and important. Same with climate change activism coming from the First Nations. Of course, we can see modern attempts to dismiss their, and other people’s, concerns with the modern trend of epithets coming from the faux or falsely self-identified Classical Liberal class as well as some branches of the conservatives – new and old – with neologisms in order to dismiss opponents: the clumping together of disciplines as Grievance Studies – imagine theology being clumped with others as Supernatural and Metaphysical Studies, victims, victimhood culture, libtard, snowflakes, social justice warriors or SJWs, betas, cucks, feminists, even globalists, PC, Regressive Left, and so on.
These invented invectives provide justification for the demonization of the other and internal groupthink while proclaiming an individualist ideology, economically and socially, while, in actuality, being staunch collectivists. These self-proclaimed classical liberals and more akin to, but not entirely, laissez-faire libertarian conservatives with a spice and salt pinch-set of social liberalism become a new class of irrational self-proclaimed rationalists.
It amounts to a very soft form of Orwellian inversion of the meanings of words. Then, of course, they portray themselves as academic pariahs and (false) prophets, which, in some cases, is true – for sure – but in most is simply intellectual self-adulation, hyperbole, and valetudinarianism. By some of their own terminology in North America and some of Europe, they are the part of the Regressive Left speaking out against the ‘Regressive Left’ – yelling at the proverbial mirror in an echo chamber in a manner of speaking.
Does this mean automatic support for the soft witch hunts of a super-minority of academics and writers – Left or Right? No, it means a singular examination of one angle on a problem: the breakdown of popular discourse to the detriment of everyone. Indeed, most of the cases of these individuals come in the form of being called mean words – inappropriate, no doubt – such as “fascist” or “racist.”
But does this justify the calls for shutting down entire disciplines, support of anti-science views with impacts for future generations, potentially unsustainable economic models, support for imperialism, or the feeling of a need to return of religious dogmatisms? If so, then say it, rather than imply it – be assertive rather than passive-aggressive; it shows a marked rush to react, as if, in the terminology, to be a “snowflake.”
I see this in other groups with different ideological premises, but I focus on this one for the time – especially as their narrow vision impacts the energy and focus of those with the education, money, and time to contribute to the democratization of nations through the inclusion of previously excluded voices. These groups, as noted, are minor and, typically, self-enclosed. However, there are relevant and important cases needing dealing with, where the concrete identification of problems in the society become grounds for obfuscation – and, probably often, deliberately so.
It takes a lot of work to not see the international disproportionately negative problems impacting women, people of color, and developing countries, or simply the women and people of color – even in simple denial of rights, e.g., reproductive rights or the right to vote until recent history – in one’s own developed nation.
Then it arises in the calls for shutting down entire disciplines or universities, even in whole countries, that look to, in some marginal way, critically examine – albeit in convoluted and polysyllabic language, granted – this aspect of society. Why not shut down theology departments speaking about unseen metaphysics or supernatural entities or magical forces, or economic departments with market fundamentalisms that plunge economies into the tank? These have far more negative impacts, not in all but many cases, on the societies around the world. Of course, this critical examination doesn’t happen, for good reason; this gives the cards away, and it ain’t a Royal Flush.
Also, the ways in which these individuals speak mostly to themselves, or never speak to their opponents on a respectful one-to-one basis, stereotype and bully across social media, re-define the terminology of their opponents and then argue against the Straw Men – even while knowing about the concept of the Steel Man, use underhanded tactics in misrepresentation of opponents and appealing to emotion and pity, extrapolate small instances in select studies to sweeping generalizations about a half-dozen or more fields extant in more than two dozen countries based on – even with optimistic projections – only one year of confirmation bias-based study of the fields, break ethical norms of academic journals and university life, and continue to denigrate and use the morals of bullies to reinforce their biases (while pointing the fingers at others without cleaning house first) and hold their base – hopefully bringing in some of the fringes in the process from the other side.
The Indigenous rights movement is highly important. It is the basis upon which individuals can come to a greater level of flourishing and equality with others who may be the dominant groups within society. Then there is also Convention No. 169 of the International Labor Organization devoted to the rights of Indigenous peoples. We can see this in the similar documents, full ones in fact, such as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. This is important, even crucial, to recall and bear in mind.
The rights of the Indigenous, especially of the women of many of these peoples, can, in some sense, provide a litmus test as to the ways a culture values its least among them; the prior example in this article is an important reflection on it. Thus, there can be minor distractions among self-involved groups but, in general, the larger and factual issues, based in the ethics of rights (and associated responsibilities), stipulate the need, in documents such as the Beijing Declaration, to work for the equal rights of women with men without delay, especially in areas such as financial need and educational access – even legal training for law literacy.
–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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