Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health – Paragraph 89
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/20
89. Women have the right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health. The enjoyment of this right is vital to their life and well-being and their ability to participate in all areas of public and private life. Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. Women’s health involves their emotional, social and physical well-being and is determined by the social, political and economic context of their lives, as well as by biology. However, health and well-being elude the majority of women. A major barrier for women to the achievement of the highest attainable standard of health is inequality, both between men and women and among women in different geographical regions, social classes and indigenous and ethnic groups. In national and international forums, women have emphasized that to attain optimal health throughout the life cycle, equality, including the sharing of family responsibilities, development and peace are necessary conditions.
Beijing Declaration (1995)
Paragraph 89 of the Beijing Declaration deals with the highest attainable standard of both mental and physical health. Now, this is a nice statement. But this raises the question about definitions and feasibility.
Obviously, the rare and rarefied forms of the definition will create a foundation upon which we will base the metrics. If the highest possible standard with Japan, then, yes, this becomes near impossibility with the current technological thin spread of medicine and the population of the Earth.
But if we look into the highest possible standard as defined within the social and medical confines of a particular or, better yet, subculture of a nation, then, of course, this becomes highly feasible for the world population, as this takes into account the peculiarities of a particular country.
This relativizes the universal in the rights to life and well-being become subjective to the context of a culture. This becomes a lack of dis-ease and infirmity of an individual citizen within a country.
This includes the health of women in the emotional, physical, and social spheres. Indeed, we can see the political and economic contexts restricting women in the past and right into the present. The efforts, now, are to denude, weaken, or attenuate those issues of the oppression of women in order to achieve that non-absolute and relativized height of the attainment of a highest possible standard of mental and physical health.
The forms of inequality faced by women continue to be a major stumbling or roadblock to the attainment of the highest standard, which becomes worse per sector of the population taken into account.
These can include the social classes and the minorities as well, Indigenous and otherwise. Continually, then and now, the emphasis on the international stage is the furtherance of efforts for shared parental responsibilities as a means of both improvement of communities as well as development and peace.
–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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