Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health – Paragraphs 106(f)-(h)
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/10/30
Strategic objective C.1.
Increase women’s access throughout life cycle to appropriate, affordable and quality health care, information and related services
Actions to be taken
106. By Governments, in collaboration with non-governmental organizations and employers’ and workers’ organizations and with the support of international institutions:
f. Redesign health information, services and training for health workers so that they are gender-sensitive and reflect the user’s perspectives with regard to interpersonal and communications skills and the user’s right to privacy and confidentiality; these services, information and training should be based on a holistic approach;
g. Ensure that all health services and workers conform to human rights and to ethical, professional and gender-sensitive standards in the delivery of women’s health services aimed at ensuring responsible, voluntary and informed consent; encourage the development, implementation and dissemination of codes of ethics guided by existing international codes of medical ethics as well as ethical principles that govern other health professionals;
h. Take all appropriate measures to eliminate harmful, medically unnecessary or coercive medical interventions, as well as inappropriate medication and over-medication of women, and ensure that all women are fully informed of their options, including likely benefits and potential side-effects, by properly trained personnel;
Beijing Declaration (1995)
These sections of paragraph 106 in the Beijing Declaration speak to some nuanced issues. Question: if healthcare providers lack adequate information about a patient to give proper evidence-based care, and if the patient is misinformed based on bad information when making ‘informed’ decisions, what are the chances of a positive outcome for the patient, e.g., the girl or woman?
By thought experiment, we know, as in anything with bad information and a lot more potential for bad answers than good ones, more women and girls, or patients generally, will be given worse health care and have bad health outcomes with the bad information.
Now, we can see the concrete form in which inclusion of a gendered perspective, or having gender in the policy and praxis of health care, retains a high level of importance for the health and wellbeing of women and girls, and of having accurate information for the healthcare providers to give good health care.
The ethics of human rights is the foundation here. The focus is on conforming to ethical and professional standards with an emphasis on human rights and gendered perspectives. It is in this gender-sensitive background and practice that there can be better-served patients by the medical community.
There should be voluntary and informed consent too. It goes back to good data and quality information analyses for medical professionals to be able to better serve their patients.
Even more so, the medical professional at all relevant levels should have good information too, about the ethics within their field of expertise. There are codes of ethics as there are human rights stipulations. These become the basic tenets of dos and don’ts within a field, in this case medical.
These are a series of measures to reduce poor practice and health outcomes for patients, and for procedures to be done with free, prior, and informed consent. When women have more information about their particular medical backgrounds, about their issues, and the potential outcomes of the sets of medical options available to them, they will, statistically speaking, have more positive health outcomes in contrast to the times of when this does not happen and when women are making uninformed medical choices.
–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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