Paragraph 43 of the Beijing Platform for Action, Chapter III: Critical Areas of Concern
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/09/20
43. A review of progress since the Nairobi Conference highlights special concerns – areas of particular urgency that stand out as priorities for action. All actors should focus action and resources on the strategic objectives relating to the critical areas of concern which are, necessarily, interrelated, interdependent and of high priority. There is a need for these actors to develop and implement mechanisms of accountability for all the areas of concern.
Beijing Declaration (1995)
The Beijing Declaration continues to be a good document for marking the equality of the sexes. Looking at the 43rd paragraph, the continued emphasis is the same with the reference of the nation-states or the state actors as the important parties here. There is a level of timescale and the consideration of ethics, too.
This paragraph sets eyes on the specialized concerns with the look at the areas of urgency, hence the timescale. Those same special concerns, probably, apply to this day, as we see the destruction of many women’s lives continue right into the present almost a quarter century past the Beijing Declaration.
The ranking of priorities for the international community is important as the provision of resources from each country remains important; while, at the same time, the problem with the need to deal with some of the strategic concerns of the global community emerges in the prioritization. Some are more urgent than others; still more, they can be dealt with cheaply and quickly; furthermore, another set requirement immediate implementation but take a long time to solve.
As the state actors are the ones to be responsible, in coordination and working in concern, for the management of the prioritized issues, many of those listed throughout the document and commented on in several articles now. Those “critical areas of concern” are to be labeled as, or were labeled as, “interrelated, interdependent and of high priority.”
The problem with some of the actualizations of solutions is not only lack of financial and other resources, and little time to work on them, but also the ability to track the levels of progress of identifiable factors. Those factors or variables become the basis for more accountability. If, for example, the priority targeted objective is to reduce the number of child marriages of women, and if one marks this as a marriage without consent or before the age of consent – so age 18, then the idea is to track these number of child marriages in accordance with prior statistics.
Then you could look at a hypothetical level of progress in the implementation of the human rights of girls in particular and women in general. If there was regress, the accountability would be the state actor, where the identifiable regression would be on the tracked metrics listed before. It is difficult to track the proper implementation of the human rights of people, especially as many state actors who already perform poorly – or don’t care as much – on the actualization of, and so practical respect for, human rights of girls and women.
As noted in some of the recent articles, the estimated numbers of women and girls alive today married as children come to 750 million or 0.75 billion. In other words, and as an easy mathematical experiment, if we look at the total global population of human beings at about 7.65 billion circa September 2018, and if we divide the number by 2, we come to 3.825 billion men or 3.825 billion women.
However, one of the ratios accepted by experts, at the moment, is 102 boys to 100 girls, as the ower estimate ratio. The higher ratio is 107 to 100. But for simplicity’s sake, we can stick with the 3.825 billion women in the world, though in actuality the number is less. So, 3.825 billion women and girls in the world with, as an older estimate mind you, 0.75 billion women and girls married as children alive today, which comes to the simple calculation: 0.75/3.825*(100)=~19.61% of women and girls, around the entire world, married as children. Although, with the high proportion of boys in the world, the denominator would be a smaller number – and with the older estimate on the numerator, the number may, in fact, be higher, though as an argument could be made for lower.
This is a disparity. The percentage may creep above 20%, with some modifications, or more than 1/5 women or girls married as children. If the goal were to reduce the number, then the states of the international community could use this metric as an indicator of the levels of child marriage, as a global percentage of women and girls living today who underwent child marriage. With a failure to reduce the number, we could keep those state actors around the world accountable for their failure in implemention of policy and setting about cultural dialogues for the reduction in the 19.61%.
Accountability becomes the basis for global justice in identifiable areas of concern. Those areas of concern spread across a wide range but run back into the arena of the lack of implementation of the rights of women as persons.
–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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