Paragraph 109(f)-(h) of the Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. C. Women and Health
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/11/12
Strategic objective C.4.
Promote research and disseminate information on women’s health
Actions to be taken
109. By Governments, the United Nations system, health professions, research institutions, non-governmental organizations, donors, pharmaceutical industries and the mass media, as appropriate:
f. Support and fund social, economic, political and cultural research on how gender-based inequalities affect women’s health, including etiology, epidemiology, provision and utilization of services and eventual outcome of treatment;
g. Support health service systems and operations research to strengthen access and improve the quality of service delivery, to ensure appropriate support for women as health-care providers and to examine patterns with respect to the provision of health services to women and use of such services by women;
h. Provide financial and institutional support for research on safe, effective, affordable and acceptable methods and technologies for the reproductive and sexual health of women and men, including more safe, effective, affordable and acceptable methods for the regulation of fertility, including natural family planning for both sexes, methods to protect against HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases and simple and inexpensive methods of diagnosing such diseases, among others; this research needs to be guided at all stages by users and from the perspective of gender, particularly the perspective of women, and should be carried out in strict conformity with internationally accepted legal, ethical, medical and scientific standards for biomedical research;
Beijing Declaration (1995)
If we look at the ways in which the research and dissemination of data on women’s health improve women’s health and wellness, one of the prominent referents is the HIV/AIDS concerns, especially prominent in 1995.
But this is neither the limit nor the scope. The funding becomes a major issue within the context of these paragraph sections. They speak to pluripotent funding requirements to solve the issues concerning gender inequity.
In particular, we can see the issues associated with the outcomes in a variety of treatments based on gender not being taken into account as a serious consideration.
A gendered lens is important for the effective tackling of problems linked more to one gender than to another, more to women than to men, as a statistical phenomenon.
As noted in the Human Rights calls, we can note the general negative outcomes that are strongly more negative from women to women and especially from men to women in terms of violence against women.
The significance can be seen in international and national statistics from reliable sources and not on the fringe. These are not on the fringe and simply not dealt with in a robust manner.
Now, there should be work to support the extant programs and initiatives, as well as the bolstering of the creation or construction of new ones with similar or improved aims – as discussed in casual or colloquial terms about research and monitoring for improvement of the performance in some programs.
There are health-care services and research needing financial and other backing, but there are going to simply be more of these in the advanced industrial economies compared to the others.
But this is also important for the promises of sufficient quality in the delivery of health-care to those most in need. Consider, for example, the particularly important moments around the birth and raising of a child.
There, simply, is too much work that needs to be done to provide even the most basic forms of health social services for the women most in need at this time in their reproductive lives – let alone having the right to choose to have children, and when, and how many, and under what financial and other life circumstances.
Next, as noted about the contraceptives, the funding or financing of the contraceptive methods is also extraordinarily important and, in fact, cheap compared to the long-term cost of unplanned or teenage, or coerced pregnancy.
Women reserve the right to provisions of basic reproductive healthcare services and tools based on reproductive health rights. But there is also the need to work on the effective education of women to be able to self-empower.
One of these, often opposed by the Roman Catholic Church – a non-trivial political entity, is family planning, as one of the above-mentioned categories of assistance.
Note, the inexpensive, likely, nature of most of the provisions for the sexual health of women. Within these contexts, it can be possible for women to self-empower and find their way into the “safe, effective, affordable and acceptable” means of reproductive health tools for little cost, and with the proper supports than, potentially, no cost.
Societies would benefit and have benefitted greatly from the respect for, implementation of, and maintenance of women’s rights as non-negotiable. Same with the research that goes into making the next generation of reproductive health tools.
–(Updated 2018-11-10 based on further research) 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 and the optional protocol (1993).
- Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995), Five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.
- United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000), and the UN Security Council additional resolutions on women, peace and security: 1820 (2008), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2009), 1960 (2010), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), and 2242 (2015).
- 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.
- UN Women’s strategic plan, 2018–2021
- 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
- 2015 agenda with 17 new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (169 targets for the end to poverty, combatting inequalities, and so on, by 2030). The SDGs were preceded by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) from 2000 to 2015.
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