Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. D. Violence Against Women – Paragraph 114
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/12/14
114. Other acts of violence against women include violation of the human rights of women in situations of armed conflict, in particular murder, systematic rape, sexual slavery and forced pregnancy.
Beijing Declaration (1995)
In paragraph 114 of the Beijing Declaration, we come to the inclusion of the violence against women in the phenomenon of armed conflict. This is a serious problem around the world. One of the big problems is the way in which the murder and rape have been forces of women’s oppression for eons.
It goes back a long way, even being incorporated into purported divine holy texts with women seen as property, as purposed for the propagation of children – hopefully sons, and so on. The coercive and slave-based sexual history of much of the species reflects the oppression of women.
It is not that every individual woman is, by the necessity of being a woman, oppressed but, rather, the nature of the relations and structures within the society produce forms of inequality at the detriment of women.
Indeed, these can be the cases in which the women, in an armed conflict context, become tools of the conquerors to further humiliate and take over the defeated populations. The murder of women and children, as more often civilians, is one tragedy.
Others include the rape as a weapon of war. Rape as a means by which to subdue and control the subjugated population. Violence against women remains an important and vile aspect of human nature and human interpersonal relations. It is done; thus, it is a human capacity.
The systematic rape of women is something tackled in some of the work written on by us here, but also within the larger global conversation started in North America by Tarana Burke but had throughout world history too.
One of the contexts of this is the ways in which the conversation is had, then misrepresented or misunderstood, and, thus, obfuscated. But, in general, the proper message gets out and the public can begin to coordinate, share common experiences, and work to change the world for the better.
But, as most know, the consequences of rape can be pregnancy, which can be an enforced form of pregnancy. These are some of the real-life circumstances and contexts for the women of the world. It pervades the contexts or environments of war.
Women simply take this as a brunt, as civilians mind you, within the context of armed aggression between two groups or state powers. The “murder, systematic rape, sexual slavery and forced pregnancy” retain a sensitivity within the public conservation while, at the same time, having the data to back up the import and prevalence undergirding the level of salience of the subject matter in any honest conversation about the sexual and other violence against women.
The questions for us moving forward related to the degree to which we continue to turn a blind eye to the derivative, or even sometimes direct, consequences and even intentions of war, violence, armed conflict and aggression around the world and the impacts on the lives of women.
–(Updated 2018-11-10) 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.
–Human Rights
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Led by: Scott Douglas JacobsenTo the socio-political Right, a disclaimer; to the socio-political Left, a trigger warning: the subject matter may be disturbing or triggering for some listeners, speakers, or call members. The statistics on international violence against women is disproportionately more than violence against men. In turn, there is violence against women committed by women against women but more often by men against women. It is the statistical difference, which is the basis for the international emphasis on violence against women in multiple spheres rather than localized differences. Wednesday morning, we will speak on violence against women for one hour or so.
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