Beijing Platform for Action. Chapter IV. D. Violence Against Women – Paragraph 118
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/12/17
119. Developing a holistic and multidisciplinary approach to the challenging task of promoting families, communities and States that are free of violence against women is necessary and achievable. Equality, partnership between women and men and respect for human dignity must permeate all stages of the socialization process. Educational systems should promote self-respect, mutual respect, and cooperation between women and men.
Beijing Declaration (1995)
In the Beijing Declaration, the general view is of the human rights violations and implementations, or lack thereof, with an emphasis on the human rights of women, as these tend to be the most violated around the world.
In fact, if we look into the differentials of the power relations between men and women, there is a general trend for men to behave as if women are lesser than them.
That is to say, ann form of intrinsic misogyny bound to the idea of women somehow requiring the permission of men to do some basic activities in life, whether to freely move, to acquire an education, or to work and be gainfully employed.
But this is the general trend. One of the largest social ills still plaguing most societies, and to different degrees, is the violation of the rights of women.
As noted in the extensive paragraph, we can note the historical perspective within a gendered lens. The ways in which gender, in history, has played a major factor in the violation of the rights of women, or the abuse of women as persons – or, perhaps, the view of women as non-persons.
Men have domineered and discriminated against women as a general rule. There seems to be a modern set of movement, mostly in the advanced industrial economies, to attempt to whitewash and denude the truth of this.
But the plain fact is women were property, if that, throughout much of history and this was enshrined in the world’s ‘great’ religions. Women were intended to be secondary or adjunct to the purposes and the lives of men. This is the history of women’s struggle to free themselves from the oppressive grips of the powerful.
It takes a strong propaganda system to work to misinform the public and ignore these trends throughout the history of the world. Of course, this is an even more poignant message for women of color in much of the world too, including the colonial, or even especially in the colonial, powers.
There are cultural patterns around the world still present amount to “certain traditional or customary practices” that oppress women in a variety of ways.
These can be linked to various forms of lowering women’s status explicitly or implicitly within the society, including in the “family, the workplace, the community and society.”
But then there is also the view of modern societies with the legal provisions but the lack of political will to push these laws. It is a particularly low, abhorrent, and barbaric form of an act to violate another human being to the point of stealing their humanity or dehumanizing them.
This, right into the present, prevents women’s full participation in society and their complete empowerment. Similar to those who deny the facts of evolution the facts of anthropogenic climate change, the facts continental drift and plate tectonics, and so on, the denial of the facts of violence against women as a disproportionately negative life experience for a significant minority of women remains within the same category.
There are a variety of social pressures that can make the impacts of violence against women even worse with, for example, the inability to comfortably come forward and report the experiences of women.
We can find this bursting onto the scene with some movements including the #MeToo movement. The force, power, and import of the movement reflects the failure of the social and legal measures to properly provide recourse for women victims, and to then, by implication, permit the criminals to run on their rather grotesque ways.
No aid, no protection, few legal recourses, shame for having been sexually assaulted or abused, a lack of willingness on the part of the leadership to reform laws to defend victims, and the poor responsiveness of the law enforcement to the legitimate grievances of the women within the society, this all compounded with the lack of education the subject.
There are individuals and movements who probably know better spreading malicious and false information to the public against the widespread international data, which shows women as the disproportionately negative recipients of violence against them.
It is a perpetual search for the ways in which women can garner some recourse for the violence against them and then change the socio-cultural discourse; one which, in essence, amounts to a humanistic, human rights oriented, and a feminist discourse on the nature of the relations between the sexes, where the seldom has been clear-cut indications of the long-term equality of women in society at all or even most levels.
Then we can come to the media representations of rape or sexual assault of women; there is a deep responsibility of the popular media to work harder in their depictions of violence against women and the on-screen reactions of violence against women. All of these impact the ways in which violence against women is received in society.
Take this one step further, we know the intergenerational impacts of this on women. But even further than that, the child and the young are watching this, and the violence against women impacts those who tend to the disproportionate burden-carriers of the care of the women, which is women.
Thus, we remain left with the general view of violence against women as a problem at several levels of analysis with immediate and long-term impacts and, therefore, the need for immediate and long-term plans for remediation and eventual elimination, as per the efforts of the United Nations, in part, and other world actors.
–(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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