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Beijing Platform for Action. Paragraph 147(o)

2022-04-27

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2019/07/18

Strategic objective E.5.

Provide protection, assistance and training to refugee women, other displaced women in need of international protection and internally displaced women

Actions to be taken

147. By Governments, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations and other institutions involved in providing protection, assistance and training to refugee women, other displaced women in need of international protection and internally displaced women, including the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the World Food Programme, as appropriate:

o. Develop awareness of the human rights of women and provide, as appropriate, human rights education and training to military and police personnel operating in areas of armed conflict and areas where there are refugees.

Beijing Declaration (1995)

Paragraph 147 has been dealing with the levels of governments, and intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations for good reason. It is an important level for more ubiquitous protection of refugee women, as many refugee women will have been one place and then moved out into another context. Approximately 21 million refugee women are extant around the world, this is a subset of the total refugee and displaced persons numbers around the world. In short, it’s a staggering number of people who are refugees right now.

In terms of the rights of the overall view of the Beijing Declaration, as this is coming to mind now, this should be covered somewhere in this colloquial series on the rights of women here. To give an idea, when I am looking at the Beijing Declaration, I try to keep in mind the framework of the overall document:

Beijing Declaration

This is the full framework of the Beijing Declaration, where this series moves chronologically along its template with the current section: “Women and armed conflict.” According to The Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) in “Trend in Armed Conflict, 1946-2017,” there are some clear statements as to the levels of war into recent years. It stated, “The Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP), the leading provider of statistics on political violence, has identified 285 distinct armed conflicts since 1946.”

In 2017, there were 49 armed conflicts. 49 armed conflicts in which women and children would be more bound to become refugees or displaced persons. That’s 22 years after the original instantiation of the Beijing Declaration. This means a generalize recognition of the importance of landmark documents and then persistent and perseverant efforts at the working towards the targeted statements within the documents.

When these come at the international level, these provide a context in which the international community through governments, INGOs, NGOs, CSOs, and regional collectives can come together on common problems. Coming to women’s rights, this is one such area. These should always be kept in mind for the Beijing Declaration, which has been consistently important and was an integral part of the advancements of women’s rights since 1995, as there have been updated outputs with the “five-year review of progress (2000), 10-year review in 2005, the 15-year review in 2010, and the 20-year review in 2015.” (See below under “Documents.”)

Section (o) of Paragraph 147 deals with more awareness-raising of the light of women in these precarious circumstances. Alongside awareness, the Beijing Declaration wavers between two parts of awareness and education, which makes sense. However, sometimes, it speaks of awareness only; and, other times, it talks about education alone. In some cases, such as this, awareness and education become a unified package with one another.

In that, the ‘development of awareness of human rights of women’ comes connected to “human rights education and training to military and police personnel operating in areas of armed conflict and areas where there are refugees.” To personal sensibilities, I like the contextualized and triplet formation of use for a purpose, by design, in which some cases or subject matter require more emphasis on awareness; others need more delineation along the lines the degree, type, and extent of educations; and still more, these might necessitate something like a hybrid consideration with awareness as synonymous with education, and vice versa.

The armed conflicts referenced earlier here become integral because of the targeted populations for the education, intended groupings. These are the military and police personnel. Those individuals who are sworn to protect the civilian population and fight the enemies of a Member State in wartime. With the human rights education and training, I would not expect a perfect state of things; however, I would posit or hypothesize an increased chance of knowledge of the human rights status (humanity) of refugees in armed conflict, which can be, and is, a serious concern. Because large numbers of civilians – mostly women and children – are killed during armed conflicts.

Those who had little to do with the conflict are murdered. To the question implicit in this reasoning about the prevention of this happening to the level and the degree at which it is happening, it comes down to awareness-raising, better human rights-oriented education targeted to the appropriate populations, e.g., military and police personnel, or both as one.

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(Updated 2020-07-07, only use the updated listing, please) Not all nations, organizations, societies, or individuals accept the proposals of the United Nations; one can find similar statements in other documents, conventions, declarations and so on, with the subsequent statements of equality or women’s rights, and the important days and campaigns devoted to the rights of women and girls too:

Documents

Strategic Aims

Celebratory Days

Guidelines and Campaigns

Women and Men Women’s Rights Campaigners

License

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.

Copyright

© Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. All interviewees and authors co-copyright their material and may disseminate for their independent purposes.

From → Chronology, Jacobsen's Bank, The Good Men Project

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