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Strategic objective D.3.
Eliminate trafficking in women and assist victims of violence due to prostitution and trafficking
Actions to be taken
141. In addressing armed or other conflicts, an active and visible policy of mainstreaming a gender perspective into all policies and programmes should be promoted so that before decisions are taken an analysis is made of the effects on women and men, respectively.
Beijing Declaration (1995)
Paragraph 141 of the Beijing Declaration comes from a framework of the importance of dealing with prostitution and trafficking based violence through the areas of the armed conflicts, and “other,” which looks at a tad like the listing of elements distributed in the universe and the elements in human beings ranked by proportion contained in each followed by the most common element in either – apparently: “Other.” It might be somewhere on the more obscure titles as names that should be given more attention for lucidity and leadership. “Other” contains a lot, in other words.
Indeed, names in the “other” category of culture, at times, contain a lot. The names like Chris Hedges (ethical authority), Rebecca Traister (moral force), Norman Finkelstein (careful scholarship), Margaret Atwood (balanced empirical narrative), Pankaj Mishra (prescient commentary), Marilyn vos Savant (objectivity), Scott Atran (truly doing the hard research), Kristen Monroe (showing the heart of altruism), Sikivu Hutchinson (courage to speak unspoken truths while connected to community), or Nathan J. Robinson (astute political commentary with style and humor). All setting good examples. (Of course, there are others.)
A gendered perspective of the problems of armed conflict, as with the other stipulations within the Beijing Declaration, provide lucid accounts of the distinct problems facing women and girls, and some men and boys, in the conflict zones and their aftermaths. When we take some time to pause, the main issue for the men comes from men of colour and poor men wrangled into the armies or the military, in general, to become hired murderers of, mostly, other men.
The issues for women and girls come in the civilian populations being the main victims of war, for one, and the individuals who are subject to the consequences of war. Most victims of rape and sexual assault in war are women and girls. Those who do not die in the inadvertent combat of the soldiers who become refugees, displaced persons, and others (there it is) are women and girls majoritively. If we look at the victims of trafficking and prostitution, too, once more, we come to the cases of women and girls.
The men may die more instantaneously, but the women face more multifarious, multiplicitous, and multifaceted problems in and after armed conflicts compared to the men. Within these gendered analyses, we can come to some items, some heuristics of thought, helpful to the comprehension of the dynamics involved in the consideration of human rights. The “active and visible” policy involved with a gendered perspective becomes crucial to the work of policies and programmes for the improvement in the livelihoods of women.
As this is a casual series, and as has been covered in some previous work, we can see the developments in the reasoning around the inclusion of women in decision-making bodies for the improved levels, increased amounts, of peace in the world and the reduction in the instances and consequences of war. This stands apart from, but linked to, the idea of taking on a gendered lens, as the issues facing the various genders will differ.
The issues facing men and women will be different because the history and nature of war have been different for men and women.
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- 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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