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Strategic objective E.2.
Reduce excessive military expenditures and control the availability of armaments
Actions to be taken
143. By Governments:
f. Recognizing the leading role that women have played in the peace movement
iii. Pending the entry into force of a comprehensive nuclear-test-ban treaty, exercise the utmost restraint in respect of nuclear testing.
Beijing Declaration (1995)
Now, paragraph 143, obviously, focuses on the importance of women in the peace process and the creation of the documents salient to, if not necessary for, the reduction of nuclear testing throughout the world. In fact, when we see the availability of the armaments with more than 14,000 active nuclear warheads, or, approximately, $2 trillion in military expenditures throughout the world can lead to some thoughts about the issues.
How did we get here? Why so many? Are there more than the estimated amounts in the world? Will these poly-opolies, internationally speaking, provide a basis for the prevention of nuclear catastrophe due to a multinational governance desire to not be vaporized and, literally, cease to exist in any decent form? This seems reasonable, but this may be an unreasonable idea in some other ways.
Sometimes, societies and governments, even semi-democratic, can be suicidal, as with the United States, and others, with a complete lack of understanding of the climate problems facing us or the outright denial of the facts of anthropogenic climate change or human-induced global warming. We don’t truly know at the end of the day because of the issues of human choices behind all of this.
The number of unknowns, probably, leaves us in a global system in which statistical heuristics become the most important basis for decision-making rather than gut, chance, God, or the gun. It becomes a scientific, an empirical question, in other words, where it is an international ethic with the necessity of being informed by science and, thus, ethics as necessarily incorporating science.
As I explored through the Humanist Association of Toronto in Humanism as an Empirical Moral Philosophy, the fundamental ideas of the humanistic ethic comes from an inclusion of science in the full decision-making tree, whether explicit or not, about the proper means by which one should act and think in the world – how one should relate to others, as per the fundamental notion of morality – with the adaptation to the facts of the world to put boundaries on the possible decisions one can make and the depth of precision with which one can make them.
Humanism presents an internationalist perspective on morality. This globalist vision of how human beings integrate with one another sincerely impacts the world of human rights considerations with the equality of women and the improvement of the inclusion of women in the varieties of peacemaking processes. The reduction of the nuclear armaments and the prevention of excess or any nuclear testing is a necessity in 1995 and now.
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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).
- Some general declarations (not individual Declaration or set of them but announcement) included the UN Decade for Women (1976-1985).
- Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979) and the Optional Protocol (1999).
- 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), 2242 (2015), and 2467 (2019).
- 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, emphasis on the entirety of the goals with a strong focus on Goal 5
- 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.
- The Spotlight Initiative as another important piece of work, as a joint venture between the European Union and the United Nations.
- February 6, International Day of Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation is observed.
- February 11, International Day of Women and Girls in Science is observed.
- June 19, Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict is observed.
- June 23, is International Widows’ Day is observed.
- October 11, International Day of the Girl Child is observed.
- October 15, International Day of Rural Women is observed.
- November 25, International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women is observed.
- Gender Inclusive Guidelines, Toolbox, & United Nations System-wide Strategy on Gender Parity.
- Say No, UNiTE, UNiTE to End Violence against Women, Orange the World: #HearMeToo (2018), and the 16 days of activism.
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Photo by Kevin Delvecchio on Unsplash