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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:
k. Ensure that the human rights of refugee and displaced women are protected and that refugee and displaced women are made aware of these rights; ensure that the vital importance of family reunification is recognized;
Beijing Declaration (1995)
Some of my favourite people in the world are individuals who, whether religious or non-religious, fight for the rights and dignity of others now, not in some abstract sense, not in the creation of some obscure and typically useless theoretical framework, not in the provision of some new scientific insight, nor in some clever slogan shareable in the public domain; no, some of my favourite people are ordinary people who put their bodies, livelihoods, careers, sometimes lives, on the line for something, which, as Mencken in spite of his tremendous flaws noted, is unquestionably noble. All the nobler when based on some true or, at a minimum, real axiom to some extent. It is an ignoring of the plights of others – their pains, losses, and desired best lives lost forever – that constitutes a prime evil, as it deals with things capable of feeling, sensing, emoting, and thinking.
Human rights, I hope, will some day in the future for some generation reach a point of realization for the population who comprise a range of consciousnesses. Something capturing the heart of constructed entities – human rights – and generalized for better applicability, more generality than religious law and human rights. Something like a Kohlbergian 8th stage developing off the 6th and 7th stages of the theoretical foundations of an ethical vision and horizon.
As we have been dealing with human rights as the internationalist foundational ethic for seven or so decades, documents like the Beijing Declaration provide a vision into a possible future for human beings more just and equitable than the one seen now. In this vision, we can see the same focus as in the other recent articles on governments, INGOs, and NGOs, which is something between national, regional, and international, with the “regional, and international,” depending on the context for the particular application of them.
The human rights universality of application, in principle, is important because most people will not meet most people, but most people will meet many people; and, many people have most of the same issues. This commonality of issues in the species makes for the idea of the universality of such principles. In that, something must be common to all for universality to apply in some reasonable sense. In these contexts of a species view implied by the “human” title in “human rights,” and the consideration of everyone as more the same than different, this is the basis for human rights as a more universal ethic than not.
Fundamentally, I believe this kind of vision of the world is the basis for tenderness and love. Simply put, it expands this vision from intimate limited interpersonal circles into the widest range available within the general or common considerations of experiences. Certainly, this can be, and has been, expanded into areas beyond the species to ideas of animal rights. Nonetheless, the awareness of said rights can be an issue.
Since Descartes, there has been this notion of only human beings having a soul. In this consideration of only human beings having souls, untold suffering has been applied to human beings considered not part of the common human species to non-human animals too. All in all, it becomes a situation of pain and suffering thrust upon individuals within the societies and the animals slaughtered for the survival and pleasure-consumption of humans.
Education limits about the rights of others and oneself can be one reason for the misapplication or lack of applied work for the fundamental human rights of others. As we have seen with so many others, there is, certainly, a sense in which refugees and displaced persons are off in the distance, in some other place, and, somehow as if by magical thinking, not one of us, not even like you; some sort of ephemeral, mystical creature beyond the breach.
Human rights are violated every day. It does not mean that the universalism of the rights or the commonality of the people are in some manner breached. Human rights are still rights, ethical ideas – invented by people. People are still members of the human species. I would only merely hope to extend this consideration into the future to non-human animals and artificial consciousnesses or technically constructed consciousnesses rather than simply evolved human consciousnesses or non-human animal consciousnesses.
With evolution via natural selection, the general idea seems clear. Human beings appear natural, mathematical objects with non-human animals coming about through the same bottom-up, environmentally guided, and non-conscious selection process in both the geosphere and the biosphere. As this implies a technical construction of consciousness or “awareness,” as the astute Paul Cooijmans points out, the same words for the same idea, just “consciousness” sounds more pompous – arrogant. When saying, “Awareness,” it becomes more clear, less magical-seeming. It is about something capable of some recursive self-consideration, which, in modern information theory and communication theory, simply means an information processor feeding back into itself for further information processing about itself. No need for pomposity or neologisms – ta-da! Then the special forms creates a formulation for some basis consciousness.
If these can evolve, then these can be constructed – because evolution amounts to a mass plural-pathway technique of engineering and selection-construction set-up at the same time – brilliant! A+ nature, nothing profound there. The focus here in the Beijing Declaration is important because of the ensuring of some of the most vulnerable populations of women seen in refugee and displaced women having access to some of the most basic rights. In that, the compounding of being so far away while also having foreign populations not know about the rights of vulnerable women creates an extremely difficult situation for those refugee and displaced women.
This is a common theme within the discussions on the rights for displaced and refugee women. In that, the basic levels of knowledge of rights is the first-order issue. After this is covered, there can be some focus on the importance of family reunification. However, as with 1995, we still require extensive efforts on the front of education for refugee women. It can be done, but it has to be accomplished within the larger ethical frameworks of the Beijing Declaration and the concept of human rights, and the equality and dignity of the best off and the worst off.
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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
Strategic Aims
- 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.
Celebratory Days
- 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.
Guidelines and Campaigns
- 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.
Women and Men Women’s Rights Campaigners
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Photo by Jude Beck on Unsplash