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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:
i. Support and promote efforts by States towards the development of criteria and guidelines on responses to persecution specifically aimed at women, by sharing information on States’ initiatives to develop such criteria and guidelines and by monitoring to ensure their fair and consistent application;
Beijing Declaration (1995)
When we can see the levels of emphasis on general frameworks for understanding the contexts for women while also keeping in mind the forms of the limits in the presentations in the documents, some of the more interesting and useful presentations are the scales of the consideration for some of the most vulnerable members of the society.
For example, when we take a sincere look at the women who have been negatively impacted by wars, they are mostly civilians; civilians tend to be the most affected by wars, or about half if we take a closer and more detailed look at the studies available to us. Nonetheless, the focus on internally displaced peoples, including internally displaced women; we come to a more comprehensive presentation of individuals affected by war and a central focus of the documents devoted to women’s rights.
As this particular section devotes itself to the global scale of examination, with some national emphasis through governments and non-governmental organizations, the issue should be a larger focus on non-combatants if in an ideal context, but this is too broad and not the focus of this particular series.
As we can see here, the training of refugee women and displaced women, in general, are framed in the discourse of “international protection.” This seems precisely right. In this sense, if in a context of the world with far more precarious circumstance, while having fewer resources and more probability to be a victim in the case of armed conflict, any form of training or knowledge for the protection of oneself and others like oneself can not only become a necessity but an important mark of the improvement in the civilizing effects upon the society.
The kinds of supports emphasized here, as is important but often the case, is the development of “criteria and guidelines on responses to persecution” with a focus on the aforementioned protection. As has been stipulated in prior articles on this form of development of ethical frames to guide the moving forward of the documentation of women’s rights, these can provide metrics to see how this progress over time, to examine the “fair and consistent application” of things.
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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 Simon Matzinger on Unsplash