WUNRN
UN NGLS - UN Non-Governmental
Liaison Service
NGLS INTERVIEW WITH NOELENE
NABULIVOU*- SMALL ISLAND DEVELOPING STATES - VITAL LINKAGES ON
ECONOMIC, ECOLOGICAL, GENDER &
SOCIAL JUSTICE, & HUMAN RIGHTS AT THE CENTER OF POLICIES & DEVELOPMENT
UN-NGLS
interviews Noelene Nabulivou, Diverse Voices and Action for Equality,
UN-NGLS:
How are women’s movements in the Pacific region mobilizing in the preparation
for the SIDS Conference? What are some of the main issues they will be
advocating?
Noelene
Nabulivou: We have been closely tracking the Open Working Group (OWG)
on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) negotiations and providing analysis and
advocacy. Our focus has been to ensure that strong connections are being made
with gender, human rights and sustainable development work done as far back as
the Earth Summit in 1992 – especially on Agenda 21 – so that there is no
retrogression in the new SDGs and post-2015 development. Part of our work right
now is preparing a WMG SIDS cluster response to the SIDS zero draft.
We have
also been lobbying for a transformative gender equality and women’s human
rights agenda. This we have done by being part of various initiatives including
through the Gender, Economic and Ecological Justice (GEEJ) initiatives facilitated by DAWN
across the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa and
These
approaches have been integrated into the preparations and input of Pacific
women-led and feminist groups into the SIDS process, a direct output of the
The wide
range of issues we cover includes:
> Ensuring that we pay as much attention to the core principles of gender,
human rights and social justice in sustainable development of SIDS, as to the
ways that we develop, work and monitor sustainable development in our
countries;
> Creating enabling conditions for gender equality and women’s human rights,
and addressing persistent and specific worsening gender inequalities, women’s
human rights violations and discriminations in the region;
> Drawing specific attention to bodily autonomy and integrity, SRHR and
sexual rights, including rights of lesbian, bisexual and trans women and
people; > Attention to child, early and forced marriage;
> Attention to women and formal political decision-making, with current
levels of women in national legislature bodies being lowest per capita in the
world;
> Attention to gender, climate change, ocean acidification, disaster risk
reduction and response; gender, fisheries, aquaculture and marine biodiversity;
> Advocating for an ecosphere approach to sustainable development that
acknowledges the connections of air, land and oceans, and the need for a
planetary boundaries approach to all development in order for it to be
sustainable and equitable for all;
> Advocating for changes to the production, consumption and distributive
patterns of Pacific societies, and this includes attention both to State
policies and practices, as well as to transforming wider regional and global
development, macroeconomic, trade and financial systems;
> Specific attention to the un-achieved promises of official development
assistance (ODA) for SIDS, least developed countries (LDCs) and other States
according to common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR) and other long-agreed
development principles in Agenda 21 and elsewhere, and insisting that any new
development agenda has specific attention to means of implementation across
every thematic area;
> Creating and sustaining political partnerships that are truly working for
diverse groups from States, civil society and other development stakeholders to
build socially just and human rights-based sustainable development in the
Pacific; and
> Ensuring that any post-2015 development agenda pays specific and explicit
attention to the specific circumstances and needs of people in SIDS, LDCs, etc.
UN-NGLS:
The overarching theme of the SIDS 2014 Conference is “The sustainable
development of small island developing States through genuine and durable
partnerships.” Six priority areas for partnerships to benefit SIDS have been
identified. The Conference “will serve as a forum to build on existing
successful partnerships as well as to launch innovative and concrete new ones,”
and stakeholders can announce new partnerships into a “Partnerships Platform”
registry. What is your view of this overall approach for the conference?
Noelene
Nabulivou: There has been much discussion on what constitutes
partnerships, so it is a highly relevant theme IF it is truly
used as an opportunity to unwrap and discuss what constitutes useful
partnerships. Some useful questions include:
What does
a meaningful and useful partnership between State and civil society require in
order to enhance sustainable development gains in SIDS States? Which actors
need to be engaged, and what do all parties bring to the table? Are these sets
of knowledge and skills similarly valued? If not, why is this the case and how
can it be changed? What kind of partnerships between governments and the
private sector? What kinds of private sector bring experience and skills to
partnerships for sustainable development in SIDS? What kinds of partnerships
are exploitative and unhelpful? What regulations and checks and balances can
governments and civil society put in place to ensure that unhelpful
partnerships are quickly recognized and ended, before too much damage is done?
What do women-led and feminist groups bring to the table? Are our heterodox
skills and resources recognized for their true value? Can we do more to ensure
that strategies and solutions on sustainable development are reflective of the
needs of diverse Pacific and SIDS women, using a human rights and social
justice frame? The last set of questions is of prime importance to be discussed
at the 3rd Global SIDS Conference, and onward: How are women-led groups part of
the post-2015 development agenda? What transformative strategies do they bring
to the table? What is their role in SIDS, and how much tangible support and
resources do they receive in order to carry out their work? Can more efforts be
made to advance the roles of women-led and feminist groups in the Pacific to
carry out their part of this critical SIDS development work?
As to the
thematic areas of coverage, they come straight out of the SIDS outcome
statements from AIMS,
UN-NGLS:
Many civil society organizations are calling attention to the interlinkages
between the SIDS, post-2015 and UNFCCC
processes. What would you recommend in terms of building synergies and cohesion
between them?
Noelene
Nabulivou: In addition to what I’ve already said, I would make the case
for an ecosphere approach to sustainable development and post-2015 development,
stating very clearly in every space that there is no way to discuss sustainable
development without attention to climate change and disaster risk reduction
(DRR), and to the fact that too many SIDS and LDCS are experiencing so much
loss and damage that this is now as much about survival, right to life and
right to development, as it is about sustainability and development.
Hence, the
work on the Mechanism for Loss and Damage,
and advances since the 1990s with the leadership of Pacific States, LDCS, SIDS
and Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) has been precisely because of the
recognition that sustainable development is not possible without coherence
across the SDGs/post-2015/UNFCCC/Convention on Biodiversity/Convention on Desertification/UNCLOS, and more.
Across all
multilateral processes, it is about specifically dealing with the issue of
maldevelopment and extractivism; transnational corporations (TNCs) and their
influence over development decisions and impact on multilateralism; ambitious,
socially just and appropriate mitigation measures according to CBDR and
historical responsibility for loss and damage; and ensuring that human rights
is at the centre of all sustainable development. It is also important to be
clear on linkages between economic, ecological, social and gender justice and
sharing good case studies of impact, and transformative strategies.
Lastly, it
is not just about coherence across all processes, but also about consistency of
position. States cannot in good faith be negotiating ambitious and multilateral
development agreements at the UN while so many of them are simultaneously
negotiating highly secretive and TNC-led agreements such as the Trans Pacific
Partnership agreement, and the proposed Trans-Atlantic Free Trade Area
agreement. This undermines multilateralism, and diminishes the possibility that
global trade, financial and investment agreements are conducive to the
promotion of gender equality, human rights of women and girls and their
communities, and that there are open, equitable, rules-based, predictable,
non-discriminatory multilateral trading systems, supporting truly sustainable
development. Without this guarantee, sustainable development for SIDS is simply
not possible, so the work at SIDS must be as much globally focused, as it is
regionally and SIDS specific.
As Third
World Network and others have raised, while progressive civil society globally
should maintain a critical analysis of the growing role of the private sector
in development, it may also be strategic to think about how the UN system can
hold private sector actors accountable, and ensure that the private sector
undergoes a review process, housed within the UN system, to determine whether a
particular company/private sector organization has a history and profile
compatible with a robustly defined sustainable development goals framework.
This might be housed in a re-opened and adequately resourced UN Centre for
Transnational Corporations, which was closed in 1992 and must be now urgently
re-established.
UN-NGLS:
What are some of the biggest challenges civil society at large is facing in
terms of access to the preparatory process and the Conference itself?
Noelene
Nabulivou: Ensuring the evenness of Major Group and civil society
participation across all SIDS regions; consistency and clarity of messaging on
the Conference, and clarity of roles of all organizing parties including the
Conference Bureau chaired by New Zealand and Singapore, host State Samoa,
UN-DESA, UNDP, UN Women and others; ensuring that civil society from the SIDS
States, including specifically women-led and feminist groups, are strongly and
strategically integrated into both the text negotiations and the Conference
itself – including into all the pre-conference and official spaces;
participation in the New-York based Intersessionals and 2nd prep-Com by CSOs
engaged through the process.
It is
critical to have funds for CSOs to engage, and clear and transparent
amounts/easy-to-manage processes to access these funds. Also essential is clear
and adequate participation by the Women’s Major Group, building on the
commitment and partnership demonstrated in our constructive and strong
participation through all lead-up processes to the Third Global SIDS Conference
in
*Noelene Nabulivou (