WUNRN
The Road to Dignity by 2030:
Ending Poverty, Transforming All Lives and Protecting the Planet
Synthesis Report of the UN Secretary-General on the Post-2015 Sustainable Development Agenda
http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/69/700&Lang=E
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
Post-2015 Human Rights Caucus Response to the UN Secretary-General’s Synthesis Report - Gender
Direct Link to Full 4-Page 2015 Document:
HR_Caucus_response_SG_Synthesis_Report FINAL
15 January
2015 - As the Post-2015 Human Rights Caucus - a broad coalition of development,
environmental, feminist, trade union and human rights organizations worldwide -
we present our response to the United Nations Secretary-General’s Report “The
Road to Dignity by 2030: Ending Poverty, Transforming All Lives and Protecting
the Planet” (The ‘Synthesis Report’).
We warmly
welcome the Secretary-General’s rallying call for a bold, universal,
transformational agenda that leaves no one behind. As we move into the
negotiations, it is imperative that Member States act with courage and ambition
to shape a new sustainable development paradigm founded on the respect,
protection and fulfillment of human rights.
We also
welcome the Secretary-General’s recognition of the Open Working Group’s contribution,
and his endorsement of the OWG’s final report recommending 17 goals. Below, we
highlight some key areas of the Secretary-General’s Synthesis Report that we
believe Member States can build on as they begin the intergovernmental
negotiations. We also identify some issues that we believe the report overlooks
or underestimates, despite their long-established importance for enjoyment of
human rights and sustainable development. Therefore, Member States should seize
the opportunity to improve on these areas in the formulation of the final
agenda.
Human
Rights
We applaud the
strong recognition throughout the Synthesis Report that human rights must be at
the core of the new agenda, and that it must be aligned with - and not fall
below – existing international law and standards (which includes human rights
law).
“The agenda
itself mirrors the broader international human rights framework, including
elements of economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights, as well as
the right to development”
The
Secretary-General’s acknowledgement of the relevance of existing human rights
law and standards is a common-sense, principled stance that we hope Member
States will replicate in deciding the final agenda. We would suggest that any
references to “existing obligations under international law” in the post-2015
Declaration or other outcome documents should explicitly mention human
rights obligations. Positively, the report recognizes participatory
democracy, press freedom, access to information, freedom of expression,
assembly and association as crucial enablers and components of sustainable
development. It is critical that the report's explicit emphasis on accountable
governance and civil and political rights finds inclusion in the final
formulation of the agenda.
However, it
will be necessary to go a step further and move from aspirational to
operational. The Synthesis Report misses an opportunity to illustrate how
previously-agreed and well-defined human rights obligations carry over into
development in practice. For Member States moving forward, it is entirely
possible to incorporate concrete proposals on how to realize human rights with
respect to the development of targets and indicators, financing, means of
implementation, monitoring and review of the agenda. (Some examples can be
found in the previous statements of the Human Rights Caucus - see those from
December 2013 and September 2014, and the Human Rights Litmus Test.) Several
times in the report, the Secretary-General calls for going beyond measuring
progress by GDP and economic growth. We wholeheartedly agree and suggest
further that human rights enjoyment provides an important measure of “the
degree to which [an economy] meets the needs of people, and…how sustainably and
equitably it does so”.
“Shared
prosperity” is not a sufficient marker of success, and should be coupled with
human rights realization as a way to assess progress on sustainable development
goals – and yield insights into obstacles and developing inequalities. The way
forward should be marked by serious consideration of current dominant
macroeconomic and fiscal policies that undermine human rights and economic,
gender and environmental justice.
The Six
Elements
The major
novelty of the Synthesis Report was the “Six essential elements for delivering
the SDGs”. In our opinion, this framing undercuts some of the strong and
positive messages elsewhere in the report, as well as being divorced from the existing
human rights framework. Therefore, we would urge Member States to focus more on
how human rights standards support and flesh out the goals and targets
identified by the OWG, and ensure that these are used to guide the design of
indicators, implementation and monitoring mechanisms.
In particular,
we are concerned that the “six elements” impose unhelpful silos and render
certain crucial issues and groups less visible. In particular, the absolute
imperative to tackle gender inequality in all its forms and realize women’s
and girls’ rights is not adequately underlined in the report. Gender
equality and the fulfillment of women’s rights are not acknowledged as
essential structural components of sustainable development, nor as core human
rights priorities in themselves, regardless of how instrumental they may be to
economic prosperity. As numerous women’s rights advocates have noted (see the
statement by the Women’s Major Group, for instance) several core elements of
gender equality – including sexual rights, ending violence against women,
redistributing unpaid care work, discrimination against LGBTQI persons, and
comprehensive sexuality education – are either omitted entirely or suffer from
watered down language that falls short of what the OWG proposed.
Here, Member
States would be wise to cleave more to the OWG’s precedent in their integration
of gender into the draft goals, in particular the stand-alone goal on gender
which to an extent does address the structural barriers to gender equality. The
final post-2015 agenda will need to mainstream gender throughout; take into
account the gendered effects of climate change for example, or in establishing
gender equality and women’s rights as guiding principles for the delivery of
the agenda. Existing international human rights treaties (such as the ICCPR,
ICESCR, and CEDAW, among others) and their monitoring frameworks, as well as
international agreements (such as Beijing, ICPD, Vienna, and the UDHR) provide
important normative and practical guidance for addressing barriers to gender
equality.
A new
paradigm of accountability?
We appreciate
that the Synthesis Report recognizes the need for “a new paradigm of
accountability” as a core component of the post-2015 agenda: “not one of
conditionality or North to South, nor South to North, but rather one of all
actors — governments, international institutions, private sector actors, and
organizations of civil societies, and in all countries, to the people
themselves. This is the real test of people-centered, planet-sensitive
development.” This firmly reflects the human rights model of
accountability, and would be a key step towards ensuring that States live up to
their development commitments.
We also welcome that the Secretary-General lays out a
framework for post-2015 accountability, at the national, regional and global
levels. This proposal positively reflects the need to ensure national-level
ownership and accountability for the SDGs, and Member States should build on
this to create participatory, transparent monitoring and accountability
mechanisms at the national level which are underpinned by a safe and free
environment for civil society, and access to information. Accountability is
impossible if these elements are not in place. To that end, the focus of one of
the “six elements” on justice is a positive step towards building institutions
that ensure accountability and respect for all human rights.
When it comes
to accountability at the global level, we feel the Secretary-General’s
proposals can be built upon and improved through a human rights perspective.
Truly people-centered, participatory accountability at the global level will
require a new approach (far more than just a ‘global component for knowledge
sharing’), and at the very least a significant reform and opening up of
existing institutions. We urge Member States to recognize and examine the role
that existing human rights mechanisms, properly strengthened, can play in this
process – and take human rights obligations into account in monitoring progress
towards the SDGs, including monitoring cross-border impacts of policies. The
Secretary-General’s emphasis on the need for regulation, safeguards and
mandatory reporting for private investments in sustainable development is a
step in the right direction, but more will be needed to ensure human rights are
respected in all development processes. At all levels, the post-2015
accountability mechanisms must be robust and comprehensive enough to cover
private sector actors, partnerships and IFIs as well as States, premised on
full transparency and the right to information, and encompassing
extra-territorial obligations.
We welcome the
attention the Synthesis Report gives to the means of implementation, including
financing. In particular, we applaud the recognition of the urgent need to
tackle tax evasion and illicit financial flows. However, the Secretary-General
missed an opportunity to introduce the all-important human rights framework
into this discussion. The means of implementation (including financing) of the
post-2015 agenda must be aligned with human rights standards and guided by
human rights principles. This will ensure that finances are mobilized and
allocated in the most equitable ways for sustainable development, at the
national and international levels. This includes adequate, sustained and
unconditional financing and support for women’s organizations, movements,
grassroots activists and women human rights defenders, which is an absolute
necessity to move towards gender-sensitive sustainable development.
As we proceed
into the first session of inter-governmental negotiations, we urge governments
to ensure that the design of the final goals and means of implementation is
guided by international human rights law and built on a bedrock of human rights
principles. As the Secretary-General says, the post-2015 framework does indeed
provide a “much-needed opportunity to integrate the broader UN agenda…including
human rights objectives”; Member States should seize this chance. The members
of the Post-2015 Human Rights Caucus stand ready to assist in this landmark
endeavor.
Signatories:
Amnesty
International (International)
Association
for Women’s Rights in Development (International)
Center for
Economic and Social Rights (International)
Center for
Reproductive Rights (USA)
Center for
Women’s Global Leadership, Rutgers (USA)
Center of
Concern (USA)
CIVICUS:
World Alliance for Citizen Participation (International)
Committee
to Protect Journalists (USA)
CONCORD
Sweden (Sweden)
EuroNGOs - The European NGOs for Sexual and
Reproductive Health and Rights, Population and Development (Belgium)
Finnish
NGDO platform to the EU (Finland)
FOKUS -
Forum for Women and Development (Norway)
Global
Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (USA and Switzerland)
HelpAge
International (International)
Human
Rights Watch (International)
International
Presentation Association (USA)
International
Women's Health Coalition (USA)
Ipas (USA)
Minority
Rights Group International (UK, USA, Uganda, Hungary)
Population
Matters (UK)
The Finnish
NGO Platform KEPA (Finland)
Universal Rights Group (Switzerland and Mauritius)