WUNRN
UN WOMEN MESSAGES FOR THE 5TH
SESSION ON THE POST-2015 DEVELOPMENT AGENDA
Follow Up
and Review - Overall Messages – 18 May 2015
1. A transformative and universal post-2015 development
agenda requires strong accountability mechanisms at all levels – national,
regional and global - to enable women and men to hold duty bearers to account
for delivering on their commitments. All actors, including governments, the
private sector and the UN system, must be accountable for their contributions
to achieving all the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and for ensuring that
the entire framework contributes to the achievement of gender equality. The
post-2015 development agenda will need a clear framework that specifies who is
responsible for delivering on what and by when, and by what means.
2. Gender equality, the empowerment of women and girls and
the full realization of their human rights are essential for the achievement of
sustainable development and for building peaceful, just and equal societies.
Therefore all levels of follow up and review – global, regional, national – as
well as in thematic reviews must systematically integrate gender equality
commitments. Follow up and review of gender equality commitments in the SDGs
should be fully aligned with the implementation of CEDAW and the Beijing Platform
for Action.
3. Civil
society organizations, including women’s organizations, play an important role
in monitoring progress and holding governments and other actors to account on
their commitments. It is important that consistent and systematic space and
resources are made available for civil society, grassroots and local
organizations and individuals to participate in the implementation, follow up
and review of the post-2015 agenda at local, national, regional and global
levels.
Follow
Up and Review at the National Level
4. National implementation of the post-2015 development
agenda requires clearly defined national implementation plans and institutional
mechanisms that outline clear and specific responsibilities for delivering on
commitments and for establishing funding frameworks.
5. All parts
of government, at national and local levels, are responsible for contributing
to the achievement of gender equality. Gender mainstreaming must be
institutionalized across all government ministries and bodies responsible for
implementing the post-
2015 development agenda, with effective means of
implementation and capacities for monitoring progress.
6. National follow up and review mechanisms should build on
existing mechanisms and should be participatory and transparent to establish
benchmarks, effectively track and identify progress, gaps and challenges. Such
mechanisms should be linked to existing reporting processes, such as CEDAW
reports. All stakeholders should participate in the national follow up and review
process and the preparation of national review reports. All parts of government
and parliament as well as national mechanisms for gender equality must be
involved and women’s organizations and civil society must be able to
contribute.
7. In addition to formal accountability mechanisms, such as
parliamentary oversight, redress procedures and multi-stakeholder monitoring
bodies, there should be secure space for inclusive and participatory modes of
social accountability (for example, participatory monitoring and budgeting,
independent reviews) that are vital for shaping local and national policies,
plans and budget allocations to implement the SDGs. All accountability measures
must ensure the full, equal and effective participation of women and girls.
8. National review reports on the post-2015 development
agenda should be prepared with the participation of women’s organizations and
gender equality experts to ensure that gender perspectives are systematically
integrated across the assessment of all goals. A periodic report that provides
an in-depth assessment of national progress in achieving gender equality across
all SDGs should be prepared with inputs from all stakeholders – government, UN
system and civil society.
9. National implementation should be aligned and integrated
with existing global norms and human rights standards, as well as
country-specific recommendations from the human rights system. For example,
national implementation of the SDGs should integrate with the implementation of
the Beijing Platform for Action, the CEDAW Convention, the general
recommendations and country-specific concluding observations of the CEDAW
Committee and other human rights treaty bodies. It is of particular importance
that review processes track whether the implementation of the SDGs is reaching
the most marginalized groups of women and girls.
10. While
States must continue to regulate the private sector to ensure compliance with
human rights standards, multi-stakeholder accountability frameworks, which
include civil society and other stakeholders, can provide complementary avenues
of accountability for the private sector. Multi-stakeholder accountability
frameworks should include transparent reporting processes and procedures,
public consultations and hearings.
Follow Up and Review at Global and Regional
Levels/Thematic Reviews
11. The regular reviews to be conducted by the HLPF must
include an assessment on how the implementation of the post-2015 development
agenda has contributed to the achievement of gender equality. These reviews
must include the participation of gender equality experts from government,
academia and civil society. As the main global policy-making body on gender
equality, the Commission on the Status of Women should contribute to the follow
up and review of the entire post-2015 development agenda and feed its
recommendations into all thematic reviews and the global review of the HLPF. An
in-depth thematic review of progress in achieving gender equality across all
SDGs at the global and regional levels should be prepared periodically.
Thematic reviews should not lead to a silo approach in the implementation of
the SDGs and must address gender equality as a cross cutting issue.
12. Global and regional follow up and review processes must
ensure that all Governments are accountable for their commitments in
implementing the SDGs, including with regard to means of implementation,
financing mechanisms and commitments to the global partnership. Governments and
all other stakeholders (including UN system, private sector, development banks
and civil society) should be held accountable for complying with human rights,
gender equality, labour and environmental standards
13. Global and
regional follow up and review mechanisms should ensure the participation and
engagement of civil society to monitor progress across all areas. This should
include the ability to provide written and oral statements, participation in
interactive dialogues with Member States and the submission of reports to the
global review mechanism. Follow up and review mechanisms should include the
appointment of independent experts by an intergovernmental body to provide
independent assessments and provide recommendations on current and emerging
issues and challenges related to the implementation of the SDGs.
Data and
Statistics to Monitor Progress
14. Effectively monitoring the targets for women and girls
requires systematic sex-disaggregation of indicators across all goals and
specific indicators to capture the unique experiences of women and girls. Where
possible, indicators to monitor all goals should be disaggregated by all
grounds of discrimination prohibited by international human rights law and other
factors relevant to the national context.
15. Recent
decades have seen significant advances in gender statistics and
sex-disaggregated data. Specifically, the minimum set of gender indicators
adopted by the UN Statistical Commission in 2013 covers a broad range of areas
and provides a strong basis for monitoring gender equality in the post-2015
development agenda. It is vital that the process for defining indicators for
the SDGs draw on the expertise of gender
statisticians and build on the existing standards and
methodologies in gender statistics to ensure that all the SDGs are effectively
monitored for women and girls.
16. Many areas of statistics that are critically important
such as time use and violence against women are still not produced regularly by
countries indicating the need for greater investment in gender statistics.
There are also some areas where new standards and methodologies will need to be
developed, as for example, in the area of women’s participation in local
governance as well as women, peace and security statistics.
17. The choice
of indicators for the SDGs cannot be solely driven by data availability.
Rather, the new framework must drive the collection and analysis of new and
existing data. This requires significantly increased investments in statistical
capacity at the national, regional and international levels to improve gender
statistics to make it possible to effectively monitor the post-2015 development
agenda.