WUNRN
The Women’s Working Group on Financing for Development (WWG on FfD) was formed in October 2007 as an alliance of women’s organizations and networks to advocate for the advancement of gender equality, women’s empowerment and human rights in the Financing for Development related UN processes including: wwgonffd@gmail.com
Women’s Working Group on Financing for Development -
July 2015
REACTION TO THE 7 OF JULY DRAFT ADDIS ACTION AGENDA
AND KEY MESSAGES
The Women’s Working Group on Financing for Development (WWG on
FfD) would like to
highlight key concerns regarding the Addis Ababa Action Agenda
(AAAA) that is currently
under negotiation and is expected to be finally adopted during the
Third Financing for
Development Conference in Addis Ababa taking place from 13 to 16
of July 2015.
We believe that the latest set of negotiations has seriously
reduced the integrity of the
Financing for Development agenda, can result in a
retrogression from previous FfD
commitments and, thus, limit the possibility to remove the
global obstacles to development
as well as setting the right priorities, policies and
rules for financing the Sustainable
Development Goals/Post 2015 Development Agenda and the
full implementation of
internationally agreed development agendas, including
those critical for women’s rights such
as the Beijing Platform for Action and the Cairo Programme
of Action on Population and
Development.
The global partnership between developed and developing countries
established in the
Monterrey Consensus is at risk of being weakened by the way
multi-stakeholder
partnerships are getting promoted, and the lack of commitment by
developed countries to
address systemic issues in the United Nations (UN), to recognize
and respect the principle
of Common But Differentiated Responsibilities (CBDR) and to
strengthen the FfD follow up
mechanism. While the draft Action Agenda, importantly, includes in
the first paragraph a
commitment to respect all human rights, including the right to
development, and that
member states will ensure gender equality and women’s and girls’ empowerment,
the draft
lacks an integrated, consistent and explicit human rights based
approach. The references to
women’s rights and gender equality in the current text rely on
previously agreed language,
some consolidate regressive formulations and others rely heavily
on private sector
contribution to achieving gender equality.
The WWG on FfD calls government's attention on the following key
issues at stake and
continues to demand for structural changes in the global economic
governance and
development architecture in order to move:
1. From systemic imbalances towards creating a rights-based
pro-development
multilateral economic and financial governance.
2. From making the business case on women’s empowerment to
respecting, protecting
and fulfilling women’s human rights and fixing the structural
conditions to realize
them.
3. From creating an enabling environment to attract Foreign Direct
Investment (FDI)
and to promote Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) towards
safeguards and
investment frameworks that have binding norms, including for
Transnational
Corporations, that are consistent with human rights.
4. From global trade imbalances to respect developing countries
policy space for
productive diversification, decent work for women, and sustainable
industrial policy.
5. From taxing women in the informal economy to progressive
taxation and international
tax cooperation.
6. From using Official Development Assistance (ODA) and
development cooperation to
leveraging private finance and donor priorities towards untied,
additional and
predictable ODA and development cooperation that contributes to
the respect,
protection and fulfilment of gender equality, human rights and
sustainable
development.
7. From “new social compacts” towards the implementation of
comprehensive and
universal social protection systems and public services
8. From reducing FfD agenda to the Means of Implementation of the
Post 2015
Agenda, towards strengthening FfD mandate and follow up mechanism
to remove
global obstacles for the implementation of all the internationally
agreed development
agendas
From systemic imbalances towards creating a
rights-based pro-development
multilateral economic and financial governance
The current Addis Ababa Action Agenda draft does not adequately
address the failures of
the systemic issues in the international financial and monetary
system that underpin poverty,
inequalities, asymmetries and mal-distribution of power and
resources in the global political
economy.
The systemic issues we face today are symptomatic of the financialization
of
economies and nature, where the financial sector has become
increasingly important in the
generation of profits and more powerful in economic governance. At
the bottom, a majority of
women must bear the burdens of care work amidst market and state
failures.
The enormous, negative impacts of crises caused by the
international economic and
financial rules, on development, social justice and human rights,
particularly women’s human
rights, are not adequately addressed. The necessary countercyclical
and social policies to
respect women’s human rights and to avoid transferring the costs
deriving from austerity
measures, privatization, cuts in cash transfers and social
services, food and job insecurity to
women through further increases in their unpaid work are not even
mentioned. Thus,
governments are relying on women's unpaid care work to continue to
acts as a stabilizer and
shock absorber of the economic and financial crisis. We are deeply
concerned that the draft
Addis Action Agenda falls short in providing alternatives to the
status quo.
Governments are still failing to provide sufficient political
leadership to strengthen the role of
the UN to lead the necessary human rights-based, pro-development
reforms of the global
economic and financial systems. The recommendations and
commitments of the outcome of
the Conference of the World Financial and Economic Crisis and its
impacts on Development
should have been the foundation of the Addis Action Agenda not
only to prevent future
multiple crises but to revert the financialization process that is
leading to greater global
inequality, instability and prevents the reorientation of finance
to sustainable and equitable
development sectors.
For instance, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) need not be
promoted as the permanent
international safety net. The Addis Action Agenda must welcome
instead all independent
and autonomous efforts at providing liquidity arrangements that
benefit systemically
insignificant, open economies whose currencies are not necessarily
preferred for use in
international payments nor for reserves purposes. While dialogue
may be encouraged
between the IMF and other regional or bilateral liquidity
arrangements, rule-setting must not
be exclusively set by the IMF. The Special Drawing Rights carry
high potential as a reserve
asset and this potential to benefit small open economies must be
explored fully.
Only by ensuring full and equal representation of developing
countries in in setting the global
rules on finance, macroeconomic, trade, investment, debt and tax
policies the trend of
transferring resources from developing countries to developed
countries can be reversed.
Addressing systemic issues at the UN is a precondition for the
achievement of the SDGs,
the realization of the Post-2015 agenda and the full
implementation of internationally agreed
development agendas, including those critical for women’s rights
such as the Beijing
Platform for Action and the Cairo Programme of Action on
Population and Development.
From making the business case on women’s empowerment
to respecting, protecting
and fulfilling women’s human rights and fixing the
structural conditions to realize
them.
In paragraph 6 of the preliminary section, the Addis Action Agenda
“reiterate[s] the need for
gender mainstreaming, including targeted actions and investments
in the formulation and
implementation of all financial, economic, environmental and
social policies.” In the year of
Beijing+20, reiterating the need is not enough. Moreover, while
the Doha Declaration called
for gender mainstreaming in development policies, including
financing for development
policies (Para 4, Doha Declaration), the draft Action Agenda is
shifting this understanding.
While it expands the scope from FfD policies towards environmental
and social policies it,
negatively, drops the development policies reference and refers to
“investments” instead of
“dedicated resources”.
Moreover, the Addis draft reaffirms language agreed in Rio+20
(Para 240, Future we want)
where governments state that “We are committed to women’s and
girls’ equal rights and
opportunities in political and economic decision-making and
resource allocation”. However,
specific mention of commitment to resource allocation should be
linked to the realization of
women’s human rights and advance gender equality otherwise it is
not clear to which
purpose the resources will be allocated. Dedicated, “adequate and
sufficient” resource
allocation for gender equality and women’s human rights should be
guaranteed, including by
international public finance.
It is worth noticing that agreed commitments (Para 31, the Future
We Want) and Targets 5.c,
5.5 and 5.1 of the Open Working Group SDG report are reaffirmed: “We
recommit to adopt
and strengthen sound policies and enforceable
legislation and
transformative actions for the
promotion of gender equality and women’s and girls’ empowerment at all levels, ensure
women’s equal rights, access and opportunities for
participation and leadership in the
economy and to eliminate gender-based violence and
discrimination in all its form” (Para 6,
AAA draft).
In the final stages of the negotiations, the reference to promote
the
empowerment of all women and girls at all levels was removed from
the Domestic Resource
Mobilization section towards the preamble, weakening actual
government’s obligations to
adopt and strengthen policies and laws that are essential for
women’s human rights and
gender equality. Under domestic resource mobilization governments
agree to “promote and
enforce non-discriminatory laws, social infrastructure and
policies for sustainable
development, as well as to enable women’s full and equal
participation in the economy, and
their equal access to decision-making processes and leadership” (Para
21, AAAA draft),
weakening the scope of policies to the ones who are able to
promote at the same time
sustainable development and enable women’s participation in the
economy.
Moreover, after strong debate in the negotiations, paragraph 240
of the Future We Want that
states to “resolve to undertake legislation and administrative
reforms to give women equal
rights with men to economic resources, including access to
ownership and control over land
and other forms of property, credit, inheritance, natural resources
and appropriate new
technology” was incorporated into the Draft Action Agenda. “Full” should
be included along
with “equal rights”, while an explicit reference needs to be made
to guaranteeing women’s
and girls economic rights” in order to recognize inherent
entitlements of women as full and
equal citizens that are subjects of human rights. Instead of “access
to ownership”,
governments should guarantee women’s and girl's rights to full and
equal access to,
ownership and control over resources including the right to
inheritance and land titling.
The references of some women’s rights in the draft get undermine
by a framework that
shows a strong tendency towards the instrumentalization and
commodification of women,
where women’s empowerment, and women’s full and equal
participation and leadership in
the economy are vital to significantly enhance economic growth and
productivity or to
promote market access for financial services. Different references
in the draft Addis Action
Agenda on addressing gender equality and women’s empowerment seem
to speak more the
IMF and World Bank language on “Gender Equality as Smart
Economics" rather than to
women and girls’ entitlement to social and economic rights which
are at the foundation of the
UN.
For instance, financial inclusion is promoted as "key for
social inclusion". However,
microfinance should be qualified given evidence that microfinance
has not only be positive. It
has also contributed to exacerbating gender inequalities, and
created dangerous levels of
indebtedness among many poor women, particularly when provided by
for-profit financial
institutions or intermediaries. Microfinance should not be
provided without effective
regulation, recourse mechanisms and consumer protection agencies
to prevent predatory
lending and ensure greater financial literacy of consumers.
Moreover, while financial
inclusion is overemphasized, little attention is given to
structural barriers for women´s
economic rights and access to, ownership and control over economic
resources: ie, the
unequal distribution of unpaid care work, the little access to
care services, the persistent
gender discrimination in the labour market (through vertical and
horizontal segregation2,
over-representation of women in precarious and low-paid jobs, and
inadequate and
insufficient social protection).
From creating an enabling environment to attract
Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and
to promote Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) towards
safeguards and investment
frameworks that have binding norms, including for
Transnational Corporations, that
are consistent with human rights.
The draft Action Agenda strongly relies on private sector
contribution to financing for
development and women’s empowerment, diverting attention away from
the role of states in
removing the global obstacles to development, mobilizing official
development assistance
and adequate domestic public resources.
The need to provide an enabling environment for business is
emphasised, while evidence
shows that the private sector often contradicts and undermines the
possibility to respect,
protect and fulfil human rights.
Moreover, the Addis Action Agenda fails to challenge the asymmetry
between the set of
binding juridical instruments states have been establishing over
the past 40 years to protect
and promote the interests of transnational corporations -
especially through Free Trade
Agreements, Bilateral Investment Treaties and Investor to State
Dispute Settlement
Mechanisms - on one hand, and the lack of binding instruments to
hold corporations
accountable for the human rights violations of people.
The draft Action Agenda fails to agree on mandatory rules and
accountability mechanisms to
ensure private sector compliance with human rights, including women’s
and indigenous
people’s rights. Instead, its promotes voluntary Global Compact
principles on gender
equality that have proven to be wholly inadequate and
inappropriate to respond to women’s
human right abuses, especially from transnational corporations.
Emblematic cases of human
rights violations and the denial of reparation and compensation
for victims - such as the
Rana Plaza building collapse in Bangladesh killing over 1,000
factory works (mostly women)
and the 20 year litigation of 30,000 affected by Chevron
intentional pollution of the
Ecuadorean Amazon - exposes how insufficient the existing
juridical frameworks are to
ensure the protection of people.
Furthermore, based on the current draft, governments also have
failed to acknowledge, let
alone endorse, the critically important process unfolding in the
UN Human Rights Council to
develop an international legally binding instrument on
Transnational Corporations and other
Business Enterprises that is based in the international human
rights framework.
FfD3 needs to address the duties and responsibilities of States to
protect people from harms
caused by the private sector, and of businesses to respect human
rights in their activities.
This includes that Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) needs to meet the decent work agenda as
defined by ILO conventions, with particular emphasis also on
sub-contractors compliance
with human rights and women’s rights. Also, effective
implementation of a ‘country by
country reporting’ obligation for multinational corporations to
publicly disclose as part of their
annual reports for each country in which they operate and
effective accountability
mechanisms for corporations, states and individuals at all levels.
To facilitate this, a UN
global inter-governmental system for automatic exchange of
information on tax should be
established.
Moreover, private sector activities including public-private
partnerships are promoted with no
sufficient safeguards to ensure accessibility, affordability and
quality of the services and
infrastructure that they are expected to deliver, or to ensure
that they do not create
unacceptable contingent liabilities for governments.
FfD3 also needs to ensure that any private sector or PPP project
has in place accountability
mechanisms in compliance with human rights standards and norms,
including environmental
and social safeguards. Agreed timelines for reporting and
evaluation must be agreed ex-ante
and with full participation of the affected communities, including
women and girls, indigenous
communities and people facing structural discrimination.
From global trade imbalances to respect developing
countries policy space for
productive diversification, decent work for women,
and sustainable industrial policy.
The Addis Ababa Action Agenda wrongly characterises international
trade as an unqualified
good, claiming at the outset that international trade is an engine
for poverty reduction and
sustainable development. This is despite the evidence that the
benefits of trade liberalisation
have been distributed extremely unevenly between and within
countries, the exploitation of
women’s cheap labour and precarious employment as a source of
competitive advantage to
attract foreign investment, the displacement and appropriation of
indigenous people’s
knowledge, the confinement of developing countries to low
value-added niches within global
value chains that restrict skills transfers and technology
spill-overs that are necessary for the
development of domestic industry.
The reference to trade and “appropriate supporting policies” to
assist and promote decent
work and women’s empowerment is misleading, especially when
governments have failed to
agree to include mandatory ex-ante and periodic human rights
impact assessments of all
trade and investment policies and to protect policy space
specially for developing countries
to implement policies such as protection of infant-industries,
female-job intensive sectors,
small women’s producers, indigenous and traditional knowledge or
access to medicines. It
fails to adequately recognize the gendered impacts of the model of
trade liberalization
promoted by the WTO and multilateral preferential trade and
investment agreements,
including the increase of women’s burden of unpaid care work
through privatization that
makes social services such as water and health less accessible.
Moreover, the Draft Action Agenda does little to challenge the
expansion of trade and
investment agreements that aggressively pursue regulatory
harmonisation and empower
foreign investors to sue governments for implementing domestic
regulation relating to wage
policy, environmental protection, public health, affirmative
action and macro-prudential
policy.
It also fails to challenge the closed and secretive nature of the
negotiation of these
agreements, which undermine the right of all citizens to
participate in public affairs. The
deletion of a provision calling for the proper review of
investor-state dispute settlement
clauses is an enormous missed opportunity to ensure that these
clauses do not undermine
the right of states to regulate, especially in areas such as
health, environment, water and
sanitation, employment, micro, small and medium enterprise
development and infrastructure,
which are all critical for gender justice and women’s human
rights. Moreover, the
development impact of Aid for trade programs including those who
claim to improve women’
access to global market has been difficult to assess, while
criticism about policy
conditionalities to trade liberalization increase. Aid for trade
promises can’t be used to
shifting ODA funds priorities that can be dedicated to fulfil
women’s human rights and
poverty eradication to leverage the private sector and promote
trade liberalisation.
From taxing women in the informal economy to
progressive taxation and international
tax cooperation.
It is extremely concerning that the reference to “promote equity,
including gender equality as
an objective in all tax and revenue policies” was removed from the
document. Governments
draft agree to “work to improve the fairness of our tax systems”,
but the Draft Action Agenda
might be promoting the contrary when it proposes simultaneously “broadening
the tax base
and continuing efforts to integrate the informal sector into the
formal economy in line with
country circumstances”. Tax policy is not gender neutral and
domestic resource mobilization
policies need to be reviewed for their impact on women’s income,
work, including unpaid
labour and unpaid care, and property and assets ownership.
Regressive tax policies that for
example rely disproportionately on indirect taxation are likely to
affect women living in
poverty more heavily because of women’s socially constructed roles
as primary caregivers
and their responsibility for providing goods and services for
their families. Expanding the tax
base through “formalization of the informal economy” can translate
into negatively affecting
self-employed women including small-scale market vendors, farmers
and fisherpeople and
those in micro and small-scale enterprises, who would likely bear
a disproportionate high tax
burden, while further enabling big corporations and rich
individuals to continue to benefit
from tax avoidance. The disproportionate burden of taxation on
women and all people living
in poverty must instead be reversed, as part of a broader shift in
fiscal policy at the national
level to address inequalities. Taxation reform should garner
additional and sufficient
resources to comply states’ obligations to commit the maximum
available resources to
fulfilling women’s human rights. The resistance from developed
countries to ensure greater
international tax cooperation through the creation of a UN tax
body that is urgently required
by all countries to truly combat illicit financial flows and tax
evasion, and to address
inequalities within and between countries, is unacceptable.
For governments to be able to mobilize domestic resources, it is
central to consider domestic
policy space and how the international institutional environment
supports or undermines the
capacity of national governments to implement macroeconomic,
productive, labor and social
policies towards equitable and sustainable development patterns.
Specific commitments
should be taken in key policy areas of domestic public resources
mobilization to contribute to
sustainable development. Priority must be given to productive
diversification policies in
sustainable and job-intensive sectors (particularly for women),
along with complementary
macroeconomic, trade, investment, labor and social policies that
remove obstacles for
equitable development strategies.
Finally, while we acknowledge that the Action Agenda draft
includes a commitment to
“increase transparency and equal participation in the budgeting
process, and promote
gender responsive budgeting and tracking” (Para 30, Draft AAA), “promote”
is not strong
enough to guarantee that women's rights are getting fullfiled, nor
that specific actions are
taken to remove structural obstacles for gender equality.
From using Official Development Assistance (ODA) and
development cooperation to
leveraging private finance and donor priorities
towards untied, additional and
predictable ODA and development cooperation that contributes
to the respect,
protection and fulfilment of gender equality, human
rights and sustainable
development.
The draft Addis Action Agenda “urges” countries to meet the 0.7%
of GNI as ODA, rather
than requiring a commitment to 0.7% which is substantiated by a
clear and binding
timetable. The inclusion of “We strongly encourage all donor
countries to establish, by the
end of 2015, indicative timetables to illustrate how they will
increase their assistance and
reach their goals” from the Zero draft is now gone. In order to
tackle volatility of ODA flows
and ensure additionality, the commitment should be accompanied by
binding timetables by
region to illustrate how and where ODA will be increased and
ensure that systems and
accountability mechanisms regarding goals achieved are in place.
The increase in ODA
should not lead to a cycle of debt for the recipient country.
Rather the major increase in ODA
should be felt in the grants component of assistance rather than
in the loan component. ODA
must not be used to exercise power over recipient countries, for
example through the
imposition of policy conditionalities. Neither should ODA be
linked to trade negotiations.
We welcome the specific mentions of ODA to Middle income countries
(MICs) in Paras 71
and 72, however, the Action Agenda focuses on MDBs not in all
donors to develop
graduation policies that are sequenced, phased and gradual (...)
and to explore ways to
ensure that their assistance best addresses the opportunities and
challenges presented by
the diverse circumstances of MICs. It is crucial that the text
includes all donors, including
bilateral and multilateral donors from the OECD DAC which still
account for the majority of
funds for gender equality and women’s rights.
Moreover, they are imperative to protect the human rights of
affected communities. The
World Bank’s safeguards revision process has already raised grave
concerns about the
consistency of the new framework with existing human rights
obligations and international
law, including in relation to resettlement policy, the rights of
indigenous peoples and
women’s human rights.
In relation to Multilateral Development Banks, (Para 75, AAA
draft), we note that the Action
Agenda mentions that the Member states will “encourage all
development banks to establish
or maintain social and environmental safeguards systems, including
on human rights,
gender equality and women's empowerment, that are transparent,
effective, efficient, and
time-sensitive”. While this is positive, it only encourages, but
it does not include concrete
plans and mechanisms to hold them accountable and monitor to such
safeguard systems.
without an explicit commitment to set up an intergovernmental
accountability and follow up
mechanism, this remains rhetoric. MDBs must ensure that their
safeguards are consistent
with the extraterritorial human rights obligations of governments,
and existing obligations
under international law.
Furthermore, all the efforts to include a specific Plan of Action
as proposed by Mexico and
supported by CELAC and G77 were removed from the final Action
Agenda. Without a
concrete plan on financing and meeting the needs of MICs, there
will be weak actions and
diluted responsibilities. We would like to see first the political
will to agree on such an action
plan and the appropriate technical environment to map out its
specificities, with the inclusion
of Civil Society. Developed countries still have responsibilities
towards middle income
countries and thus, middle income countries must be considered ODA
recipients. Given the
fact that MICs have the largest number of the people living in
poverty, the majority of whom
are women.
We note positively the specific mention to “urge countries to
track and report resource
allocations for gender equality and women's empowerment”, however,
tracking and reporting
alone is not enough. The Action Agenda should call upon donors to
adequately fund gender
equality, and women’s human rights and empowerment. It is
unacceptable that developed
countries are not committing to scaling up the share of ODA for
achieving gender equality,
women’s empowerment and women’s human rights. ODA must be used to
promote
development while reducing structural inequalities including
gender inequality. It must this
uphold the obligations of all governments to fulfil existing
internationally agreed development
agendas and goals related with women’s human rights included in
the Beijing Platform for
Action, the Program of Action of the International Conference on
Population and
Development, the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against
Women, among others, without resorting to impositions and policy
conditionalities within the
narrow framework of aid giving. Furthermore, ODA should be
provided in a way that
effectively supports longer term structural change for example
through sustained support to
civil society organizations and especially women’s rights
organizations.
ODA continues to play a key role in support of gender equality and
women's human rights
and empowerment. However, the OECD DAC GENDERNET analysis of
donor's financial
commitments in this field showed that there is a big gap between
the official rhetoric and
actual practice. While there has been an overall upward trend in
the amounts of aid focused
on gender equality in education and population services, gender
focused aid in other sectors
has remained stalled and insufficient. The share of ODA for
achieving gender equality and
women’s human rights should be scaled up ensuring that there are
year to year increases by
some agreed upon level and new and additional official funding
should be secured to
implement the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDG Gender
equality standalone
goal on women’s rights and gender equality must have stand-alone
funding to fulfil its
ambition.
We call for caution on the multi-stakeholder partnerships in
specific areas such as health,
education and food that are included in the draft Action Agenda.
These partnerships with the
private sector are not discussed and approved by governments in an
intergovernmental
space at the UN. The multi-stakeholder partnership approach can
have severe
consequences for the implementation of the development agenda for
the next decades since
it relies on siloed approaches without a clear link to human
rights obligations and
comprehensive development agendas, and national strategies. For
example, the “Every
Women Every Child” initiative has a mother-child approach in
relation to sexual and
reproductive health, and it does not clearly outline its
contribution and articulation with the
comprehensive sexual and reproductive health and rights policies
of the Program on action
of the ICPD. Furthermore, their funding is unpredictable and
volatile as they depend heavily
on voluntary commitments from the private and corporate sector.
Before promoting these
voluntary initiatives, governments should establish an open,
transparent, and participatory
UN led intergovernmental space for oversight, monitoring and
review of any partnerships
developed or promoted within the framework of the United Nations.
For instance, in the case of Adult Education, the tendency to
promote the privatization and
marketization of education coupled with the scarce financing of
public education
jeopardize the right to education and the possibilities for young
and adult women and men to
have free access to education. Women are key to the realization of
the right to food for all,
they have unequal access to food and unequal access to resources
for food.
Moreover, any multi-stakeholder process needs to start with the
role of States as guarantors
of the rights of communities and individuals and all governments
need to ensure democratic
ownership so that all people’s voices and their concerns be the
primary basis for national
development plans, policies and processes. Democratic ownership of
development
strategies by the people through representative, transparent and
accountable institutions is
the main mechanism for achieving the governance needed for
achieving sustainable,
inclusive and just development that reaches all people. A true
implementation of the principle
of democratic ownership requires the necessary democratic policy
space, and insists that
national parliaments and civil society, including women’s rights
organizations, must have a
say in defining development strategies. The role of civil society
in development processes
should be ensured in line with the right to participate in public
decision-making, which should
be reflected in substantive inclusion of civil society, including
feminists and women’s rights
organizations, in development processes.
From “new social compacts” towards the implementation
of comprehensive and
universal social protection systems and public
services
While the Monterrey Consensus recognized the vital importance of
investment in economic
and social infrastructure, social services and social protection,
including education, health,
nutrition, shelter and social security programmes, which take
special care of children and
older persons and are gender sensitive (Para 16, Monterrey
Consensus), and the Doha
Declaration advanced “universal access to basic economic and
social infrastructure and
inclusive social services” (Para 13, Doha Declaration), the Addiss
Action Agenda draft
emphasizes the commitment to new social compacts (Para 12, AAA
draft), which obscures
the fact that States are already under the obligation to fulfill
the human right to social security
established in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and the
International Covenant
on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). Therefore, the
commitment should be
stronger in ensuring progressive financing to build comprehensive
systems of social
protection that provide universal access to quality social
services.
Specific commitments should be made to include care as a core axis
of social protection,
and a high priority. There is a strong need for policies,
regulations and services to transform
current patterns of sexual division of labour, including the
unequal distribution of unpaid care
work, through improving social infrastructure, expanding universal
care services and
promoting the transformation of gender roles that reinforce an
unfair social organization of
care. The aim of "generating full and productive employment
and decent work for all" (Para
16, AAA draft) is unachievable unless States assume concrete and
effective commitments to
transform these structural barriers. Unfortunately, the mention to
reduce and redistribute
unpaid care work proposed by different block of countries is not
finally included in the latest
draft version of the Addis Action Agenda.
From reducing FfD agenda to the Means of
Implementation of the Post 2015 Agenda,
towards strengthening FfD mandate and follow up
mechanism to remove global
obstacles for the implementation of all the
internationally agreed development
agendas
Paragraph 19 of the Addis Action Agenda states “The post-2015
development agenda,
including the SDGs, can be met within the framework of a
revitalized global partnership for
sustainable development, supported by the concrete policies and
actions as outlined in the
present Action Agenda.” However it is important to recall that FfD
agenda is more than the
means of implementation of the post-2015 development agenda, and
not all means of
implementation of the post-2015 development agenda can be covered
in the Addis Action
Agenda.
We recognized that the draft Addis Action Agenda rightly agrees on
a "Technology
Facilitation Mechanism" (which developing countries have been
calling for since Rio+20),
providing a space to deliberate on technologies and their
potential impacts that are relevant
to the fulfillment of the SDGs. The draft Addis Action Agenda also
states the importance of
traditional and indigenous knowledge and innovations, their role
is invaluable of in enabling
communities to address development and climate change challenges.
However, the gender
gap in technology receives insufficient attention, in particular
measures to include women in
design of sustainable technologies.
However, FfD is the only process within the United Nations that
deals with systemic issues,
a pre-condition to achieve SDGs, but also to generate the
structural conditions for the
implementation of other agendas that are part of the United
Nations and cannot be reduced
to the 17 objectives approved, among them, the Human Rights
Conventions, the Women´s
Rights Beijing Platform for Action (BPfA), the Cairo Programme of
Action on Population and
Development, the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), the Land-locked
Developing
Countries (LLDC), and the Small Island Developing States (SIDS),
etc.
Government should not engage in a race to the bottom and negotiate
an agreement that
ends up weakening commitments in both fronts. So, it is necessary
to find synergies
observing the corresponding mandates and expertise of each process
as a way to
strengthen, and not reducing, commitments in both processes.
The lack of commitment to establish a strong FfD follow up
mechanism would have
consequences in the ability of countries, especially developing
countries to implement the
international agreed development agendas and prevent the impacts
of future global crises.
The specific modalities of FfD follow up mechanism proposed should
be further discussed.
The compromise is to have annual ECOSOC Forum on Financing for
Development follow-up
with universal, intergovernmental participation. It is positive
that in Paragprah 132 it is stated
that it will have intergovernmentally agreed conclusions and
recommendations but it should
be clear how this outcome will fed into the overall follow-up and
review of the implementation
of the post-2015 development agenda in the high-level political
forum (HLPF) on sustainable
development.
Since the forum will have four days to discuss FfD but also the
means of implementation of
the post-2015 development agenda, there could be also a potential
loss of specialization
over many of the areas above, because programmatic concerns may
dominate discussions
over macroeconomic considerations. The FfD holistic approach needs
to be preserved even
under the HLPF, the FfD agenda precede and surpass the scope of
the SDG/Post2015.
This implies to assess the implementation of commitments of all
six FfD chapters outlined in
the Monterrey Consensus but specially the level of coherence and
consistency of the
international monetary, financial and trading system in support of
development. To follow up
the Consensus and the Addis Action Agenda, obstacles and gaps to
FfD implementation
need to be assessed recommendations made on how to overcome these
obstacles and
bridge the gaps. For instance, governments agreed at the the World
Financial and Economic
Crisis and Its Impact on Development that the United Nations, on
the basis of its universal
membership and legitimacy, is well positioned to lead in reform
processes aimed at
improving and strengthening the effective functioning of the
international financial system
and architecture (paragraph 2). However there has been little
progress in advancing this.
The Forum should assess why and what should be done.
Moreover, accountability on all commitments is crucial, with due
emphasis on commitments
of developed countries as well, so that the review of
implementation is not only focusing
towards national implementation. Actions of systemically
significant countries that have
direct bearing on the stability and sustained growth of relatively
smaller and open economies
need to be discussed and debated in an open, transparent space
that the UN provides.
Bridges and inter-connections among development, trade, finance,
debt, systemic issues
and women’s rights commitments need to be further explored. From
the WWG on FfD we
stress that that it is essential for FfD to keep its autonomy in
the follow-up process.