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http://www.post2015women.com/response-to-outcome-document/
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Post-2015
Women’s Coalition’s Response to the Outcome Document
“Transforming Our World:
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” of the UN Sustainable Development
Summit
On the occasion of the adoption of the
Post-2015 Development Agenda, we, as the Post-2015 Women’s
Coalition, reiterate our concern that the Sustainable Development Goals,
Targets and Means of Implementation continue to fall short of a global agenda
that addresses systemic imbalances, inequalities, and discrimination, rooted in
gender equality principles that deny the basic human rights of women and girls
There have been substantial strides towards a more inclusive process, and the
Coalition welcomes the commitment of the Co-chairs, member states, Major Groups
and other stakeholders since the commencement of the Open Working Group
Process, which has created a new tool for realising gender equality and women’s
human rights. Despite contentious issues that prolonged debates during the
July-August 2015 Intergovernmental negotiations, the consensus document
reflects emerging development challenges, tackles short falls of the MDGs, and
takes concrete steps by the international community towards an action agenda. This
agenda is more inclusively defined and envisioned, although it still falls
short of creating a holistic agenda for feminist development as sustainable
development. Moving forward, we remind the international community that gender
equality and women’s participation and human rights must be at the centre of
all implementation efforts for sustainable and gender equitable development and
peace.
The outcome document, “Transforming Our World:
the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” agreed to by member states in
the lead up to the 70th General Assembly and Post-2015 Development Summit, sets
an ambitious vision for the next 15 years, striving for “a world of
universal respect for human rights and human dignity, the rule of law, justice,
equality and non-discrimination (para 8). Member states have committed to
“work for a significant increase in investments to close the gender gaps and
strengthen support for institutions in relation to gender equality and the
empowerment of women at the global, regional and national levels. All forms of
discrimination and violence against women and girls will be eliminated…” (para
20). The International community has committed to: “redouble our efforts
to resolve or prevent conflict and to support post-conflict countries, including
through ensuring that women have a role in peace-building and state-building.
We call for further effective measures and actions to be taken, in conformity
with international law.”
The document has been strengthened in terms of
gender-equality and women’s empowerment, in large part thanks to the tireless
and unwavering advocacy and coordination of the our Coalition’s members, the
Women’ Major Group, and other allies who fought for women’s priorities,
demands, and roles as agents of change in the agenda. In particular, we
acknowledge the recognition throughout the Preamble and Declaration of women’s
human rights and achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment as a
prerequisite for sustainable development. We also acknowledge Goal 5
dedicated to gender equality and women’s empowerment, and the inclusion of
women as a cross-cutting issue in relation to poverty and agricultural
productivity, health, and education. We note the importance of specific means
of implementation tied to each goal, ensuring that appropriate policy reform,
financing, and other resources will be dedicated to achieving gender-equality
and women’s empowerment. However, we remain highly critical of the Means of
Implementations link to the Addis Ababa Action Agenda, which retained regressive
and discriminatory language on financing and governance reform,
multilateralism, and gender equality.
As such, the members and constituencies
of the Post-2015 Women’s Coalition are deeply concerned that the
document up for adoption has failed to achieve a comprehensive gender equality
strategy and human rights based approach to development, and has not addressed
the urgent need for reforming structural and systemic inequalities and
discrimination.
Systemic discrimination and power
imbalances, including lack of financing, and insufficient policy space for
developing countries, pose serious threats to the achievement of the
sustainable development goals. Despite the strong push by developing countries
and civil society and other stakeholders for specific references and
reformulation of the role of IFIs as well as the decision-making power and
policy space for developing countries, the post-2015 agenda mentions
policy space only with specific limitations and qualifications (para 44 &63),
and does not leave room for structural reform of existing dynamics and
power relations. With its rhetoric to “leave no one behind,” the development
agenda perpetuates these barriers, and excludes populations facing conflict,
instability, environmental threats, and communities in marginalized areas. The
full realization of their rights, and the implementation of the SDGs will only
occur with substantial commitments from member states, donor countries, UN
agencies and other stakeholders to follow their words with concrete actions and
resources. We do, however, support the recognition and support of countries in
special circumstances, including LDCs, LLDCs, SIDs, and MICs, with the
understanding that their development challenges require continuing resources
and capacity building.
Stronger language on human rights and
discrimination to guide the agenda and the formulation of targets and
indicators has been overlooked in favor of the five pillars of
sustainable development: People, Planet, Prosperity, Peace and Partnership.
Noting the integrated nature of social, economic and environmental development,
the document fails to layout comprehensive human rights based approach to
sustainable development or recognize the universal and cross-cutting nature of
respecting, protecting and fulfilling rights. The agenda also fails to include
LGBTQ rights and its language on non-discrimination does not account for
migratory status, economic status, age, or culture.
The agenda has increased the role and
power of the corporate sector and international financial institution at both
the local and global policy making levels, coupled with lack of
transparency and public accountability for these actors. Their role was further
emphasized in the focus on a “New Global Partnership” (para 39). The
prioritization of profit over people, and conflating economic development with
economic growth, is a barrier to fulfilling human rights, particularly as the
agenda has failed to guarantee regulatory frameworks and accountability
mechanisms to ensure that people and the planet come before progress and
economic growth.
Gender mainstreaming and coherence with
existing international commitments will be critical in the implementation and
follow-up and review of the agenda. Similar to the Zero Draft, “Transforming
our World” does not adequately articulate gender inequality, discrimination and
structural and systemic disadvantages. While the targets and means of
implementation under Goal 5 seek to address the gaps remaining from MDG 3,
gender equality and women’s empowerment, these issues remain siloed as “women’s
issues.” In its vision, the agenda commits to ensuring the role of women in
peace building, but without complementary targets and indicators to monitor
this change. Standalone targets on eliminating violence against women and
ensuring universal access to education, while critical, must be linked to their
impact on women’s economic, political and social empowerment, reinforcing the
integrated nature of realizing human rights. And while the agenda calls for
policy coherence with existing international platforms it neglects critical
gender equality commitments within instruments such as CEDAW, ICCPR, ICESCR,
UDHR, BPfA, the Cairo Declaration, the Maastricht Principles, the Declaration
on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the Declaration on the Elimination of
Violence Against Women, the CRC, and Security Council Resolution 1325.
Unpaid Care & Domestic Work responsibilities
disproportionately fall on the shoulders of women, and the final draft
neglects to treat unpaid work as a human right, affecting their ability to
participate equally and effectively in the labor force with adequate social
protections and compensation. Rather, it is limited to Target 5.4 without
corresponding means of implementation or commitments to legislative or policy
change.
Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights, a contentious issue
throughout the last of the intergovernmental negotiations, retains universal
access to reproductive rights, and sexual and reproductive health care (Target
5.6). While access to healthcare has been guaranteed, the targets
throughout the agenda, despite their mention of women, youth, indigenous, the
aging, and the disabled, disregard the full inclusion of people who are
marginalized and socially excluded based on their sexual orientation and gender
identities. The inclusion of all people, including those of diverse sexual
orientations and gender identities, is critical for realizing universal human
rights.
Peace and security have been recognized
as key to achieving sustainable development, yet without
addressing gendered militarism, the connections between gender equality and
peace, and the arms trade, the post-2015 development agenda will not achieve
transformative and peaceful change in regions experiences conflict. It is
deeply concerning that the root causes of conflict, including illicit arms
trading, financing of fundamentalism, and the role of northern governments in
proliferating conflict, were not addressed with concrete accountability
mechanisms and time bound commitments. Women human rights defenders and
activists in particular require substantial protection frameworks and resources
to reduce the obstacles and risks they face due to ongoing violence,
instability, and structural inequities, upholding the human rights principles
of universality and nondiscrimination in all aspects. We call on all
governments to take leadership and put robust, effective and gender sensitive
protection , measures, so that Women Human Rights Defenders in all their
diversity can do their work in their specific contexts.
The Means of Implementation and Global
Partnership stress the need for mobilizing a diverse range of resources to
implement the sustainable development goals, and there is a
commitment to ensure women’s equal rights to access economic resources.
However, specific resource commitments have not been linked to the realization
of women’s human rights and advancing gender equality. Furthermore, we are
concerned with the reliance on private financing for development and women’s empowerment,
diverting attention away from the role of states in removing global obstacles
to development, mobilizing official development assistance and sufficient
domestic public resources. We call for adequate and sufficient resource
allocation and investment for gender equality, women’s empowerment and the
realization of women’s rights in general.
Follow-up and review of the sustainable
development goals is not gender neutral, and it is alarming that
governments will be held accountable to targets more than 10-15 years in the
future, despite the urgent need to address inequalities, exclusion, systemic
discrimination, which lead to serious human rights violations. We urge member
states, UN Agencies, and all other relevant stakeholders to monitor sustainable
development vis a vis existing international reporting platforms in the
interim, as well as recognize civil society led reviews of progress on a
shorter and more relevant timescale. While we acknowledge the inclusion of
disaggregated data in the means of implementation, many of the existing targets
and indicators remain aspirational as there is limited data on key challenges
and threats for women, including taboos related to reporting domestic violence,
harassment, rape and other forms of gender-based violence. Thus it is critical
to ensure that indicators developed by the IAEG are supplemented by relevant
capacity-building for developing countries and all stakeholders active in
monitoring and collecting data. We urge member states to take seriously the commitments
to engage with all levels of civil society and communities– local, national,
regional and global – and include innovative forms of data collection in
government reporting and implementation plans to accelerate progress, equality,
and peace.
The push to achieve sustainable and
inclusive development does not end at the Post-2015 Development Summit; it is only the
beginning of an intensive process of planning, implementing and monitoring the
goals and targets. It is critical that member states take advantage of this
opportunity to address systemic inequality and discrimination, both within and
between countries, which remain serious impediments to realizing sustainable
development. As a global coalition with strong constituencies at the
international, regional, national and local levels, with diverse expertise and
experience, the Post-2015 Women’s Coalition commits to fulfilling its role
as civil society in the implementation and monitoring of the development
agenda. Our commitments will be guided by an integrated approach to holding
governments accountable and implementing the SDGs, that includes human rights
instruments and existing gender equality commitments.
We, as the coalition, commit to:
·
Analyze outcomes of international and regional processes to make
them accessible and relevant to women’s groups and other CBOS.
·
Provide alternative modes of communication, in particular
through info graphics, social media and trainings on policy literacy and
advocacy, with a intent to make this knowledge available in multiple languages
·
Encourage and support the participation of women, feminists, and
grassroots activists in spaces open to civil society consultation, and
continually push to increase policy space for women’s allies
·
Facilitate ongoing regional meetings of activists to ensure that
networks are connected, empowered and implementing action plans
·
Develop policy briefs and knowledge products to increase
awareness of gender equality and women’s empowerment within the context of the
SDGs, poverty eradication and financing for development
·
Promote and enhance the visibility and legitimacy of regional
challenges and priorities in international decision making spaces
· Raise awareness of practices at the local, national and regional levels that enhance gender equality and women’s empowerment, such as gender budgeting, implementation of international human rights conventions at the city scale, and citizen led monitoring mechanisms that have been mainstreamed into government decision making