Feminist Reflections: UN Report on Post-2015 Development – SIGN-ON
Author: Womens UN Report Network
Date: June 3, 2013
WUNRN
Feminist
Reflections: UN’s High Level Panel Report on Post-2015 Development Agenda
IMPORTANT – Time Specific: If your organization would like to
endorse this review, please send name of organization, country and name of
contact to cwgl@rci.rutgers.edu
by 12 noon
(EST)/17:00 (GMT) on 12th June.
On 30th May 2013, the High Level Panel (HLP) of Eminent Persons
on the Post-2015 Development Agenda launched its report. A New Global
Partnership: Eradicate poverty and transform economies through sustainable
development sets out 12 illustrative goals and 52 targets aimed at “ending
poverty in all its forms”, ensuring “that no person – regardless of ethnicity,
gender, geography, disability, race or other status – is denied universal human
rights and basic economic opportunities”, and ending “hunger and ensur[ing] a
basic standard of wellbeing”.
We appreciate the efforts undertaken in the HLP to establish the
inter-linkages between social, economic and environmental dimensions of
sustainable development, and welcome a:
- stand alone goal on “Empower girls and women and
achieve gender equality”, and associated targets on eliminating violence,
ending child marriage, equal rights for women to own and inherit property,
and eliminate discrimination in political, economic and public life;
- specific target on sexual and reproductive health and
rights under the “Ensure healthy lives” goal; and
- specific target on maternal mortality under the “Ensure
healthy lives” goal.
However, and despite acknowledging the need for profound economic
transformation, the report fails to:
- offer the necessary transformational building blocks
for a new sustainable human development agenda;
- provide a transformational approach to address growing
inequalities within and between countries and between women and men, as
well as the root causes of poverty, including the growing feminization and
intergenerational transfer of poverty;
- address the current macro-economic model which
perpetuates poverty and inequality;
- include people who are discriminated against on the
basis of sexual orientation and gender identity;
- link existing human rights accountability mechanisms at
the regional and global levels in its accountability discussion; and
- address limited financing as a key barrier to advancing
sustainable development, including women’s rights and gender equality.
The report also fails to include a target to reduce growing wealth
inequalities, and suggests instead that this should be the decision of
countries. This suggestion ignores enormous wealth inequalities between
nations. It fails to acknowledge, even in the narrative, the large body of
research demonstrating that neo-liberal policies of economic growth,
privatization, de-regulation and reduced government spending, have increased
inequalities and fueled human rights violations, particularly for women.
We welcome the report’s attempt to position young people and adolescents as
a cross-cutting theme by highlighting education (albeit overlooking the
discussion on transition to secondary and quality education), access to health,
including sexual and reproductive health and rights, and job creation. However,
the report opted to address these concerns from an instrumentalist approach
rather than a human rights one. A sustainable development agenda must look beyond
young people as beneficiaries of services and potential employees, to
recognizing their roles, particularly those of young women, in political and
social transformations. The report omits crucial aspects of adolescents and
young people’s health and rights, including the importance of access to
comprehensive sexuality education, abortion, the impact of HIV and AIDS on
young people, and sexual orientation and gender identity.
The report repeatedly points to the economic value in addressing human
rights and sustainable development, rather than to the intrinsic value of
rights enjoyment. It also mainly addresses civil and political rights and does
not take economic and social rights as the ethical framework needed to set
global economic policy. In fact it offers a dangerous direction in justifying
the rights of corporations and businesses over people and the planet, over
human rights and global public goods.
It also presents a picture of people living in poverty in developing
countries in need while failing to address responsibilities of those
monopolizing wealth, resources and power. The report identifies the need for
more food, more funds, more growth, but fails to touch on the need for
re-distribution of resources or wealth or the distortions created by pro-transnational
corporate economic policies. In fact, it elevates the private sector as a
preeminent sustainable development actor, and does so with fleeting reference
to the importance of social and environmental standards, with business’ role
defined as “adopting good practices and paying fair taxes”. In addition it
fails to tackle the growing and daily conflicts between corporations and human
rights defenders, including women human rights defenders.
We welcome the efforts of the HLP to go beyond the Millennium Development
Goals (MDGs) in addressing situations of conflict and violence. We agree with
the report that peace and good governance are not optional, but core elements
of wellbeing, and that a “transformative” agenda is required to move beyond business
as usual. However, for development to be sustainable rather than degenerative,
more is needed. It is critical to recognize that there can be no development
without disarmament and the full and equal participation of women. To overcome
the violence that is built into local and global social, economic, cultural,
and political structures, we need an integrated approach that strengthens a
holistic understanding of peace and security for all.
New Global Partnership
The Panel proposes that the new global partnership with the responsibility
for eradicating poverty and transforming economies through sustainable
development include “governments”, “the business community”, and “multilateral
institutions”. While other groups, including civil society, are listed, they
are not highlighted here because the report itself places little emphasis on
them. In fact, the report adopts and attempts to expand the neoliberal project
to the extent that many proposals, including the goal of gender equality, read
as mere instruments to feed into the market. This emphasis not only neglects
the detrimental effects of neoliberalism on sustainable development, it
consistently contradicts the international human rights framework. A genuine
new global partnership would have those most marginalized, women of the global
south, at the center, and ensure truly democratic processes, transparent
decision making and accountability.
On Context and Trends Analyses
Given that the HLP’s report is a reference point for the post 2015
sustainable development agenda, with the potential to influence policy making
through 2030, it is necessary to ask: Is the report sufficiently informed by
the global trends and challenges leading to 2030? In fact, the report is
remarkable for its lack of both context and trend analyses. Contextual analysis
of the global economy, with reference to the effects of the financial crisis
and ensuing austerity measures on inequalities would be useful for goal
and target setting. For example, it mentions social protection programs without
articulating the need for them during economic downturns. The report is also
silent about the need for counter cyclical economic policy to ensure that
minimum core human rights standards are met.
Within the context of global governance, both the rise of the BRICS (Brazil,
Russia, India, China, South Africa) and the increasing influence of the
G-20, point to the growing strength of the aggregate power of these countries.
However, the majority of people living in poverty now live in middle-income
countries, particularly the BRICS. They have the potential to reconstruct
economic narratives and influence attempts to “create a global enabling
environment and catalyse long term finance” (goal 12), particularly through a
development bank backed by the BRICS. These realities create
opportunities and challenges for financing sustainable development.
By 2030 approximately 60% of the world’s population is projected to live in
urban centers. Urbanization is on the increase in developing countries, with
urban centers estimated to generate the bulk of economic growth. With increased
urbanization will come migration, and in many countries, as in the past, women
will make up a significant share of this migrant population searching for a
better life for themselves and their families. Coupled with climate change,
increasing urbanization will create challenges for ending poverty, achieving
gender equality, and accessing water, food and energy and housing. It is
imperative that the post 2015 sustainable development agenda is informed by
such realities and trends.
On Accountability
The new global partnership will involve multiple partners and the report
calls for “mutual accountability”, noting that everyone involved must be “fully
accountable.” How can this happen, when “like the MDGs, they would not be
binding”? The report notes that “each country is being asked what it wants to
do, on a voluntary basis.” It promotes the private sector as the engine of
development, while gesturing toward self-regulatory and weak systems that have
failed to ensure that the private sector is accountable for environmental and
human rights violations. The report also notes that “accountability must be
exercised at the right level: governments to their own citizens, local
governments to their communities, corporations to their shareholders,
civil society to the constituencies they represent.” This contradicts and
undermines the call for “mutual accountability”.
In this multipolar scenario, governments and the United Nations must be honest
about the limits that are imposed to hold corporations to account for
violations such as land grabbing, worker exploitation and corruption. Overall,
the numerous references to the private sector’s key role in driving development
after 2015 are very concerning, especially given the lack of commensurate
safeguards to ensure that human rights are protected and promoted above private
sector interests, and the lack of concrete monitoring and regulation of the
private sector.
The Goals
We think that having a clear framework that is specific, measurable,
time-bound and attainable is a powerful way to motivate action and mobilise
resources. We appreciate the proposal to have global goals with national
targets as it increases country ownership, which increases the chances of
success. However, we would like to see the development of a mechanism that
ensures that the national targets are sufficiently ambitious to ensure that
countries are taking meaningful action.
We do not support the selection of targets from a “menu”, as this could lead
to difficult or unpopular areas being dropped from action, and reduces the
cohesive global action tackling a particular issue. All targets and indicators
must be covered at a meaningful level by all governments, even if they have the
flexibility to judge their own rate of progress over time. This is especially
important for sexual and reproductive health and rights.
The goals are missing critical inter-linkages, specifically in terms of
women’s rights and gender equality. For example, climate change is highlighted
as a cross-cutting issue, but links between climate change, women and the
illustrative targets intended to address aspects of climate change are not
made. Targets related to energy, agriculture, transport, deforestation and food
security need to articulate the inter-linkages, e.g., in terms of women’s
access to and control of natural resources, their role in sustainable energy
solutions and capacity building, or they will not be prioritized. Similarly,
women’s empowerment and ensuring stable and peaceful societies are both goals,
however, there are no indicators linking the two, such as inclusion of women
and women’s organizations in peace negotiations.
Goal 1: End Poverty
The report continues to use the discredited World Bank poverty measurement
of 1.25 USD per day. This is not a poverty line but a starvation line. It
measures how many people are likely to soon die of malnutrition, exposure,
etc., rather than a measurement of living with dignity, which is what
eradication of poverty should indicate. Higher national poverty lines can be
defined nationally but the Panel has lacked the courage or ambition to draw a
higher and broader global poverty line.
While the report acknowledged the importance of land to development, it focuses
on security of tenure and the commercializing potential of land rather than the
fact that landlessness is the largest single indicator of poverty. The report
suggests an increase by “x% the share of [….] businesses with secure rights to
land, property and other assets”. The inclusion of ‘businesses’ can be easily
distorted and enable land-grabbing and forced evictions. In addition, there is
no differentiation in references to “the business community”, yet
disaggregation between small, medium and larger private sector entities is
critical as they are not perceived or treated as the same. The report presumes
a neo-liberal purpose for land which is not the experience nor aim of most
small land-owners. Measuring the distribution of land and resources and aiming
for more equitable distribution amongst people, rather than corporations, would
be meaningful.
Goal 2: Empower Girls and Women and Achieve Gender Equality
Gender equality is an essential component of sustainable development, and we
will not achieve progress on the post 2015 framework without it. While we
welcome this goal we hope that more work can be done to make it meaningful.
Empowering girls and women and achieving gender equality (Goal 2) cannot be
accomplished in isolation from ending poverty. However Goal 1 as currently
written, in part equates the right of businesses to own land with that of women
and communities. As a result it effectively ignores the current practice of
land grabbing, environmental degradation and displacement that occurs when
corporations are able to own and control land.
The HLP is correct to highlight the target of preventing and eliminating all
forms of violence against girls and women. However, the links between
gender-based violence and impunity, militarization, military spending, and the
prevalence of small arms must be addressed if meaningful gains are to be made.
The child marriage indicator is welcomed only if the term is explicitly defined
as in the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Goal 4: Ensure Healthy Lives
This goal acknowledges sexual and reproductive health and rights as critical
components of a healthy life and an essential component of a healthy society,
however, we are concerned by the lack of specificity in the suggested target.
We welcome reference in the narrative around health that “discrimination can
create barriers to health services for vulnerable groups”, but the lack of
further discussion around supporting marginalized and key populations and
providing stigma-free services is a gap.
Goal 7: Secure Sustainable Energy
The target to phase out fossil fuel subsidies is welcomed, but it is too
vague and won’t compel change. It should at the very least cover the
eradication of subsidies to fossil fuel industries and carbon emitting multinationals.
Goal 8: Create Jobs, Sustainable Livelihoods, and Equitable Growth
The report recognizes the importance of jobs to sustainable development, but
reduces labor to the value it brings to economic growth and consumption. It
undermines the Decent Work agenda by creating a reduced category of “good jobs”
for the developing world, with the implication being that the developed world
can expect the broader decent work agenda. It notes that the concept of decent
work which “recognizes and respects the rights of workers, ensures adequate
social protection and social dialogue,” may be too much for some developing
countries and suggests a “middle ground” for them. Is the HLP saying that some
workers, simply because of their geographic location, do not deserve to have
internationally agreed upon rights?
It also suggests that good jobs need to be “secure and fairly paid,”
however, there is no indication of what fair pay would amount to – would that
be less than 1.25 USD per day? In addition, labor market flexibility, the
report notes, is required to stimulate growth, which contradicts the notion of
labor security. Women are most often subjected to ‘flexible’ labor markets and
the erosion of labor rights due in part to traditional gender division of labor
within the household. Within this context, unpaid labor must also be addressed.
This requires that unpaid work must be recognized, reduced and redistributed.
The report suggests that favorable business environments are required for
entrepreneurialism, but ignores the experiences of small, women-led enterprises
that are often unable to compete with foreign multinationals which are given
investment incentives, such as taxes exemptions. Re-directing subsidies from
multinationals to local micro-enterprises, small businesses and cooperatives
would create jobs.
This goal set a target to “strengthen productive capacity by providing
universal access to financial services”, which begs the question, why this
emphasis? Why not investments in productive activities with the potential to
generate jobs, gender-aware and context-specific skills development programs,
and social protection programs – all of which generate decent jobs, sustain
livelihoods and result in more equitable growth?
Goal 10: Ensure Good Governance and Effective Institutions
“Institutions,” for this goal, are defined as covering “rules, laws, and
government entities, but also the informal rules of social interactions.” Given
that “businesses” feature so prominently in this report, its absence in this
section, for this goal is stunning. Corporations are given a free pass. A
global regulatory framework set by governments to protect people from the
avarice of business is essential if sustainable development is the ultimate
goal, especially given that the only priority of the private sector is its
profit motive. Extraterritorial obligations, as elaborated in the Maastricht
Principles, should be used as the foundation for facilitating good governance
in the context of the new global partnership outlined in this report.
The increased focus on civil participation and voice is welcomed, however
stronger specificity is required and participation should include
decision-making.
Goal 11: Ensure Stable and Peaceful Societies
It is undeniable that violations of human rights and injustice are
ingredients for instability, conflict and war. Actions that ensure that people
in general, and women in particular, are able to live without fear and want are
key to ensuring stable and peaceful societies. Ensuring that governments are investing
in and budgeting for peace and not increasing militarization are key. A target
to reduce military spending and increase social spending would be of singular
value. Again, the report focuses here on symptoms but not causes.
In particular, we recommend that the link between gender inequality and
militarization be recognized and addressed, and that a holistic approach to the
Women, Peace and Security agenda that addresses participation, prevention,
protection, and relief and recovery be integrated into sustainable development
efforts, including goals and indicators. There is a need to recognize that
nuclear weapons, as well as climate change, pose unprecedented threats to
humanity; that arms, including small arms and light weapons, promote
environmental degradation and reduce state capacity to invest in social
equality and sustainable development, and fuel gender-based violence,
especially against women human rights defenders; that the effects of
militarism, military spending, and the arms trade erode gender equality and the
realization of women’s rights; and that development, peace and security require
conflict prevention through women’s full and equal participation and
leadership, not just a “transparency revolution”.
Goal 12: Create a Global Enabling Environment and Catalyze Long Term
Finance
While there is a target to keep warming to 2 degrees C, there is no target
for countries to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. It also fails to recognize
the role and responsibility of large-scale historical emitters in contributing
to climate change and its inequitable impacts (geographical, gender, economic,
etc.), from which we already see the reversal of existing development gains. An
enabling environment requires clear recognition of common but differentiated responsibilities
in addressing climate change impacts, mitigating causes and creating the
conditions for long term sustainable development.
Overall the financing goal lacks the kind of urgency and ambition that
mobilized trillions of dollars to bail out banks in record time. This goal
fails to recognize the sustained critique of international financial systems
and the need to reform them. The 2008 crisis, and others which came before,
including with Long Term Capital Management in 1998, are evidence that we need
reform of the financial regulatory system, where the needs of people and not of
capital are at the center, and policies are developed and goals set with a
recognition that women and men do not share the same realities, and that they
experience economic crises differently. Governments have an obligation to
effectively regulate financial institutions and markets to prevent economic
crises.
We appreciate efforts to define clear financing targets to achieve the
goals, but believe the report should have given attention to how funding
is delivered to maximize impact. Research from recent years indicate that
effective financing for gender equality must move away from fragmented,
short-term funding to longer term partnerships that are predictable and
flexible, and provide multiyear support.
Further, the report failed to highlight the need to secure resources for the
diversity of actors engaged in this work, including civil society, and among
them, women’s organizations and movements, who are doing some of the most
impactful and innovative work in this field, holding the line on past gains,
pushing for new policy and behavior changes, providing critical services, and
holding governments accountable to their commitments.
While discussed in some detail in the narrative of the report, the Panel has
failed to recommend sufficient substantive changes to tax systems that would
ensure corporations make some contribution to sustainable development and the
communities that sustain them. The report is also silent on the need for
governments to mobilize the maximum available resources to meet human rights
obligations and ensure the full enjoyment of economic and social rights,
following principles of non-retrogression and minimum essential levels/minimum
core obligations.
This goal is also delinked from several of the other articulated goals,
e.g., it fails to address the need to ensure functioning supply chains or
access to essential medicines as targets, as was included in Goal 8 in the MDG
framework. This is a serious omission as some of the challenges to ensuring
access to essential reproductive health medicines and realizing sexual and
reproductive health and rights are connected to weaknesses with the financing,
supply chains and health systems that deliver access to essential medicines,
including reproductive health medicines.
Conclusion
In moving forward, we recommend that a human rights approach to sustainable
development processes be strengthened through enhanced recognition of state
obligations to respect, protect, and fulfill women’s human rights and gender
equality. We recommend clear regulations to ensure that economic interests are
not allowed to override the greater aim of respecting human rights and
promoting sustainable development. We call for a change in the current policies
of international institutions that serve to entrench inequalities through
neoliberal reforms that leave countries struggling to meet their sustainable
development objectives.
While the HLP report is more of the same, or some would argue, MDG +, the
world between 2015-2030 will be changing in many ways, including the balance of
economic and political power. The Secretary General provided an opportunity for
something more; it was a missed opportunity. It is now up to him and the member
states to ensure that the next fifteen years post 2015 will be a time of people
above profits.
Drafting Team: Katia Araujo, Huairou Commission; Heather Barclay,
International Planned Parenthood Federation; Marta Benavides, Feminist Task
Force; Savi Bisnath, Center for Women’s Global Leadership; Eleanor Blomstrom,
Women’s Environment and Development Organization; Clare Coffey, ActionAid; Kate
Lappin, Asia Pacific Forum for Women, Law and Development; Rosa Lizarde,
Feminist Task Force; Abigail Ruane, Women’s International League for Peace and
Freedom; Alejandra Scampini, Association for Women’s Rights in Development
If your organization would like to endorse this review, please send name
of organization, country and name of contact to cwgl@rci.rutgers.edu by 12 noon (EST)/17:00
(GMT) on 12th June.
Endorsed by:
Appropriate Technologies for Rural Women Cameroon (ATRuW), Cameroon
Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD)
Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID), International
Center for Integrity Promotion and Information (CIPI), Kenya
Center for Women’s Global Leadership (CWGL), USA
Centro de la Mujer Peruana Flora Tristán, Peru
Concertación Interamericana de Mujeres Activistas por los Derechos Humanos
(CIMA), Costa Rica
Deltawomen Ngo, Nigeria
Dharti Development Foundation Sindh, Pakistan
Feminist Task Force, International
FemLINKPacific, Fiji
The Gambia Committee on Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women
and Children (GAMCOTRAP), The Gambia
Inter Africa Network for Women, Media, Gender Equity and Development
(FAMEDEV), Senegal
International Women’s Rights Action Watch Asia Pacific (IWRAW Asia Pacific)
Legal Rights Forum, Pakistan
Millennium Sistahs T&T, Trinidad and Tobago
National Department of Social Development, South Africa
National Network Against Domestic Violence (NNADV), Nepal
National Network for Beijing Review Nepal (NNBN), Nepal
Niger Delta Women’s Movement for Peace & Development (NDWPD), Nigeria
Practical Solutions, United Kingdom
The Programme on Women’s Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (PWESCR),
India
RAFED 4, Cameroon
Saathi Nepal, Nepal
Solidarity for Women’s Rights Association (SOWA), Republic of South Sudan
TGNP Mtandao, Tanzania
Vision Spring Initiatives, Nigeria
Women for Human Rights, single women group (WHR), Nepal
Women Living Under Muslim Laws International Solidarity Network, United
Kingdom
Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF)
Women’s Rights Center, Poland
WUNRN – Women’s UN Report Network
Young Women’s Leadership Institute (YWLI), Kenya
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