Welcome to the United Nations
1. Introduction
Achieving gender equality, the realization of women’s human rights and the empowerment of all women and girls is essential to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Gender equality is cross-cutting, beyond just SDG 5 and gender equality must be mainstreamed in the implementation of all other goals.
Issues such as climate change, global warming, ocean acidification, and ecological damage render an unprecedented urgency to the entire 2030 Agenda, while multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination and systemic barriers exacerbate human rights violations, marginalisation and vulnerability of women and girls of all ages and diversities. More than ever, women and girls are those most greatly affected by inequality, yet they are also key actors of sustainable development, knowledgeable in providing solutions to problems.
To achieve gender equality and the SDGs, all must take action to overcome systemic barriers leading to inequalities within and between countries; adequately address the gender and human rights dimensions of each goal and linkages between goals; ensure policy coherence; and commit to genuine accountability processes, including meaningful engagement of civil society and justice for women’s human rights defenders.
2. Addressing the systemic barriers
Eradicating poverty and promoting prosperity in a world where just eight men hold the same wealth as the poorest half of the world requires flipping the status quo. Time is running out.
Tackling systemic barriers and structural inequalities means recognising and responding to the intertwined systemic issues of neoliberalist capitalism, fundamentalisms, militarism, racism and patriarchy as systemic drivers of gender and other forms of inequality. It is imperative to take a democratization and rights-based approach with a clear and justice-focused definition of prosperity that fully recognizes concepts such as buen vivir, ecological sustainability and sufficiency and climate justice.
In this paper, the WMG highlights a set of systemic issues that diminish, undermine and infringe on women’s human rights and the success of the SDGs: militarism, corporate influence, consumption and production patterns, and shrinking civil society space.
Militarism
Militarised political economies increase poverty, inequalities and violence against women by limiting investment in gender equitable social development while devastating communities and economies affected by armed conflict, and prioritizing defence expenditures over social sector spending. This is opposite of the right to development, and the “innovative finance” called for from Agenda 21(1992) to Beijing (1995) to the 2030 Agenda (2015). Global military expenditure was more than 12 times global expenditure for Official Development Assistance (ODA) in 2010, and the income of the global feminist movement ($106 million for 740 women’s organizations) was less than the cost of a single F-35 Fighter plane ($137 million). Arms transfers may be financially lucrative but cost dearly in human rights and peace: In 2016, civil society shadow reports found that arms sales from Germany contributed to gender based violence and violence against women (SDG 5) in India, Iraq, Mexico; Yemen also found that arms transfers from the United Kingdom, Sweden, and France violated obligations on economic, social and cultural rights in Yemen including on health (SDG 3), education (SDG 4), and housing (SDG 11).
Achieving the 2030 Agenda requires ending patriarchal assumptions that devalue and obscure the care economy while prioritizing war and conflict economies. It requires assessing the gendered impacts of current investments - from bloated military budgets and privatised services to emaciated humanitarian and women, peace and security action - and investing in economic fair play rather than masculine dominance models.
Corporate influence
Over the past 40 years, the world has been both encouraged and coerced into an era in which the most powerful law is not that of sovereignty but that of neoliberal capitalist supply and demand. Of the 100 largest economies in the world, 51 are corporations, and only 49 are countries. The rising power and extended reach of corporations - which can sometimes exceed the power of states - in the current era of globalisation, extractivism, impunity and extreme inequality is an urgent challenge.
Since corporations are dedicated to making profit while states are obligated to uphold a social contract, disparities in power often create conflicts between action for profit and action for human rights, peace, and sustainability. For example, forced evictions by mining companies in Guatemala involved gang rape (SDG 5) while women in the mining sector in the Democratic Republic of Congo have no safe access to water (SDG 6), food (SDG 2), education (SDG 4), or health (SDG 3), while generally engaged in the most toxic work at the mining sites (SDG 8).
The private sector is held up as a source of innovative finance, yet corporate tax evasion, illicit financial flows and lack of transparency diminish public funding sources for sustainable development, gender equality and universal human rights.
Consumption and production
Unsustainable production and consumption patterns are inextricably linked to a neoliberal capitalist system that values growth and profit over justice, sustainability and sufficiency. These patterns exacerbate unequal distribution of resources and negatively impact achievement of gender equality and women’s human rights.
Extractivist, profit-oriented patterns of production and consumption contribute to climate change (SDG 13), ocean acidification (SDG 14), pollution, excess traffic and waste (SDGs 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12), which impact food security (SDG 2), health (SDG 3), water (SDG 6), soil (SDG 2) and air quality (SDG 13) for many, and bring prosperity for few. These patterns are primary contributors to greenhouse gas emissions that are responsible for climate change and are the historic responsibility of developed countries, in the context of common but differentiated responsibilities.
In the larger context of inequality, racism and intersecting discriminations, the impacts from overproduction and consumption are more intense for marginalized populations whose neighborhoods are often the site of overcrowding, polluting industry and heavy traffic (SDG 10). Additionally, due to gendered roles, it is most often women who take care of children, the ill, people with disabilities and the elderly, and they experience loss of health, education, time and income and social protection as a result (SDGs 1, 4, 5) and suffer from a lack of access to justice, in law and in practice.
Shrinking civil society space
Civil society organizations have the capacity to mobilize financial and human resources necessary to successful implementation of SDGs, ensuring that the historically-ignored indicators, such as women’s empowerment and gender equality (Targets 5.a, 5.b, 5.c) and participatory and representative decision-making (Target 16.7), do not fall into silos of the state-centric mechanisms. But feminist and women led groups and social movements, and women and environmental human rights defenders, who are on the frontlines of SDG monitoring and implementation, are often overlooked and undervalued when budgets and projects for sustainable development are decided, compromising their positive impact in some cases.
In other cases, it is civil action itself that is under threat, and civic space is shrinking worldwide. This can be seen in Berta Caceres and others in Honduras, and repressive, punitive measures against civil society in Colombia , Syria , Libya , Russia , West Papua and elsewhere . There are also measures through which member states limit the access of civil society to international decision-making at the UN. The growing trends of political pressures of member states against civil society signal a real threat to the legitimacy of existing human rights, rule of law, and the normative framework of international peace, security, and development that are enshrined in the main principles of the 2030 Agenda.
As duty bearers of human rights, governments have an obligation to their citizens to protect and uphold human rights. Thus, it is important to entrust civil society with power and resources and to create safe spaces for candid engagement of civil society with governments that builds trust for longer-term mutual collaboration. State violence against the members of civil society and restrictions of their freedoms should be addressed by the international community and individual governments as a matter of priority. It is of utmost importance to fully protect the lives and political participation of civil society activists and human rights defenders, ensuring full investigations of the crimes committed against them, identifying and prosecuting the intellectual and material authors of these serious criminal acts.
3. Accountability, data and coherence
Accountability
The sustainable development framework and the human rights framework can and must be harmonized in order to ensure that states meet their existing obligations under human rights treaties and their political commitments espoused in the 2030 Agenda.
Agenda 2030 was not drafted in a political or legal vacuum, but in the context of international agreements and conventions such as the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), Beijing Platform for Action, International Conference and UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. In this way, a rights-based approach to sustainable development is not an option, but an obligation.
As the HLPF has a mandate of sharing and peer-learning, utilizing the existing human rights review mechanisms presents an opportunity to transform the sustainable development agenda from burgeoning rhetoric into rights realization. In this way, we will ensure that women’s voices are not only heard, but answered. This is the essence of accountability.
In addition, public-private partnerships should be accountable to citizens, ensuring compliance with human rights, gender equality, and labour and environmental standards, through a legally binding corporate accountability mechanism.
Data and indicators
Tracking progress is critical to success of the 2030 Agenda, and if monitoring and evaluation of programmes are taken seriously, then disaggregated data should be easily available and accessible. However, data is lacking or incomplete for many indicators, providing an incomplete picture for women and girls. For example, violence against women, is not tracked well, and data should be tracked particularly in rural communities and conflict areas or humanitarian contexts.
In addition, many of the most critical indicators for gender equality do not have agreed methodology yet and, therefore, no globally comparable data. This lack of data weakens the ability to monitor SDG progress. Greater integration of the human rights system with the sustainable development agenda can help bridge these data gaps as the statistical community strengthens and creates agreed methodologies. In addition, the HLPF should create a mechanism to incorporate shadow reports into the voluntary national review process, as a credible strategy for filling the current lacuna.
Policy coherence
The SDGs are crucial vehicles to move the world in a sustainable direction, but alone they are far from enough. The multiple, overlapping and sometimes competing international processes result in pages and pages of commitments that look good on paper but can be tough to implement for small countries with limited resources. The HLPF can facilitate greater dialogue and collaboration between processes, for example the three Rio Conventions to achieve coherent and mutually supportive climate change, biodiversity and desertification policies, for example, by connecting the conventions' secretariats and facilitating active cooperation.
5. Conclusion
Gender equality, good governance, respect for human rights and access to justice are critical enablers and drivers of shared prosperity and sustainable development. Rights holders and duty bearers must work together to amplify voices and actions that address the systemic barriers to sustainable development.
Recommendations in the body of the paper can be summarized in 5 broad categories, with each more fully described in the Executive Summary:
- Women’s Human Rights - Take a democratization and human rights-based approach to SDGs implementation
- Meaningful Participation - Ensure more than token representation of women and civil society
- Civil Society Space - Maintain and enhance the space, building strength from diversity
- Finance - Directly resource women’s rights groups
- Accountability - All actors take responsibility for Agenda 2030
