Welcome to the United Nations
2022 HLPF Theme: “Building back better from the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) while advancing the full implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”.
In focus SDG Goals: SDGs 4 on quality education; 5 on gender equality; 14 on life below water; 15 on life on land; and 17 on partnerships for the Goals.
UNFPA is requested by the President of ECOSOC (PR of Botswana) to provide substantive inputs to the review of the 2022 HLPF theme and the SDGs undergoing in depth review from its vantage point. (see attached letter)
The responses below are framed around five guiding questions provided in the ECOSOC President’s letter.
For the purposes of this submission, and in keeping with UNFPAs mandate areas as reflected in the ICPD Agenda, Nairobi Commitments and our UNFPA Strategic Plan 2022-2025, as we review the theme, our responses are focused primarily on SDG 5: Gender Equality and the Empowerment of women and girls (including targets SDG 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, and 5.6), and to a lesser extent on SDG 4- Quality Education, and SDG 17- Data and Partnerships. Examples of UNFPA collaborations with other UN entities are annexed to this document.
Guiding Questions and Responses
Question (a) Progress, experience, lessons learned, challenges and impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the implementation of in -depth SDGs bearing in mind the three dimensions of sustainable development (social, economic, environmental) and the interlinkages across the SDGs and targets, including policy implications of their synergies and trade-offs.
Overall
The COVID-19 pandemic constitutes the largest global public health crisis in a century, and has resulted in significant health, social and economic challenges. Movement restrictions since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, following significant surges in COVID cases in countries, have resulted in disruptions across all sectors including health, education, and employment resulting in decreases in women’s labour force participation, increases in women’s unequal share of unpaid care and domestic work, increases in incidents of violence against women and girls as well as harmful practices. The COVID-19 pandemic continues to undermine decades of social and economic progress.
SDG 5- and the COVID-19 Pandemic
COVID-19 affects women and men differently. Women make up a significant portion of frontline health workers and continue to do the majority of unpaid care work. Women and girls are more likely to be poor and living in vulnerable situations, making them more likely to bear the brunt of health, economic and social shocks such as COVID-19. As health, social protection and legal systems are weakened or under pressure, the pandemic makes existing inequalities for women and girls worse, placing them at higher risk of domestic violence, abuse and other forms of discrimination.
● Women, including through civil society and grassroots organisations, are playing leading roles as crisis responders amidst the COVID-19 pandemic , not only as frontline healthcare workers but as unpaid caregivers, and community mobilizers.
● Through the Global Fund for Women, UNFPA supported grassroots feminist crisis responses to COVID-19 by investing in local women-led organizations to directly support communities they serve and ensure their continuity. Furthermore, UNFPA leveraged partnerships with youth networks, religious and traditional leaders, and women’s rights organisations to support risk communication, community engagement in primary prevention and stigma reduction. This was to ensure women and girls’ agency, decision making and voice with a constant focus on their safety, dignity and rights.
● To ensure that no one is left behind in accessing essential and lifesaving sexual and reproductive health services and commodities, UNFPA contributes to the prevention and control of the pandemic, to ensure the continuity of essential services for women, young people and vulnerable populations such as older persons, persons with disabilities, LGBTQI, ethnic minorities including Afro-descendants and indigenous people. UNFPA developed specific guidance and provided platforms to raise the visibility of and address the challenges faced by these groups during the ongoing COVID-19 response and recovery phase. Leveraging data and geospatial mapping for SDG visualization, and harnessing data from the COVID-19 Vulnerability dashboards to ensure that decision makers have the information to target needed interventions towards those most at risk and furthest behind.
● UNFPA works to protect frontline health and social workers, 70 percent of whom are women that need personal protective equipment PPE. In an unprecedented joint procurement collaboration with 11 UN agencies and two international NGOs, the participating agencies contributed to securing access to a sustainable supply of affordable PPE. UNFPA was able to procure PPE worth $29 million for 101 countries in 2020. Women and girls were able to access SRH services, including antenatal care, family planning supplies, and social services related to GBV.
● Estimates produced by UNFPA, Avenir Health, Johns Hopkins University and Victoria University in April 2020 suggested devastating impacts of the pandemic on the rates of gender-based violence worldwide. Due to disruption of prevention and protection services and increased vulnerability and perpetration of violence during emergencies, 31 million additional cases of GBV were expected, with additional 15 million cases for every three months of continued lockdown.
● The long-term impacts of the pandemic on gender-based violence against women and girls (SDG 5.2) still remain largely unknown. School drop-out and negative coping mechanisms such as child marriage are likely to increase the risks of women and girls being subjected to gender based violence (GBV) in their lifetime. Furthermore, overwhelmed healthcare and social service systems and diminished capacity of civil society and local support groups due to shortage of funds and redirection of resources, leaves survivors of GBV without readily available essential services to escape the cycle of violence.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, UNFPA has supported GBV interventions across 150 countries to ensure delivery of survivor-centred response services, prevention programmes, coordination systems as well as the provision of technical support and advocacy to ensure laws and policies are human rights compliant . UNFPA also supports the Joint UN Programme on the Essential Services Package for Women and Girls Subject to Violence (Phase III forthcoming), the joint UN RESPECT framework roll out and the Spotlight Initiative. UNFPA also developed under the kNOwVAWdata initiative a Decision Tree to support safe and ethical decision making around the collection of data.
● The COVID-19 pandemic has had negative impacts on the rates of harmful practices, including female genital mutilation and child marriage (SDG 5.3). There have been increased risks of girls undergoing female genital mutilation with resulting setbacks in meeting SDG target 5.3 by 2030. UNFPA estimates there may be as many as 2 million cases of female genital mutilation by 2030 that would have otherwise been averted.
o The UNFPA and UNICEF Joint Programme on FGM is the largest global programme to accelerate abandonment of FGM provides care for its consequences. This programme works at the community, national, regional and global levels to raise awareness of the harms caused by FGM and to empower communities, women and girls to make the decision to abandon it. The Joint Programme has helped more than 3.2 million girls and women receive prevention, protection and care services related to FGM.
o The UNFPA-UNICEF Global Programme to End Child Marriage promotes the rights of adolescent girls to avert marriage and pregnancy and enables them to achieve their aspirations through education and alternative pathways. The Global Programme supports households in demonstrating positive attitudes, empowers girls to direct their own futures, and strengthens the services that allow them to do so. It also addresses the underlying conditions that sustain child marriage, advocating for laws and policies that protect girls' rights while highlighting the importance of using robust data to inform such policies.
