Welcome to the United Nations
As we gather virtually for the 2021 High Level Political Forum (HLPF), the COVID-19 pandemic continues. We mourn the loss of family, friends, elders, colleagues, and feminist advocates. We mourn those who have lost their lives to COVID-19; to the accidents and health problems that overwhelmed and under-resourced health systems could not respond to; to the violence in our homes; and to the State violence that has occurred during brutal crackdowns. We mourn the loss of life that is to come as Global North countries continue to hoard vaccines and prioritize intellectual property and profits over lives in the Global South.
Over one year from the onset of the pandemic, women and girls in all their diversity and their organizations continue to be at the frontlines of the response. Through our paid and unpaid labor, women and girls keep homes, communities, and economies afloat. And yet national and international funders do not prioritize our organizations for support. Moreover, governments, corporations, and non-State actors continue to undermine our ability to effectively and meaningfully participate in policymaking, including through threats, harassment, and violence against women environmental and human rights defenders.
We are at the frontlines because government systems - care, health, including sexual and reproductive health care services, economic and tax, environmental management, and global governance - have been inadequate in responding to the pandemic, especially since these systems were built on inequality, subjugation, and oppression. Patriarchy, white supremacy, colonialism, militarism, neoliberal capitalism, ethno-nationalism, and authoritarianism built the systems that brought us to this moment of intersecting crises. Austerity and privatization pushed by neoliberal capitalism hollowed our public health systems. Militarism, illicit financial flows, tax abuse, and unsustainable debt burdens, emptied public coffers of valuable resources that could, among other things, fund the public care systems women and girls desperately need. Extractive industries and industrial farming driven by colonialism and capitalism have destroyed biodiversity, habitats, territories, and homes.
Without systemic change, these structural inequalities will continue to shape our pandemic responses, derailing us further from achieving gender equality and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). States should heed the call of feminist advocates and place economic, racial, climate, and gender justice at the center of pandemic recovery and SDGs implementation.
