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DAWN Statement at the 2010 UN ECOSOC High Level Meeting
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*With references to the G-8 / G-20 Meeting Outcomes* (4 July 2010)
We all understand that the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) underwent reforms and introduced the Annual Ministerial Review (AMR) as a way to learn policy lessons from debates on macroeconomic issues that are important to member states of developing countries. This year the AMR’s focus was on “*Implementing the Internationally Agreed Goals and Commitments in regard to Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women*”. The theme is a welcome development but the question is the extent to which the National Voluntary Presentations (NVPs) were able to illustrate how gender equality considerations can inform macroeconomic policymaking. By and large, the NVPs sounded like they were reports being made to the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). Without this differentiation, there would appear be too strong an overlap between ECOSOC and the CSW that only confuses
follow-up processes.
The 2nd Development Cooperation Forum (DCF) comprised the other segment of the ECOSOC HLM. The 2005 World Summit mandated the ECOSOC to convene a biennial high-level DCF to review trends and progress in international development cooperation. The DCF carries plenty of potential for discussing issues of a complex nature. It is qualitatively different from the processes of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness because the DCF can engage in meaningful debate over macroeconomic considerations attached to external financing flows. The DCF with its multi-stakeholder character can be a setting for an exchange of views where policy innovation may take place. This year, the discussions in the 2nd DCF centered on “*Development Cooperation in Times of Crises: New Commitments to Reach the MDGs.*”
Immediately prior to the ECOSOC HLM, announcements have been made by the G8 on new initiatives for maternal and child health. But we all know that 2/3 of maternal mortality issues are concentrated in 11 countries, of which 7 are fragile, post-conflict states and the rest is in South Asia and Indonesia. While these aid initiatives resolve a specific problem they also reinforce a situation where there are donor darlings and donor orphans.
As well, the most recent G-20 statement focused on fiscal consolidation in the midst of predictions on the possibility of the collapse of the Euro zone. These factors have clear implications on the ability to scale up resources and fulfill commitments. But even if the scaling up of resources were successful, some of the aid barely gets translated into spending due in large part to the practice of using aid monies for reserves management or for debt repayments. Hence, the expected improvements in achieving the internationally agreed development goals are at the very least delayed and at worst are not met.
Discussions are also needed on how to create global funds for liquidity and reserves management in order to free up monies for expenditures. A sovereign debt resolution mechanism will be helpful in this regard. The DCF could have discussed these in a reasoned manner and also look towards opportunities for designing exit strategies from aid.
Finally, processes in the General Assembly on Financing for Development and on follow-up to the UN Meeting on the Impact of the Global Financial and Economic Crisis continue to be highly relevant and must be linked to debates generated by the ECOSOC discussions.
All these considerations are important for promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment for and beyond the UN Review of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that will take place in September 2010. Greater policy coherence that is consistent with gender equality and women’s rights will be achieved more effectively if systemic issues are brought to bear on discussions around development cooperation inside the United Nations System.
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*1*Based on interventions made by DAWN members Marina Durano & Gigi Francisco at side events held during the 2010 ECOSOC HLM, 29-30 June, New York
*2*DAWN is a network of feminist scholars, researchers and activists from the economic South working for economic and gender justice and sustainable and democratic development. DAWN members, affiliates and training alumnae are dispersed but also interlinked across the regions of the economic South where many are recognized feminist activist researchers, movement leaders, competent heads and staff of non- governmental organizations and young feminists. DAWN currently coordinates the Women’s Working Group on Financing for Development (WWG).
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Policy Coherence with Gender, Equality and Rights in Development Cooperation
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The WWG welcomes the 2010 High-Level Segment that includes sessions on the Annual Ministerial Review (AMR) with the theme “Implementing the Internationally Agreed Goals andCommitments in regard to Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women” and the Development Cooperation Forum (DCF) which focuses on “Development Cooperation in Times of Crises: NewCommitments to Reach the MDGs.”
We reaffirm HUMAN RIGHTS and EQUALITY as fundamental values upon which international relations and development must stand. The United Nations (UN) Millennium Summit Declaration states that “No individual and no nation must be denied the opportunity to benefit fromdevelopment. The equal rights and opportunities of women and men must be assured." (Read more by DOWNLOADING full statement; For more updates on Gender in Financing for Development, visit http://www.ffdngo.org/gender-financing-development)
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All Development Goals are Gender Goals
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Presentation Delivered by Natalia Cardona*, member of the Women's Working Group on Financing for Development, in the meeting, "Coherent Development Cooperation: Maximizing Impact in a Changing Environment" (Helsinki High-Level Symposium in Preparation for the 2010 Development Cooperation Forum, 2010 June 4)
Thirty one years ago, many of the governments of the world committed legally to women’s rights by signing the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). Sixteen years later the Beijing World Conference on Women adopted a comprehensive plan of action towards gender equality. And this September, the presidents and prime ministers of the world will meet in New York at the Millennium Development Goal summit to assess a decade of antipoverty efforts. They will discuss how to progress in spite of the tremendous challenge coming from multiple and overlapping crises on climate, food, energy, finances and the economy. The challenge is tremendous and it will take the combined efforts of men and women to make the next step towards eradication of poverty for both men and women.
In spite of some progress, the follow-up of Beijing conference and CEDAW commitments are not yet complete. Gender equity is not yet fully implemented nor is it an equal component of sustainable economic and social development. By any measure including Social Watch’s Gender Equity Index all is quite where advances are most needed in gender equality. Social Watch members share a concern that governments are quick to sign on to international instruments but short on implementation. There is also a gap in gender legislation and its actual implementation. With the present global recession there is also a need to take stock of the progress made towards Internationally Agreed Development Goals including the MDGs and of emerging issues.
In September 2008, ministers from around the world agreed that “1.4 billion people—the majority of them women and girls—still live in extreme poverty...” In January 2010, World Bank estimated that an additional 64 million people are now living in extreme poverty as a result of financial crisis. So the total number of the poor is now 1.5 billion. So our challenge has grown! In addition to poverty, we also need to address deprivation, social exclusion and marginalization of poor people many of whom are women.
Lack of progress in achieving the MDGs –WHICH ARE ALL GENDER RELATED—and growing poverty does not just result from the external shocks and crises. It also results from the lack of commitment to build an enabling environment (in other words MDG 8 must be achieved and is essential for realizing the other MDGs). Such an enabling environment would require global partnerships around sustainable trade, aid, debt and technology transfers. There has been some progress in cancelling bilateral and multilateral debt but a more comprehensive and systematic debt mechanism is still required. It is still far from being concluded. ODA in proportion to the total economy of the donor countries “peaked” in 2008 but at the same percentage level of 1992! OECD estimates that DAC countries will fall short by US $21 billion from their 2010 Gleneagles commitment. Developed countries are still far from achieving the goal of mobilizing 0.7% of GNP in ODA.
MDG 8, which is to be met largely by developed countries, is the only goal which lacks time-bound commitments. It is also the one where insufficient progress is registered. This dynamic is a symptom of the double standards in global governance –where there are more demanding international standards for developing countries and the non-binding standards for developed ones. At the same time, trade and investment agreements as well as policy conditionalities by the Bretton Woods Institutions are restricting the policy space of developing countries. These conditionalities could have the effect of creating a new debt crisis. New financial challenges now also call for new strategies to tackle and control financial speculation with financial regulation and by establishing new financial transaction tax aptly nicknamed the “Robin Hood tax”.
In times of crisis it is women who bear the brunt of decreased financing for development. It is women who have to juggle taking care of feeding their children and other family members in dire economic situations and as social programs are cut they take on the burden of unpaid labor. The poor have no cushions and reserves to cope with crises. Yet there is hardly any discussion about this. The same countries that cannot find money to fund development nevertheless quickly mobilized trillions of dollars to rescue failed banks and corporations. The sarcastic comment we often hear is that “if the poor were a bank, they would have been rescued.”
So the crisis has women's faces and children's faces. Crises are not gender-neutral. The crises affect the women because they exacerbate already existing inequalities and highlight the negative effects on women and women dependent economies. Yet hardly any measures taken by the countries to tackle the crisis have highlighted promotion of women's employment and livelihoods. Without employment promotion of women, poor women are bound to sink deeper into precarious work and into jobs with lower productivity, meager incomes and lack of social protection. Many of them also become more vulnerable to trafficking and illegal jobs. While tackling these crises and protecting women from worst forms of exclusion and exploitation, we also need to have long-term social development policies that truly encompass gender as a key step towards equality and increased human well being. Social indicators always take twice as long to recover during crises—we have learned this from previous crisis in Asia and Latin America—and there is a need for a better assessment of how those indicators are doing. In other words economic growth is no longer a valid measurement of human well being and achieving human rights.
It is necessary than to decode situations within households since people who share the same space maintain asymmetric relationships and authority systems tend to prevail. Furthermore, despite advances the limitations placed on women by the division of labor by sex and social hierarchies determine a socially unequal situation between three closely linked systems: the welfare and social protection system, the labor market and the household. So together with the gender-sensitive employment policy, we also need to promote women's equal social status both in society as well as in family. There is a need to not just develop policies for women but of designing and developing an new development paradigm with equal opportunities for everyone and without discrimination.
A transformation of the present economic paradigm is also needed because of the environmental crisis. When developing new economic environmentally friendly approaches, we also need to incorporate the views and roles of women. We cannot just reflect on the monetary economy. We must also include the care economy and non-monetary contributions of women.
The 2009 Social Watch Report, based on reports from civil society organizations in over 60 countries, found a lot of evidence in support of investing in the poor, most of whom are women and girls, through social services or even direct cash transfers. It makes for a better economic stimulus package than subsidizing those who are already rich. In times of crisis affluent people save and the money does not circulate. Whereas those living in poverty will spend all the money they get and thus boost the economy.
The poor not only suffer from crises, but they too are expected to pay the cost of the crisis. They too will contribute to stimulus packages through higher taxes and reduced salaries and social benefits.
In this context, “business as usual” is no longer possible a change is necessary. We must have fair enabling environment for developing countries that includes equitable trade terms. Such an enabling environment must integrate a comprehensive justice and human rights framework with social and gender justice at the forefront of internationally agreed development goals including the MDGs. In addition, the financial sector should be made responsible for the crisis it has created. A comprehensive justice program should include:
· Social and gender justice (achieve the MDGs, promote gender equality, universal basic social services and “dignity for all”)
· Financial, fiscal and economic justice --the financial sector should pay for the crisis they created, through a financial transaction tax or similar mechanism; speculation needs to be regulated, tax heavens and the ‘race to the bottom’ in tax policies ended or reverted, developing countries allowed defensive control of capital flows and policy space.
Additionally, donors should review and, if appropriate, increase or redirect their assistance to developing countries to enable them to mitigate and more effectively respond to the crisis in accordance with their national strategies.” The crisis should be seen as an opportunity to advance in key reforms in the global economic governance, including reforms of the Bretton Woods Institutions and debt workout mechanisms.
· Climate justice (recognition of the “climate debt”, investment in clean technologies and promotion of a decent job creating green economy) and…
· Plain old justice (judges and tribunals) to demand the basic human rights.
Crises are a challenge, but it is also an opportunity to advance reforms in the global economic governance, including reforms of the Bretton Woods Institutions, reforms that would be difficult to initiate in conventional times. Crisis is a time for courage and for bold and innovative action. Ten years ago the Millennium Declaration promised “a more peaceful, prosperous and just world” in which gender equality is key. It’s time to move those promises forward. *Natalia Cardona is from Social Watch and a member of the Women's Working Group on Financing for Development |
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MDGs & Human Rights in Development Cooperation: Looking Beyond 2010 and 2015
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Co-sponsors: Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and Center of Concern/ CIDSE
Date: June 29, 2010
Time: 1:15 pm – 2:30 pm
Location: CR E (NLB)(United Nations Headquarters)
In recent years the Financing for Development Conference Review and the Accra Agenda for Action have referred to the role of human rights in development cooperation. Nonetheless, controversial issues remain around the specific relevance of different human rights to the achievement of the MDGs, the efforts of different actors in development cooperation and the mechanisms for their operationalization. This event will provide a platform for dialogue on the following questions: How can human rights commitments helped advance the MDGs agenda in the 5 years left towards the critical deadline of 2015? What efforts should be made to better account for them in a post MDG (after 2015) development cooperation architecture? What role can the ECOSOC DCF play in both of these efforts? What recommendations can be made for the MDGs+10 Summit to support them?
Speakers (does not necessarily reflect order in which they will speak):
James Turpin, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
Dan Seymour, UNICEF
World Bank (TBC)
Martin Dahinden, Director General of Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation
Josefa Francisco, Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era
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United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) Committee on Non-Governmental Organizations
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DAWN remains an active member of the ECOSOC whose activities are regularly reported in its quadrennial reports submitted through the Secretary-General pursuant to Economic and Social Council Resolution 1996/31:
1. Quadrennial reports 1995-1998
2. Quadrennial reports 1999-2002
3. Quadrennial reports 2002-2005
Conference Participation:
1. 54th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women: 01-12 March 2010
2. 42nd Session of the Commission on Population and Development: 30 March - 03 April 2009
3. 2005: 10th Year Review: 49th Session of the Commission: 28 February - 11 March 2005
See DAWN's profile at the UN CSO Network List of Contributors:
http://esango.un.org/irene/?page=viewProfile&type=ngo&nr=1136§ion=9
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