Noelene Nabulivou, from Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN), spoke at the State of Play of the Negotiations press conference in Rio+20. The press conference is about the major groups’ reflection on the negotiations and outcome of the document.

I’m from Women’s Action for Change from Fiji and I’m also from Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era or DAWN and we’re working here with the very broad coalition of women’s groups from across the economic North and South including Africa, Asia, Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean.

Basically we’re very disappointed as I sit here today. We had a protest this afternoon at 2pm and basically how we feel is that the women’s rights were again being traded off as the negotiating blocks negotiate their way to what they feel is an agreement that will be about sustainable development but also about a post-2015 development agenda. For us, we find that reproductive rights is absent from the text we have today and that is a concern for us. We’d like to say that we also are very happy that we have common but differentiated responsibilities in the text and that is about social equity. But for us, if we’re speaking about social equity and human rights, then we’ve got to be very much speaking the human rights of women and particularly about reproductive health and rights. And if we’re talking about reproductive health and rights what we want to say is we already have these agreements in international language. We have had them in Beijing and we have them in ICPD. We have a very progressive Commission on Population and Development this year, the 45th commission.

So what we want to say is that we are very disappointed that some of our friendly states haven’t stood up for us as women, and women all around the world are watching very closely the next couple of days and we really want to see it reflected, not just a visionary statement at the front of the text either but how as the implementation going to occur throughout the text.

There are women here, for instance, I am from a small island developing state. So for me, I’m very interested in the urgency issue. We have states, like the Pacific small island states, it’s clear to us that we are witnessing catastrophic climate change and we feel that the Rio+20 text doesn’t do justice to the immediacy and the severity of what we’re facing. There are women from Africa here as well who want to speak very loudly and clearly about the rights related to food and water. So we want to be sure if what we’re talking here is the rights of human beings, not of corporate identities but of humans. We want to talk about gender justice, we want to talk about ecological justice, we want to talk about economic justice and the right justice. These are all women’s issues and we are half of the world. Thank you.

Question and Answer

Q: I’d like to understand a little better about what was cut in the last hours within the reproductive issue. What was the loss between the text; and how did it happen in the negotiations, who wanted it to go out and how did they succeed?

A: “Women’s sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights is accepted language. This comes from the Beijing Conference of women it also comes from the ICPD, it’s accepted in global agreements. What we find now is in the final phase there is an absence of any reference to reproductive rights. So a key part of sexual reproductive health and rights is gone. If we want to ask ourselves “how did this happen?” we can do the analysis until the gals come home. But basically what has happened is, this is a conference, I mean, the secretary general said himself; this is a conference like no other we’ve had before. It’s a once in a generation conference, it deals with a multitude of issues. That means that states need to be keeping a very close eye on a number of key human rights and social justice issues across the board. I follow these negotiations in the informal informals and I think what has happened, one of the reasons is that it’s very hard with the process of working groups; for people to follow every single working group that’s going on. That’s one, but that’s only one part of the answer. The other answer is the role of the Holy See in these negotiations. This is an observer; it’s a non-state, and they very clearly shown that this is a part of a long ongoing process to wind back and repress women’s rights across the world. The Catholics for Choice had just released a report about their role in Rio+20 which I think would be very good for the press to take a very close look at. So thank you.”

Closing Remarks

Women around the world are fighting all sorts of fronts on various issues and this is about sustainable development. Our losses that we’ve had in terms about reproductive rights in the document are because states and others have been conceptualizing sustainable development as the three pillars- economic, social and ecological and then gender on the side. This is the results that you get when you do that. And I just wanted to say, that there are 15 elder women in Cambodia who are in prison right now, we have a campaign here called “Free the 15”. They have been protecting their lands for their communities and they’ve been put in prison. There’s a 72 year old that has been put in prison for a year and a half. That is a classic example of where we need to see the inter-linkages between gender, economic and ecological justice because without that, if we just look at green economy we are again doing this narrowing and we will end up with social injustice and human rights injustices around the world. Not just for women but for indigenous people and for many people around the world that do not have a voice. Thank you.