This article was published in the issue of November 2017 of the newsletter DAWN Informs.
Feminist organizing entered the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) period with a bang, through its effectiveness in advocating for the creation of UN Women. But harsh realities soon came to the fore. Nowhere was this so clear as in the difficulties that UN Women itself had in getting donor governments to keep the funding promises they had made. The recessionary aftermath of the US housing crisis and financial crash of 2008 was the preeminent global economic concern as Rio +20 processes began circa 2010.
Space for civil society had also begun closing in many countries. Instead of the military coups that had marked the 1960s and 1970s, there emerged the new phenomenon of autocratic leaders coming to power through democratic elections, and then proceeding to undermine key pillars of democracy such as open media and rights to free speech, assembly, mobilization and protest. Hostility to human rights defenders was growing. This climate spread into UN negotiations, making it ever harder for civil society organizations to be present in negotiation rooms or to be heard in the way they had been during the 1990s.
South versus North mistrust and disagreements were worsened by the weakening of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change as the US and other rich countries demanded that its underlying principle of common but differentiated responsibility be dropped. Despite this, a sense of crisis on multiple ecological fronts lent urgency and momentum to the preparations for Rio +20.
Feminist organizations that were present at Rio +20[1] in 2012 began using the umbrella of the Women’s Major Group (WMG) for advocacy. This was an important move, strategically and tactically, as the different Major Groups had an established place in official meetings and negotiations ever since the UN Conference on Environment and Development, Rio Earth Summit 1992 (UNCED). In the growing illiberal climate inside and outside the UN, laying claim to the institutional space of the WMG was critical to feminist ability to participate effectively in Rio +20 and in the SDGs processes that followed.
Feminists from women’s organizations and within environmental and other organizations mobilized and advocated on a broad range of the issues that became part of the SDGs and their targets. They focused on gender equality and women’s human rights including SRHR, but also addressed the connections to broader systemic issues such as the weakening of agreed UNCED language, the excessive push to favour the private corporate sector, weaknesses in addressing the harmful ecological and human effects of ‘extractivism’, and the importance of financing[2].
The period following Rio +20 was a confusing one in terms of processes and mandates. Rio +20 had mandated setting up an Open Working Group (OWG) of 30 UN Member States to negotiate specific goals, targets and indicators. But the UN Secretary General also appointed a High-Level Panel (HLP) with 27 members drawn from governments, civil society and the private sector to provide advice on the post-2015 agenda. Civil society organizations could not afford to ignore either the OWG or the HLP.
From Rio+20 in 2012 through all of 2013, the WMG was intensively engaged in multiple ways at both global and regional levels in the parallel and extremely busy HLP and OWG processes. More and more women’s organizations began to join in these processes at both regional and global levels as their importance became clear.
In March 2013, WMG members attended a civil society meeting of over 300 participants in Bonn, and then went on to the HLP meeting in Bali. They issued a statement in Bonn that cautioned “…against developing another set of reductive goals, targets and indicators that ignore the transformational changes required to address the failure of the current development model rooted in unsustainable production and consumption patterns exacerbating gender, race and class inequities. We do not want to be mainstreamed into a polluted stream. We call for deep and structural changes to existing global systems of power, decision-making and resource sharing. This includes enacting policies that recognize and redistribute the unequal and unfair burdens of women and girls in sustaining societal wellbeing and economies, intensified in times of economic and ecological crises…”[3]
The WMG had articulated an early critique of the excessive slant towards the private sector in the Rio +20 outcome, and the challenge of securing the means of implementation for the SDGs, especially financing. As preparations for the 3rd International Conference on Financing for Development to be held in Addis Ababa in July 2015 gathered steam, the Women’s Working Group on Financing for Development (WWG/FfD) that DAWN had been instrumental in forming back in 2008, began supporting feminist mobilization and advocacy[4]. The FfD negotiations were taking place in a context of weakening multilateralism as well as attempts by some governments to roll back women’s human rights and gender equality in the discussions of the SDGs, their targets and indicators. Focused advocacy built on expertise and targeted networks was therefore essential.
But the terrain was extremely difficult. The FfD conference was beset with South versus North battles, and was criticized by many in both civil society and governments as not having fulfilled its promise. The WWG/FfD produced the Women’s Working Group’s reaction to the Outcome Document and contributed to the CSO Response to the Addis Ababa Action Agenda. Both documents reflect a critical analysis of the FfD outcome, especially its death-knell for the long unfulfilled 0.7% ODA commitment, and its endorsement of the private corporate sector as a privileged development actor. Greater acknowledgement of gender equality and women’s human rights in this context appeared instrumental, and seemed to be precisely the “polluted stream” into which feminists did not want to be mainstreamed. A major loss at Addis, due to the North’s intransigence, was the possibility of an independent global tax body that could regulate tax systems, close loopholes, and begin to address the problems of tax avoidance and of illicit financial flows. A fairer tax system could garner more than adequate resources to fund the SDGs, but this was vehemently opposed by the powerful countries that promote and serve as tax havens.
Feminist groups present at the preparatory meetings for Addis and at Addis itself worked closely with other organizations. The trial by fire at Addis highlighted the fact that good and effective advocacy does not automatically advance the feminist agenda in the short term. But it is essential to be resilient for the longer haul, and to continually learn from difficult experiences.