Within the framework of the Second Session of the Regional Conference on Population and Development in Latin America and the Caribbean, Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) urges the governments of Latin America and the Caribbean to pay special attention to five aspects that are essential to accelerate the implementation and strengthen the monitoring of the Montevideo consensus on population and development.
1. The development of multidimensional and comprehensive public policies from a gender and human rights perspective must be a priority: The commitments made by governments in the Montevideo consensus demonstrate that sustainable development is not possible without ensuring the full realization of all human rights for all people. This implies recognizing the centrality of sexual and reproductive rights (SRR), achieving gender equality and a fair social organization of care, eradicating violence in general and against girls and women in particular and subverting inequalities, both structural and intersected by gender, race-ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, socioeconomic status and territories for building sustainable and equitable development patterns in the region.
This regional political agreement is a great opportunity. The scope and multidimensionality of the Consensus is far from being a utopia or disadvantage, on the contrary, it should be precisely a guiding principle of comprehensive policies for the full realization of rights for all people and peoples of the region. Therefore, the effective and full implementation of the Consensus will contribute to fulfilling the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and other international commitments, will advance in practice a more ambitious and comprehensive agenda and will avoid dispersion of efforts and resources.
2. New and strengthened institutional capacities and structures are required: The multidimensional and interlinked nature of the priority measures of the Consensus implies that all the powers of each of the States in each of their institutional levels must:
- generate or deepen the capacity to address the causes of structural inequalities to achieve true universally of rights,
- ensure social participation under feasibility conditions (i.e. favoring the possibility of obtaining relevant and appropriate information) and
- ensure accountability and promote the possibility of claim in case of a breach.
Building and strengthening public institutions with responsibility for population and development issues (priority measure 3) and ensure the full integration of population dynamics into sustainable development planning, sectoral policies and public policies and programs in general (priority measure 4) requires States and their different levels of government to make every effort to overcome silos and above all, to eliminate the asymmetry of hierarchy among the institutions. Therefore, it is necessary to prioritize the mechanisms to mainstream the gender, race-ethnicity and youth perspectives and to work in coordination with the areas involved in the Consensus, including those defining economic, social and environmental policy.
At the same time, federal States have concurrent powers between central and state (or provincial) levels and thus coordinating from the central government involves developing strategies to achieve the adherence of the other levels and materialize this working will and common objectives into agreements and administrative acts. Coordination should be strengthened through interaction, the generation of spaces between the different institutional levels and the enhancement of those programming and agreement spaces adequate to national realities. Building these institutional capacities should be a priority.
3. Implementing the Consensus requires sustainable and sufficient financing: There are no secrets: resource allocation shows what the priorities are for the public administration. And this is sufficient reason to reveal the budgets governments allocate to the full and effective implementation of the Consensus.
The states are obliged to mobilize the maximum available resources to guarantee human rights, including through progressive tax reforms, increasing the tax burden on higher income sectors and combating tax evasion and avoidance by multinational companies and individuals with high incomes. The economic slowdown in the region or the vulnerability to external variables due to imbalances of the global economic and financial architecture are obstacles but no impediments to the implementation of the Consensus. Latin American countries have shown that it is possible to recover an active role of the State in the economic dynamics, for example by implementing countercyclical policies, reducing the debt burden or managing it with sovereignty in order to comply with human rights commitments.
4. It is essential to develop the capacities to build comprehensive indicators: Today there are large gaps in terms of statistical information. A large amount of aggregate indicators hide inequalities according to age, race-ethnicity or area of residence, for example, when it comes to sexual and reproductive health and rights, particularly maternal mortality.
It is essential to include the participation and contributions of feminist organizations in the definition of indicators for monitoring the Consensus at regional level. In this sense, in order to be consistent with the human rights approach promoted in the Consensus, the capacity to measure availability, accessibility, acceptability and quality of services as well as indicators to measure the protection, promotion and fulfillment of sexual rights should be created. For example, through population surveys it is possible to monitor the percentage of the population (disaggregated by different categories) that makes free and informed decisions about sexuality.
However, the absence of comprehensive indicators should not be an excuse for not moving forward in fulfilling the agenda. Gaps and their causes do not go unnoticed to decision-makers who know the reality and the context where they work. For example, efforts should be increased to prevent preventable deaths. Preventable deaths of girls, adolescents and women from causes related to pregnancy, childbirth or the postpartum period are an urgent challenge in terms of education, empowerment, adequate and appropriate health services, especially in relation to unsafe abortions. This has to be done without delay.
5. The participation of feminists’ organizations and social movements in strengthened monitoring and accountability mechanisms at national and regional level is essential for the implementation. The challenge of fully complying with the Consensus implies the need to create spaces of exchange, agreements and joint work to move from words to action.