Justice for All: Addressing Rights, Gender and Disability in Sustainable Development Goals 10 and 16
Pacific Consultation on Progress on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the Post-2015 Development Agenda
Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat
Reviewing the proposals of the SDGs Open Working Group
Address by Dr Claire Slatter
SGDIA, USP; DAWN
Thank you for the opportunity to engage with you in this consultation on Progressing the MDGs and the Post-2014 Development Agenda. In the 10 minutes I have I want to make a few general points based on DAWN’s (and my own) analysis of the serious development challenges facing us globally and regionally, and of how we might work to strengthen sustainable development goals intended to address the cross-cutting issues of rights, gender and disability. Specifically, Goals 10 and 16.
Three core concerns in DAWN’s advocacy work over the last 30 years have been economic justice, gender justice and environmental or ecological justice. I will couch what I have to say mostly in relation to the first two dimensions of justice.
Sustainable Development Goal 10
SDG 10 focuses on reducing inequality within and among countries. Inequality in wealth distribution is a major global concern today.[1] Achieving this goal requires firstly an overhaul of the international financial, economic and trade institutions and policies that are together responsible for facilitating or enabling the obscene inequalities in wealth distribution that we are witnessing today, both across the globe, and within all of our countries.
It seems that the narrow focus in the MDGs on poverty eradication distracted attention from the reality of accelerated economic inequality, which has now reached the unconscionable level captured by Oxfam’s (2014) finding that the richest 85 people in the world today own more wealth than the bottom half of humanity – who number 3.2 billion people.
As elsewhere in the world, inequality is on the rise in Pacific Island states. Both ESCAP and ADB have reported greater inequality and fewer formal social protection mechanisms for the most vulnerable in Pacific Island countries compared with Asian countries. A 2014 World Bank report on hardship and vulnerability in the Pacific found ‘levels of inequality in the Pacific… comparable to those in East Asian countries’, with much of the population living above the poverty line not consuming much more than those living in hardship, and the most well-off people (the top 20%) consuming “many times more than the least well-off’ (The World Bank, 2014).[2] Such findings on inequality in this region are relatively recent and reflect the impacts of neoliberal macro-economic policies. These policies favour the private sector (including foreign investors) and higher income earners, hold wages down, and reduce the social provisioning capacity of states.
Tim Bryar concluded his presentation by asking whether inclusiveness was an appropriate response to inequality. The question has also been posed on whether inclusiveness is ‘the target or the process for ending inequality’. Extreme inequality in wealth distribution cannot be reduced by strategies of economic or financial inclusion of those considered to have been excluded from the market, or by-passed by the free market gravy train. Such thinking lay behind the ‘micro-credit revolution’ which saddled countless poor women with debt. Trying to deal with the problem of extreme in equality by an ‘inclusion’ approach means not challenging or seeking to change the status quo and the current orthodoxy, and being averse to making fundamental changes in established global economic, financial, trade and investment regimes.
We need commitments to major reforms and policy reversals. Specifically we need to ensure that corporate entities pay their fair share of taxes and pay fair wages to their workers[3], we need to return to a progressive taxation system to ensure that those who earn more, pay more in taxes, and we need to introduce a tax on international financial transactions. We also need to ensure – and this is critical in our region- that our people are protected from losing the access they have long enjoyed to land and the option of subsistence/semi subsistence livelihoods, and that those of our people who need land for agricultural livelihood are given access, on fair terms. These are the only ways we will achieve wealth redistribution and more equitable societies. Without making fundamental shifts away from the neoliberal policies which have advantaged private corporations and wealthy individuals at the expense of ordinary people, SDG 10 will be nothing more than empty rhetoric and a pretended concern to reduce inequality.
One of the realities we need to recognize is that we are living today in a corporate-driven world. The rights of multinational corporations are being systematically advanced through free trade agreements and rules that governments are agreeing to, albeit often under pressure, as in the case of Pacific Island states during WTO accession processes. The rights of investors are also being protected through bilateral and multilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreements. Governments in the Pacific that are embarking on (or contemplating embarking on) new mining initiatives need to heed concerns about both environmental risks and severe social impacts, and apply the precautionary principle. We must ensure that the SDGs are firmly grounded in a human rights framework, that investor rights are not given priority over human rights and that the principle of free, prior and informed consent of customary landowners is operationalized under SGD 10.
Sustainable Development Goal 16
SDG 16 which focuses on promoting peaceful and inclusive societies, providing access to ‘justice for all’, and building effective, affordable and inclusive institutions cannot be achieved without ensuring equal protection of the rights and freedoms of all categories of citizens, especially women citizens, economically disadvantaged and marginalized citizens, citizens within ethnic, cultural and religious minorities, citizens with non-hetero-normative sexual orientation and gender identity, and citizens with disability.
The framing of the stand-alone goal of gender equality in the SDGs, and of targets for its realization is already being critiqued within DAWN[4] for primarily focusing on women’s ‘empowerment’, rather than on women’s rights. Improving women’s access to resources, land and water, and increasing the number of women in leadership are meaningless without centralizing women’s right to equal citizenship with men, which means women’s right to full ownership of self, to bodily integrity, and sexual autonomy. These are absolutely fundamental to attaining gender equality and gender justice. The rights to personal autonomy and self-determination are indeed at the core of human rights.
Given the fact that all except one Pacific Island state have now ratified CEDAW, the consistently strong position that PICs have given to women’s sexual and reproductive health and rights in regional and global fora, and that 12 Pacific states have either ratified or signed the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability, Pacific Island states could lead the way in calling for, and setting for ourselves, targets and indicators for the comprehensive protection of human rights for all.
The Post-2015 development agenda must be about creating a different world from the present one we live in. It’s a ‘fierce new world’, as DAWN describes it, that we live in today. Particularly fierce for the women, ethnic and religious minorities, LGBTI persons, those seeking asylum in places free from conflict and war, and the impoverished bottom half of humanity, all of whom live with indignities and face human rights violations and physical or structural violence daily. We also live with the looming crisis of rising sea levels and other impacts of climate change.
I recently wrote a paper on Club de Madrid’s ‘Shared Societies’ model, looking at its application to Pacific societies. ‘Shared Societies’ are ‘stable, safe and just’, based on ‘the promotion and protection of all human rights as well as on non-discrimination, tolerance, respect for diversity, equality of opportunity, solidarity, security and participation of all people, including disadvantaged and vulnerable groups and persons’. Shared societies are socially cohesive and inclusive societies in the sense that everyone living in them ‘feels at home’. They are
‘constructed and nurtured through strong political leadership’ (Club de Madrid, 2009: 22).[5]
There are core values in Pacific cultures that provide a firm foundation for creating shared societies, and building solidarity, social and economic security and social cohesion. Pacific cultures are based on values of wealth sharing, reciprocity, consensus decision-making and customs of respect. There is a strong ethic of social responsibility for wider kin and for the elderly, and widely subscribed redistributive norms govern broader social relationships.
Given these core values in our cultures, it is heartening that the Framework for Pacific Regionalism makes reference in its vision statement to creating just societies and equality for all people of the Pacific.[6] These defining features of Pacific cultures which underpin social relationships should inform public policy. Our leaders have been roundly schooled by international financial institutions and donor agencies since the early 1990s in neoliberal thinking and policy prescriptions. We need to counter the emphasis that continues to be placed on economic growth and integration, and the lesser attention given to redistribution and social development.
To conclude, it’s imperative to put back in place effective re-distributional mechanisms, as well as social safety nets, to support the growing numbers of people who are economically marginalized. The state has important roles to play in both legislating (and enforcing) minimum wages, and in ensuring that all of our citizens have an equal starting point – that there is a genuinely level playing field. This means ensuring that all children do get to finish school, that all schools are well-resourced, that basic infrastructure and services, and quality health care are available to all. These are the kinds of targets and indicators that should be included under SDGs10 and 16.
There are a growing number of human rights advocates in our region – many of them feminist human rights advocates, working to secure the rights of women in all their diversity, and the rights of all other people who make up our diverse societies today. We look to enlightened political leaders in our region to take the bold steps that need to be taken to ensure the fulfillment of human rights for all, thereby helping to make our societies fairer and more equitable, as well as more humane and peaceful, for all.
[1] The World Economic Forum in its Global Risks Report for 2012 highlighted the greatest economic, environmental, geopolitical, societal, and technological risks the world would face in 2012. The top two risks, in terms of their overall impact and likeliness to occur, were “severe fiscal imbalances”—i.e. debt—and “severe income disparity.” Source: http://www.clubmadrid.org/sspblog/?p=1818
[2] The report, Hardship and Vulnerability in the Pacific Island Countries (2014) records that more than 20 percent of the population in Pacific Island Countries “live in hardship, meaning they are unable to meet their basic food and non-food needs”. Inequality was found to be highest in Solomon Islands, PNG and Fiji, and in rural areas. http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2014/03/27/hardship-and-vulnerability-in-the-pacific-island-countries
[3] And meet their responsibilities in terms of protection of the environment.
[4] Cai Yiping, ‘Beijing and Beyond’, Asia Pacific Civil Society Forum on Beijing+20, Bangkok, 14 November 2014.
[5] The model of shared societies is based on recognizing that insecurity, instability, conflict and war have their roots in social exclusion, inequality and failure to ‘manage diversity’, and that there are environmental costs to failing to build cohesive, inclusive societies. The essential elements of shared societies are: meaningful democratic participation; respect for diversity and the dignity of the individual; equality of opportunity including access to resources; and protection from discrimination. Club de Madrid (2009) ‘Call to Action for Leadership for Shared Societies’ http://www.clubmadrid.org/img/secciones/The_Shared_Societies_Project_Booklet_160910.pdf
[6] This statement has been revised. The original sentence was critical of the exclusion of these commitments in the Draft Framework for Pacific Regionalism. The redrafted statement appreciates the inclusions in the adopted Framework.