Women’s and feminists’ organizations from Latin America and the Caribbean gathered together in Buenos Aires, in December, to draft up a message to the States towards the 63rd Session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) that will take place in New York, in March. Corina Rodríguez Enríquez, from DAWN, coordinated the group discussions to develop recommendations on infrastructure and the provision of public services.

Corina noted that CSW conflates infrastructure, provision of public services and social protection under the same title, and this can be problematic. “Infrastructure is not the same as social protection. The fear we have is that privatization processes, and in particular Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects, could be applied to social security systems”, she explained. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are promoting these mechanisms, and feminists are worried about the possibility of CSW supporting this agenda as well.

Corina shared DAWN’s analysis on the private sector, PPPs and corporate capture. Partnerships between public and private sectors have several risks for people, in particular for women, regarding the access to basic social infrastructure and the provision of social services. First, because private sector drives the agenda and sets priorities. Therefore, as the private sector is more interested in projects big enough to be profitable, it disregards work which is essential for daily life of people and specifically for women, issues such as sanitation and access to clean water. An additional problem of PPP projects is their lack of accountability and transparency, which leads to the misuse of public resources.

Although CSW declarations are not binding, they do influence the women’s agenda. With the assumption of right-wing governments in Latin America that promote privatization in several fields, the feminist movement must be aware and alert.

The final declaration from the women’s organizations stated that infrastructure development should be based on principles of respect and the promotion of human rights, guaranteeing the right of women and girls to the city, housing, water, mobility, technology information and communication. They also recommended that we need to consider the gender perspective for the ex-ante and ex-post evaluation of infrastructure projects, and to establish effective transparency mechanisms, avoiding the promotion of financing mechanisms that operate outside existing standards.

Finally, women and feminists organizations warned that infrastructure projects should avoid generating processes of population displacement and dispossession of the territories, whose impacts are mostly faced by women, especially by rural, indigenous and Afro-descendant women, and that safety of human rights defenders must also be guaranteed in their defense of territory and natural resources.

The organizations also recommended to consider the gender perspective for the ex-ante and ex-post evaluation of infrastructure projects, and to establish effective transparency mechanisms, avoiding the promotion of financing mechanisms that operate outside existing standards.

Read the full declaration: Declaration Civil Society Preparatory Meeting CSW63

Read more of DAWN analysis on the private sector, PPPs and corporate capture here: Corporate power: a risky threat looming over the fulfilment of women’s human rights.