International Assistant Programme Director Anusha Santhirasthipam reports back from a week of meetings at the UN centre in New York, focussing on Rio+20 preparations and the policy asks of the Women’s Major Stakeholder Group.

“83 days to The Future We Want” says the countdown banner at the top of
the official UN website on Rio+20. Leaders of nations, business and civil
society are all descending on Rio de Janeiro, Brazil from 20-22 June 2012 to
try and reach an accord on how we sustain our planet and our people.

Soroptimist
International and other influential women’s organisations have joined together
to form the Women’s Major Stakeholder Group (WMSG) to be a strong, unified and
coherent voice for women within the debate on sustainable
development and green economy. All of last week SI was engaged in a series of strategic  meetings with UN officials and Government
negotiation teams to influence the development of the Zero Draft Document. This
will hopefully be accepted as the outcome document of Rio+20, subject to Government agreement.

Gender
equality and women’s rights are integral to the achievement of sustainable
development and poverty eradication, and must be recognised as a mainstream goal
of sustainable development. Gender equality is also a cross-cutting issue that
impacts success of many sectorial initiatives and therefore must be woven into
all aspects of sustainable development. Women’s participation in
decision-making at all levels and in all areas, facilitated through capacity
building, equity measures, education and full realisation of human rights, will
accelerate poverty eradication. A human rights framework that enhances and
ensures access to and control of resources by women, indigenous and other
vulnerable groups should guide the transition to a sustainable and equitable
global economy. However, recent debate has seen a weakening of this language within the Rio+20 outcome document. Click here to read a press release issued by a coalition of civil society organisations, including the WMSG, outlining these concerns.

The
WMSG has prioritised three key areas for inclusion in the Rio+20 Zero Draft. It
is now up to us to influence and lobby local politicians, media and civil
society in our respective countries. Here is where we need to focus on: 

1. Sustainable Development Goals
– These are anticipated to replace the Millennium Development Goals in 2015. We
want Governments to elaborate on the principles for the goals. For example, one
principle should be to incorporate gender equality into each goal. The WMSG would also like to see
a separate goal on gender equality.

Soroptimists are encouraged to lobby
their national Governments to set targets and establish indicators to monitor and
measure gender equality for each sustainable development goal, including gender
equality in the employment sector. Also, do ask your Government to go beyond
GDP (Gross Domestic Product) to include indicators which value and recognise informal and subsistence contributions
to the economy, which are often non counted in traditional economic indicators. The value of women’s
unpaid work, especially rural women in the global south, must be recognised.

2. Social Protection Floor: This
includes income support and access to basic services, education, health (including
sexual and reproductive health rights), safe food, water and sanitation, housing and energy. We want to ensure women’s access to benefit  – including the
informal sector and “care economy”.

The UN Social Protection Floor
Initiative adopted in 2009 was made in response to the staggering reality that
80 per cent of the world population is still living without comprehensive
social protection. The UN
International Labour Organisations is recommending that each country develops national social protection floors. Soroptimists can lobby for this
locally. For more information go to www.ilo.org.

3. Strengthening effectiveness,
efficiency and accountability of sustainable development institutions: There must be a focus on gender mainstreaming, and women’s participation. The WMSG calls
for full implementation of Principle 10 which states: "Businesses should work against corruption in all its forms, including extortion and bribery". Public participation, access to information and social justice should be incorporated into business practice and the institutional culture of the private sector. 

 

Future Challenges and Call to Action

Rio+20 has the potential to deliver a
transformational agreement which will ensure the social, economic and
environmental security of future generations. But it is not going to be the
panacea for all that is wrong in the world. The
primary concerns of the WMSG for Rio+20 and beyond are:

1. Education,
   including women’s life-long education, equal opportunities and universal access
   to education for women and girls.
2. Food
   security and land rights of women farmers.
3. Water
   and sanitation as a human right and protection from depletion.
4. Energy
   security.
5. Chemicals
   and waste management , including health impacts on women and children.
6. Sustainable
   production and consumption with a focus on gender equality.
7. Health
   and well-being of women and girls, including environmental health, mental
   health and non-communicable diseases.
8. Mining
   and the extractive sector – protecting the environment on which many rural
   women rely from irreversible damage.

This
is a call to action for you to go lobby for the change that you wish to see in
the world. To paraphrase Robert Kennedy:  “Our lives on this planet are too short.
The work to be done is too great. We cannot wait any longer.”