Gender, Economic and Ecological Justice for Sustainable Development A Feminist Call to Action As the world decides on the future course of international development, women across sectors, regions, and constituencies are mobilizing for justice. We seek fundamental structural and transformational changes firmly rooted in human rights obligations, non-‐retrogression, and the Rio principle of common but differentiated responsibilities, as well as adherence to a North-‐South framework of international development cooperation. This requires the redistribution of unequal and unfair burdens on women and girls in sustaining societal wellbeing and economies, intensified in times of economic and ecological crises. It also requires states to have ratified and implemented international human, economic and social rights treaties. Any sustainable development framework must incorporate social equity and human rights including gender equality; genuine reforms to the current model of sustainable consumption, production, and distribution; and a new ecological sustainability and reparative plan recognizing planetary boundaries, ecological sustainability and applying a biosphere approach. It must also tackle intersecting inequalities (including the structural drivers of inequality), and multiple forms of discrimination based on gender, age, class, caste, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity and abilities. We aim to build political commitment and to overcome financial and legal obstacles to sustainable development and the realization of women’s human rights. We demand a paradigm transformation to prioritize profit over people, and exacerbates inequalities, war and conflict, militarism, patriarchy, environmental degradation and climate change. We urge the international community to address the unjust social and economic conditions that perpetuate violence and discrimination, the feminization of poverty, commodification of natural resources, threats to food sovereignty that impede women and girls from realizing their human rights and achieve gender equality. We call for a stand alone goal on gender equality and the full realization of women’s human rights that generates a re-‐organization of power, wealth and resources. We call for an end to all forms of discrimination and violence, including gender-‐based discrimination and sexual violence; guarantee women’s equal participation at all levels of political and public life and decision-‐making; guarantee the equal right of women to own and inherit land and property; guarantee women’s sexual, bodily and reproductive autonomy free from stigma and discrimination; and collect data and statistics, disaggregated by gender and age, to inform the formulation, monitoring and evaluation of laws, policies and programs. Any goal on education must include: achievement of universal access to quality early childhood, primary, secondary & tertiary education for girls and boys alike, with a focus on transitions between primary-‐secondary and secondary-‐tertiary transitions for girls in order to ensure retention and completion and ensure formal and informal life long learning; and comprehensive sexuality education programs promote values of respect for human rights, non-‐discrimination, gender equality, non-‐violence and peace-‐building. Any goal on health must include: the achievement of the right to the highest attainable standard of health, including sexual and reproductive health and rights. Health services must be integrated and comprehensive, free from violence, coercion and discrimination, and emphasize equitable access, especially for adolescents, to contraception, including emergency contraception, maternity care, safe abortion, prevention and treatment of STIs and HIV, and services for those suffering from violence. It must also include comprehensive sexuality education and all services must be accessible, affordable, acceptable and of quality. New
investments and strategies for health and the development of goals, targets and indicators must be based on human rights, including sexual and reproductive rights. To ensure economic justice we call for: an enabling international environment for development rooted in the principle of extra-‐territorial obligation of states to ensure macroeconomic and financial policies meet economic and social rights. This includes development-‐oriented fiscal, monetary and exchange rate policies, progressive tax measures and a sovereign debt workout mechanism; boosting productive capacity through an inclusive and sustainable industrialization strategy of diversified economic sectors; combating gendered division of labour and assuring the redistribution of unpaid work while ensuring full employment, decent work and a living wage for all; implementing a universal social protection floor for women, men and children to access basic services such as health care, education, food, water, energy, housing and employment; recognition and account for the value of care work and protect the rights of care workers throughout the global care chain; promotion of technology transfer, financing, monitoring, assessment, and research in line with the precautionary principle. To promote ecological justice, we call for: securing safe, sustainable and just production and consumption patterns and eliminate hazardous substances and technologies; an end to the commodification of nature; ensuring food and water sovereignty based on the recognition of small holder farmers and fisherfolk, particularly women, as key economic actors whose right to use and own land and access rivers, lakes, seas and ocean should be protected against resource grabbing through legally binding safeguards; respect for the unique knowledge of indigenous peoples and peasant and coastal communities, and ensure the right to free, prior and informed consent in any development projects that may affect the lands which they own, occupy or otherwise use. This also requires a strengthened UNCLOS, reaffirmation of the Maastrich Principles on Extraterritorial Obligations, and attention to the UNFCCC loss and damage mechanism. With regard to governance and accountability and means of implementation of the sustainable development framework, we call for a prioritization of public financing over public-‐private partnerships. Private sector is profit-‐oriented by nature and not required to invest in social needs and global public goods. The public sector—whose crucial roles are to finance social needs towards poverty eradication and finance global public goods—thus remains the lynchpin of a sustainable development financing strategy. All public budgets need to be transparent, open to public debate, incorporate a gender perspective and allocate adequate resources to achieving these priorities. We must ensure the meaningful participation of women in the design, delivery, monitoring and evaluation of the development goals, policies and programs as well as peace-‐building efforts and protect all women human rights defenders. There must be access to effective remedies and redress at the national level for human rights violations. Monitoring and evaluation should include reporting of states on their obligations before the Universal Periodic Review as well as through regional human rights processes. Regulation, accountability and transparency of non-‐state actors, particularly trans-‐national corporations and private sector actors through public-‐private partnerships, is essential to ensure sustainable development.
