A WEDO
Information and Action Guide
Table
of Contents
What is the United Nations Millennium Declaration?
What is the United Nations Millennium Declaration?
The UN
Millennium Declaration was agreed by 191 governments at the September 2000 UN
Millennium Summit, where 147 heads of government turned out for the largest-ever
gathering of world leaders. The Declaration is packed with positive language
about peopleÕs needs for the new millennium and about womenÕs centrality in
development processes. In it, governments commit Òto promote gender equality
and the empowerment of women as effective ways to combat poverty, hunger and
disease and to stimulate development that is truly sustainable.Ó The
Declaration also addresses Òthe equal rights and opportunities of women and
menÓ and pledges Òto combat all forms of violence against women and to
implement the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
against WomenÓ (CEDAW).
www.un.org/millennium/declaration/ares552e.htm
What are the United Nations Millennium Development
goals?
The UN
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), issued by the UN Secretary General in
2001, are a Òroad mapÓ for implementing the Millennium Declaration. The MDGs
comprise eight goals supplemented by 18 numerical and time-bound targets and 48
indicators intended to improve living conditions and remedy key global
imbalances by 2015. Goal 3 calls for gender equality and womenÕs empowerment.
In addition the MDGs address several of the 12 Critical Areas of Concern in the
Platform for Action adopted at the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in
Beijing, namely poverty (1), education (2), health (5) and environmental
sustainability (7). www.un.org/millenniumgoals
1.
Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
2.
Achieve universal primary education
3.
Promote gender equality and womenÕs empowerment
4. Reduce
child mortality
5.
Improve maternal health
6. Combat
HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
7. Ensure
environmental sustainability
8.
Develop a global partnership for development
How Have Women Responded to the
MDGs?
The
United Nations has been a key forum for womenÕs advocacy. From the 1975 UN
International Year on Women through the Decade on Women (1976-1985) and the
global conferences and summits of the 1990s1 women participated actively to
shape economic, social, and political development. In these settings advocates
established strategic mechanisms, influenced resolutions and won crucial
commitments to set a far-reaching global policy agenda that recognizes gender
equality and womenÕs empowerment as essential components of poverty
eradication, human development and human rights.
The
Millennium Declaration reflects widespread international acknowledgement that
empowerment of women and the achievement of gender equality are matters of
human rights and social justice. It is another indication of the successful
efforts of women to put gender on the global policy agenda.
However,
the Millennium Development Goals do not represent the full vision of gender
equity, equality and womenÕs empowerment or poverty eradication and structural
transformation envisioned in key human rights instruments,2 or in significant
inter-governmental agreements like the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action. Chief
among the gaps is the failure to include the issue of reproductive rights. Nor
do the MDGs mention two critical issues in the Declaration, peace and human
rights.
In the
MDG drafting process WEDO and other womenÕs rights advocates argued that gender
equality and womenÕs empowerment are essential cross-cutting components for
achievement of all the goals. If the approach to implementation was gender
blind, if adequate resources were not identified and if global economic
policies remained discordant with social and environmental needs the MDGs could
not succeed. Unfortunately the MDGs include womenÕs empowerment and gender
equality only as a single goal and the consequences are already apparent:
country reports tend to confine these concerns to Goal 3 and the goals on
health (4, 5, 6) and to exclude them from the goals on poverty eradication (1),
environmental sustainability (7) and global partnerships (8).
Nonetheless,
the MDGs do contain time-bound targets for holding governments and
international institutions accountable; and they are mutually reinforcing—progress
towards one goal affects progress towards the others. In addition the MDGs have
broad support; the 191 UN member states, UN agencies, and international trade
and financial institutions have committed to the 2015 timeline. Additionally,
the review and follow-up processes to UN conferences and summits of the past
decade will focus extensively on achieving the goals, providing a critical
opportunity to implement the policy gains of the international womenÕs
movement.
For these
reasons, the MDGs can be seen as another avenue of engagement for monitoring
the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action and other key
international policy agreements. In this regard the MDG process offers three
main challenges to advocates:
¥ To
ensure a gender-sensitive approach to implementation at the national level,
integrating gender across all the goals;
¥ To
demand adequate resources and equitable global economic policies that are
consistent with social and environmental needs;
¥ To link
the MDGs to other ongoing global and national policy processes, particularly
the 10 year review of the Beijing Platform for Action (or Beijing+10) in 2005.
(Footnotes)
1 These conferences included: the Conference on Environment and Development
(Rio de Janeiro, 1992) where womenÕs vital role in environmental management and
development and the need for their full participation to achieve sustainable
development was recognized; the International Conference on Human Rights
(Vienna, 1993) where womenÕs human rights were spelled out for the first time;
the International Conference on Population and Development (Cairo, 1994) where
formal recognition of womenÕs reproductive rights prevailed despite bitter
opposition; the World Summit on Social Development (Copenhagen, 1995) where the
link between gender equality and poverty was explicitly recognized; and the
Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing, 1995) where advocates won a
broad-based agenda for promoting and protecting womenÕs human rights worldwide,
while establishing the principle of shared power and responsibility between
women and men in all arenas.
2 For
women, the most significant of these is the 1981 UN Convention on the
Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). www.un.org/
womenwatch/daw/cedaw/
Gender
equality is not only a goal in its own right, but an essential ingredient for
achieving all the MDGs, be it poverty eradication, protecting the environment,
or access to healthcare. Attempting to meet the MDGs without incorporating
gender equality will both increase the costs and minimize success. Because the
MDGs are mutually reinforcing, success in meeting the goals will have positive
impacts on gender equality, just as progress toward gender equality in any one
area will help to further each of the other goals.
Goal
1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.
It is now
generally recognized that the majority of the worldÕs poor are women. Goal 1
reflects this by broadening the definition of poverty to encompass not only
income poverty but other dimensions such as lack of empowerment, opportunity,
capacity and security. Because many aspects of gender inequality influence the
different dimensions of poverty, promoting gender equality in the design of
strategies and actions to meet this goal is critical. Gender equality has a
direct impact on economic growth and the reduction of income poverty by raising
productivity improving efficiency, increasing economic opportunities and
empowering women.
Goal
2: Achieve universal primary education.
Of the
150 million children aged 6-11 who donÕt attend school, over 90 million are
girls. Meeting the education goal therefore requires that the
distinctive
conditions preventing girls or boys from attending or completing primary school
be addressed. Reducing education costs, improving quality, tackling parental
concerns about female modesty or safety and increasing the returns to families
that invest in female schooling are factors that can overcome social and
economic barriers to girlsÕ education. Goal 2 is key to achieving Goal 1;
eliminating genderdisparities in education is one of the most effective poverty
reduction strategies.
Goal
3: Promote gender equality and womenÕs empowerment. Of the world's 876 million
illiterate people over 15 years two-thirds are women; working women have less
social protection and employment rights; a third of all women has been
violently abused; over 500,000 women die each year in pregnancy and childbirth;
and rates of HIV/AIDS infection among women are rapidly increasing. The
proportion of seats held by women in national parliaments is also included
making this goal important in its own right and to all the other MDG goals.
Goals
4, 5, and 6: Reduce child mortality; Improve maternal health; Combat HIV/AIDS,
malaria and other diseases. Evidence from countries around the world demonstrates that gender
equality is key to improving maternal and child health and stemming the spread
of HIV/AIDS and other diseases. Some 500,000 women—the majority in poor
countries—die each year due to pregnancy-related causes. Reducing
maternal mortality depends on the extent of health care availability for
expectant mothers, particularly when dealing with complications. Greater control
of income by women tends to lower child mortality even when the householdÕs
total income is taken into account. Child mortality rates are also linked to
gender-related norms and customs. Globally, 48 percent of adults living with
HIV/AIDS are women and in many regions women make up the majority of infected
adults. Meeting the health goals requires an awareness of the biological
aspects of disease transmission and treatment as well as the social and
cultural factors that promote or reduce good health. Women cannot achieve
empowerment and equality unless their reproductive rights are fully and legally
realized.
Goal
7: Ensure environmental sustainability MenÕs and womenÕs different roles and responsibilities
are strongly linked to environmental sustainability. WomenÕs survival, and that
of their households and communities, depends on access to and control of
natural resources—land, water, forests and plants. Every day women and
girls walk long distances to bring water and fuel to their families. Women
perform the majority of the worldÕs agricultural work, producing food for their
families, as well as other goods that are sold in national and international
markets. Over generations, women have developed in-depth knowledge of the uses
and care of medicinal plants. Women have learned to manage these resources in
order to preserve them for future generations. Yet these vital contributions
are generally ignored or exploited.
SOURCES: Gender Equality and the MDGs
(World Bank) www.worldbank.org/gender/gendermdg.pdf;
Promises
to Keep: Achieving Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (ICRW)
www.unmillenniumproject.org/documents/tf03genapr18.pdf
Achieving
Goals 1-7 will depend on the extent to which the UN system, national
governments and international trade and financial institutions are able to
develop Goal 8, a global partnership for development that currently includes
targets or indicators o the global trade and financial system, good governance,
official development assistance (ODA), market access, and debt.
Yet the
current targets and indicators do not adequately address the systemic
inequities and power imbalances within the global economic system that
undermine the goals. The focus has been more on what the poorest countries need
to do to achieve the MDGs and less on accountability of the most powerful
global actors—the richest countries and the international financial and
trade institutions. Moreover, there are no time frames, quantifiable
benchmarks, or instruments that can hold industrialized countries, economic
institutions, and corporations accountable. Establishing such accountability
mechanisms becomes vital therefore, particularly when countries fail to meet
the goals due in part to lack of financial resources.
Over the
past decade, the neo-liberal economic model and market-driven
policies—particularly trade and finance rules and the deregulation and
privatization of public goods and services—have exacerbated poverty, food
insecurity and economic exclusion of the majority, while increasing the wealth
and over-consumption of the privileged few.
Gender-blind
macroeconomic and national policies keep women concentrated in the informal
sector without job or safety protections and in the lowest-paying, most
hazardous jobs in the formal wage economy, while rendering their household
labor invisible. Women still earn less than men for the same work and remain
drastically under-represented in decision-making.
The
impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic has further increased womenÕs income-earning,
domestic, and care-taking responsibilities. The lack of land tenure or
inheritance rights and economic trends such as water privatization undermine
the ability of women to own, manage, use, and conserve natural resources and to
provide for themselves and their families. In working towards implementation,
womenÕs rights advocates can use Goal 8 to push for accountability in the
global arenas, holding the international financial institutions—World
Bank and International Monetary Fund—the World Trade Organization, the UN
and national governments accountable for creating the necessary enabling
conditions for implementation to be achieved. At the UN, the ongoing Financing
for Development (FfD) process provides the necessary arena to engage in issues
of global governance and macroeconomic policy, and strategies for the
mobilization of resources needed for implementation of international
development commitments. The World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) outcomes
and follow-up, monitored through the Commission on Sustainable Development,
focuses on partnerships and a variety of strategies needed to ensure progress
towards the MDGs and larger development agenda of peace, equality, and
sustainability. WomenÕs rights advocates can use both processes to push for
global accountability.
(pullquote)
"It is essential to design, implement and monitor...efficient and mutually
reinforcing
gender-sensitive policies and programmes...at all levels (to) foster
the
empowerment and advancement of women."
—Beijing
Declaration
Any
discussion on attaining the MDGs must start with an understanding of the
different positions of women and men, girls and boys in society.
Lobby
your government to apply a broader gender lens to measure progress: Promote the use of
sex-disaggregated data to measure and monitor the impact of fiscal and social
policies on women compared with men, including those data that have been
marginalized or are missing from the MDGs. This data is essential, and should
be applied in analyses of policies at all levels—national, provincial,
and local.
Expand
the MDG indicators:
Many gender-sensitive indicators already exist and have been used to measure
progress of other UN agreements from United Nations world conferences such as
the Beijing Platform for Action. Use them.
Look for
local indicators in National Plans drawn up after the Beijing Conference. More
than 70 percent of the 187 governments that agreed the Beijing Platform of
Action drafted National Plans by March 1998. WomenÕs monitoring reports in
Mapping Progress, a 1998 WEDO publication, cover progress in 90 of these
countries www.wedo.org/monitor/MP.htm
Look for
other gender sensitive indicators
developed
by international agencies:
United
Nations Development Programme
Human
Development Indicators, including key Gender Indicators:
http://hdr.undp.org/reports/
global/2002/en/indicator/indicator.cfm?File=index.html
UN Gender
Mainstreaming Mandate on Statistics:
www.un.org/womenwatch/osagi/gmsatistics.htm
UN
Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) ECLAC Economic
and Social Statistical Yearbooks, including sex disaggregated data:
www.eclac.cl/estadisticas/default.asp?idioma=IN
World
Bank Gender Sensitive HIV/AIDS Indicators
www.worldbank.org/gender/genaids/factsheet.pdf
Following
the 1995 conference in Beijing, women began monitoring their governmentsÕ
efforts—or lack thereof—to turn policy promises into action. In
preparation for UN reviews in which governments present progress reports,
womenÕs organizations have responded with their own critical shadow reports.
Seeing the world through the eyes of women, still the majority of the poor and
powerless, provides the only truly realistic context for official words and
deeds. Progress reports by government authorities, still overwhelmingly male,
must be read alongside the realism of womenÕs day-to-day lives.
Track
implementation of measures necessary to meet the MDG targets: This provides advocates with a
further opportunity to pressure governments and inter-governmental bodies to
mainstream gender.
Millennium
Development Goals: National Reports—
A Look
Through a Gender Lens. www.undp.org/gender/docs/mdgs-genderlens.pdf
United
Nations Millennium Development Group—Reporting on the Millennium
Development Goals at the Country Level. www.undp.org/mainundp/
propoor/docs/UNDGMDG-Guidance-NoteENG.doc
Push
for country reports to be put through a gender review process: to assess whether gender is
adequately addressed as a cross cutting if they are simply following the global
matrix that limits gender equality to girlsÕ education as in the Goal 3 target.
Develop
a local version of the MDGs: Get input from all the stakeholders including womenÕs
organizations and other civil society sectors as well as government
representatives and UN agencies.
Bring
all of the stakeholders together: to review the UNDP common country assessment
www.undp.org/dpa/coweblinks/index.html, Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers
www.undp.org/dpa/publications/poverty.html, or equivalent national poverty
reduction plan, in the context of the Millennium Development Goals.
Keep
up-to-date with global progress: Country progress towards the goals from the
UNDP
Human
Development Report 2002 http:hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2002/en/pdf/
hdr_2002_a_1_3.pdf
How many
countries are on track? (Data from
the Human
Development Report 2002)
http:hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2002/en/pdf/
hdr_2002_feature_1_1.pdf
About
Beijing+10
Protect
Global Policy Promises to Women www.wedo.org/protect.htm
About
CEDAW
UN CEDAW
Committee www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw
About FfD
Women
Challenging Globalization (English, French, Spanish)
www.wedo.org/publicat/publicat.htm
About
WSSD
WEDOÕs
gender analysis of the World Summit on Sustainable Development and updates
www.wedo.org/programs/sustainable.htm
Beijing+10
and CEDAW--WEDO Governance listserv: global5050ingovernment@yahoogroups.com
FfD
WomenÕs Caucus listserv: ffd_wc-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
WEDO
Sustainable Development listserv: WEDOSustDev2002-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Beijing+10
and CEDAW
UN
Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM)
www.unifem.undp.org
www.unifem.undp.org
UN
Division for the Advancement of Women (UNDAW)
www.un.org/womenwatch/daw
African
WomenÕs Economic Policy Network (AWEPON)
www.awepon.org
Development
Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) www.dawn.org.fj
International
Gender and Trade Network www.igtn.org
KULU:
Women and Development www.kulu.dk
WomenÕs
International Coalition for Economic Justice (WICEJ) www.wicej.org
WSSD
Network
for Human Development (REDEH) www.redeh.org.br
Women in
Europe for a Common Future www.wecf.org
World
Water Council www.worldwatercouncil.org
Gender
and Water Alliance
www.genderandwateralliance.org
International
Campaign on the Millennium Development Goals (CIDSE)
www.cidse.org/docs/200312081215006352.pdf
Background
Papers of the Millennium Project Task Forces
www.unmillenniumproject.org/html/doc_lib.shtm
MDG
Gender Net—Links to publications on gender and MDGs www.mdgender.net
MDG
Gender Net—Discussion Archives
http://groups.undp.org/read/?forum=mdgender-net
We the
People: 2003. A Call to Action for the UN Millennium Declaration (WFUNA)
www.wfuna.org/wfuna-archive/site/WFUNA%20-%20english%20-%20final.pdf
Women and
the Millennium Development Goals (WHRNet) www.whrnet.org/docs/issue-mdg.html
From
Promise to Performance: How Rich Countries Can Help Poor Countries Help
Themselves www.undp.org/mdg/CGD%20BRIEF_April_2003_CRA.pdf
Millennium
Development Goals Indicators
http://millenniumindicators.un.org/unsd/mi/mi_goals.asp
Progress
of the WorldÕs Women: Gender Equality and the Millennium Development Goals
(UNIFEM) www.undp.org/unifem/resources/progressv2/index.html
United
Nations Human Development Report 2003 www.undp.org/hdr2003/
Gender
Equality and the Millennium Development Goals www.worldbank.org/gender/gendermdg.pdf
Health,
Nutrition and Population and the Millennium Development Goals
www1.worldbank.org/hnp/MDG/MDG%20-%20HNPbooklet.pdf
World
Bank Workshop on Gender Equality and the Millennium Development
Goals—Report and Program www.worldbank.org/gender/mdgworkshop/
Common
Ground: WomenÕs Access to Natural Resources and the United Nations Millennium
Development Goals:
www.wedo.org/sus_dev/common1.htm
Diverting
the Flow: A Resource Guide to Gender, Rights and Water Privatization
www.wedo.org/sus_dev/
diverting1.htm