Women’s Major Group 2014 Response to the Report of the Intergovernmental Committee of Experts on Sustainable Development Financing (Final Draft, 8 August 2014)

The Women’s Major Group (WMG) has released its response to the Report of the Intergovernmental Committee of Experts on Sustainable Development Financing (Final Draft, 8 August 2014).

The WMG welcomes the Committee’s recognition that its work must be founded on key Rio principles, including human rights, gender equality, and common but differentiated responsibilities, and that the principle of country ownership is also a basic precept in its work. However, members are concerned that the Committee has not sufficiently integrated these principles into its analysis and recommendations, and that it ultimately does not do enough to challenge a model of development that perpetuates inequalities between rich and poor, men and women, and between developed and developing countries. Its key areas of concern relate to the impact on women’s human rights and gender equality of the Committee’s discussion of:

• Private sector financing;
• Tax policy and cooperation;
• Trade and investment;
• Social protection; and
• Environment

The WMG also consider the extent to which the Report explicitly addresses financing for gender equality and women’s rights and on a general note, members are disappointed that the overall tenor of the Committee’s report lacks the urgency called for by the scale and immediacy of the threats to human rights and sustainable development globally. Given that the Sustainable Development Goals make explicit reference to the Committee’s input, it was incumbent on the Committee to make clear and bold recommendations for reforms to transform international and domestic frameworks for sustainable development financing. However, the language of the report is often tentative and, where recommendations are made, they are frequently qualified and give governments considerable discretion. Further, the Committee has compromised some of the more ambitious proposals in its earlier work, including a call to make the reduction of inequality between countries a key priority.

Finally, the WMG notes that, contrary to the relatively transparent, participatory nature of the Open Working group process, there was extremely limited access to the ICESDF’s work output and to its negotiation process. The Group therefore strongly hopes that future processes around development financing, including the Global Financing for Development Conference in July 2015, are transparent and provide for significantly more space and participation of civil society.

For full response click here.

How to use the WMG response

The report of the ICESDF is an important input into the post-2015 development agenda and will be included in the Secretary-General’s synthesis report (which is currently being written and is due in November). You are therefore urged to bring the concerns included in the WMG response to the attention of your Governments and to ask them to take them into consideration when the negotiations begin on the post-2015 development agenda early next year. It can also be used in preparations for the Global Financing for Development Conference.