NGOs Beyond 2014 - Articles

19 Feb 2015, UN New York

Thank you, Your Excellencies.

I'm Malyn Ando from the Asian-Pacific Women's Resource and Research Centre for Women, and I represent the Women’s Major Group, comprised of more than 600 women’s organisations around the globe.

In the last two days, you all said you want an ambitious and visionary Declaration. We thus call on you to prioritize human rights, gender equality and the full realization of human rights of girls and women of all ages and with disabilities and in all their diversities, including sexual and reproductive health and rights. We want to see rights guaranteed to all persons from birth and across the life cycle. We want to end inequalities. We also call you to achieve environmental sustainability, peaceful societies, accountability and justice.

Regarding review and accountability, we call for the following:

1. Scope: We agree with the Member States that have emphasised that follow up, review and importantly accountability are essential to the success of this visionary, transformative agenda.

2. Monitoring mechanisms:

This should be transparent, inclusive and participatory, and done regularly at global, regional, and national levels.
The indicator framework must emphasize equity, focusing on especially disadvantaged and excluded groups to effectively address the multiple dimensions of poverty and discrimination. Disaggregated data must be collected and analyzed for all goals and targets, at a minimum based on gender, age, income level and geographic location.

3. Accountability and review mechanisms:

We want a mandatory, universal global accountability mechanism that ensures qualitative and participative monitoring, building on the existing mechanisms under the Human Rights Council UPR, CEDAW and other human rights treaties.
We want a strong justice system for remedy and redress for individuals when their rights are violated.
Public-private partnerships should be held accountable, ensuring compliance with human rights, gender equality, labour and environmental standards, and through a binding corporate accountability mechanism.

4. Participation: We stand ready to work with you for the success of this agenda and to do so effectively, we need full and meaningful participation in all stages and levels from definition to review and monitoring, from the national level to HLPF, and women's organisations should have institutional space in these mechanisms.

I hope that when we all come back to our countries, we would be able to tell our own constituencies that our governments are living up to our expectations towards creating a world we truly want. Thank you.