Page 5:  A6) How should a new framework reflect the particular challenges of the poor living in conflict and post-conflict settings?

As violence and conflict are rooted in human insecurity and deprivation, fragile and conflict-affected States face severe obstacles in reducing poverty and achieving development. The post-2015 framework, therefore, must effectively address the particular challenges of people affected by poverty in conflict and post-conflict settings, in part through promoting governance, justice, equity, and peace. Incorporating gender equality and implementing a human rights-based approach, including sexual and reproductive health and rights, was advocated by several respondents. Six international organizations referred to the Peacebuilding and Statebuilding Goals (PSGs) of the New Deal for Engagement in Fragile States, agreed at the Busan Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, which identified five foundational conditions for development and aid effectiveness in fragile and conflict-affected countries: legitimate politics (a State for all); security (safety for all); justice (equity for all); economic foundations (jobs for all); resources and revenue management (services for all). The international community should provide targeted support and solidarity, contributions emphasized, through ensuring access to basic needs, supporting civil society, investing in youth, stabilizing health systems, and promoting restorative and/or transitional justice.

Page 12 Implementing sustainable development through the international human rights framework

Many argued that the full implementation of all human rights would be the most effective way to deal with other sustainable development challenges as well. If human rights were truly implemented and respected, they could serve as an “ethical lens” through which economic and other policy could be judged, asserted the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID). The human rights framework would provide a comprehensive tool for accountability, especially to help ensure that marginalized groups and others facing discrimination, whether in terms of gender, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, or other factors, are included in development gains.

For some organizations, however, genuine implementation of existing human rights obligations cannot be treated in isolation from what they see as the need to address conflicting “corporate rights” and “rights of capital” when these may undermine human rights and sustainable development objectives. Social Watch, for example, argued: “Transnational corporations may nowadays sue governments at international fora for any change in the rules, including health regulations, that affect their actual or planned profits.... There is an urgent need to rebalance rights – that is, to reclaim human rights as the normative foundation of policy, and to roll back the rights of capital in relation to the rights of people.”

CARE International and the International Planned Parenthood Foundation (IPPF) advocated a transformative rights-based approach vis-à-vis gender equality, which CARE framed as “a key driver of poverty”; the organization called for both a central goal on gender equality and women’s empowerment and the mainstreaming of gender factors within all other goals through gender-related indicators and targets. For example, IPPF advocated the inclusion of “policies that increase access to reproductive health services and increase gender equality particularly those that increase women’s access to education and participation in the work place” as part of the framework’s overall principles of human rights, empowerment, justice, and gender equality.

In addition, contributors including ActionAid International suggested that existing human rights need to be expanded to include the rights of future generations and to a healthy environment.

A number of contributors, including the Beyond2015 network, strongly endorsed the approach taken by the UN System Task Team on the Post-2015 UN Development Agenda, which suggested that the new framework should be underpinned by the three principles of: (a) human rights; (b) equality; and (c) sustainability.

Page 22  A6) How should a new framework reflect the particular challenges of the poor living in conflict and post-conflict settings?

Human rights and gender equality as guiding principles

Guiding principles for addressing conflict through a new framework include a human rights-based approach and the incorporation of gender equality into all strategies of response. Health Poverty Action, for example, called for the adoption of a rights-based approach linked to accountability, empowerment, participation, non-discrimination, and attention to marginalized groups, while the Center for Women’s Global Leadership highlighted the need for the framework to promote human rights while recognizing the unique and specific ways that women, men, and human rights defenders are affected by conflict situations. ActionAid International recommended an explicit focus on the rights of women and marginalized people to peace and stability, and ensuring access to justice for those affected by gender- based violence during and after conflict. The fulfillment of sexual and reproductive rights, including access to contraception and safe abortion, was emphasized by AWID and the International Council for Adult Education (ICAE) as particularly necessary in the context of sexual violence in war.

Annex: Elements to be included in the architecture of the framework

Additional dimensions to include in the framework:

Health:

Quality health care services for identification, treatment, (re)habilitation and disease prevention, including health education and immunization;
Robust and concerted international action against chronic diseases in low-income and middle-income countries;

A target for zero tuberculosis (TB) deaths;
Prioritization of sexual and reproductive health and rights, including family planning;
High-quality, stigma-free, and affordable maternal health care before, during and after childbirth; Renewed commitment to the HIV response (and to ending AIDS), including strengthening the linkages between sexual and reproductive health and HIV prevention and care, and articulating synergies between health, HIV and other areas (e.g. gender equality, nutrition, education etc.).