CATCHAFYAH CARIBBEAN FEMINIST NETWORK
Response to
A NEW GLOBAL PARTNERSHIP: ERADICATE POVERTY AND TRANSFORM
ECONOMIES THROUGH SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
The Report of the High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development
Agenda
Overview of Concerns
1. Maintains the minimalist and goal setting agenda of the MDGs. This
approach is problematic for us in the region as not all of the targets are
applicable. The result is that in practice this may not be the agenda driving
development in the region (which may not be a bad thing).
2. Gender equality must be mainstreamed throughout the goals and targets.
Even though it is also welcomed as a stand-alone goal.
3. Report lacks criticism of current economic paradigm and as a result there
is lack of congruence between and across goals and targets. It privileges a
neo-liberal model and takes it for granted as the only way of being in the world.
As such in target 1b businesses appear to have been given human rights or at
least have been equated with people which is untenable and unconscionable.
Page 23 of the report mentions the accountability of businesses to shareholders.
What about to workers and to the communities in which they operate?
Goal 8d which mentions increasing the value-added of new products fails to
account for the ways in which so-called “value-added” may have adverse effects
such as environmental degradation, unhealthy, processed food products etc.
The neo-liberal, market fundamentalist, private sector centric underpinning of the
development approach actually contradicts many of the progressive human
rights-based goals.
Goal 12: “12a. Support an open, fair and development-friendly trading system,
substantially reducing trade-distorting measures, including agricultural subsidies,
while improving market access of developing country products.” Another blanket
market-fundamentalist approach, fails to recognize the need for domestic
markets to actually help achieve some of the other targets around environmental
sustainability and poverty reduction. Report fails to critique neoliberal model but
is in fact embedded in it.
In terms of a global trading system, Caribbean countries have very little voice
and as the case with Antigua and online gambling show, are not even in a
position to ensure that WTO rulings, when favourable towards them, are
enforced. Need for reform of institutions such as IMF, World Bank, World Trade
Organisation to be addressed. The issue of high debt repayments must also be
addressed as it limits the ability of governments to implement policies and
programmes toward poverty alleviation and sustainable development.
4. Concern that migration is not adequately treated. Human rights of migrants
must be recognized across all goals and targets. The issue of migration-- both
international and intra regional-- is of critical importance to the Caribbean as it is
one of the most migratory regions of the world both in terms of in and out
migration.
5. Ending extreme poverty is NOT enough for the region. Poverty cannot be
defined solely as income-based nor the indicator for its reduction be based solely
on the most extreme forms of income poverty, especially where poverty results in
social exclusion, de facto exclusion of access to social services, exclusion from
employment, where migrant status is often a predictor of poverty and social
exclusion and where poverty is intergenerational, linked to unpaid caring work
done largely by women or failure to respect the human rights of persons with
disabilities and those living with HIV. Poverty must be understood as a
multidimensional and multicausal. For example, the recent country assessment
of living conditions in Barbados demonstrated that despite significant social
spending poverty in Barbados individual and household poverty has doubled
over the last 20 years. The report therefore needs to recognize that poverty is
more complex than income alone.
The goals and targets set must therefore NOT contradict each other. For
example, if empowering women and girls is a target then goals around ending
poverty need to be more ambitious. All people should be covered by social
protections, not just x% of persons, amongst them the most excluded: persons
with disabilities, migrants, women, young people, homeless gay and trans* youth,
persons living with HIV.
6. Gender equality goals are too minimalist for the Caribbean. The report fails
to address the ways in which gender inequality persists despite gender neutral
language in law and de jure equality of access in many areas. In other words,
eliminating overt discrimination has been done in a range of areas in the
Caribbean and has STILL not ensured gender equality. There is therefore a need
to “measure the immeasurables” when it comes to persistent gender inequality
and to move beyond non-discrimination. Non-discrimination is too conservative a
gender equality goal. Women need to be addressed throughout the report in their
own right, women’s rights must be recognized as human rights and not
addressed predominantly in instrumentalist ways. Women must be addressed as
women and not solely as mothers.
7. The report does not address the human rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and
Transgender persons (LGBT). Neither does it at a minimum call for nondiscrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity expression.
8. If the goal is quality education and lifelong learning, then how is the target
universal lower secondary education? That education is a human right needs
to be made explicit. The need for comprehensive sexuality education also needs
to be emphasized. In some Caribbean countries only university education makes
a difference in women’s earnings. In other words, when it comes to employment
in the formal economy a man with only a primary education outearns a woman
with secondary education. In order for the quality lifelong education target to
make sense for a wide range of countries education must be explicitly named as
a right and targets for education must extend beyond secondary level. In
addition, to address ongoing concerns about boys’ dropout rate and its links to
other negative outcomes such as crime and insecurity we have to secure
education as a right.
9. We are concerned that climate change is not adequately addressed given the
vulnerability of the region to natural disasters.
Tonya Haynes, PhD
For
Catchafyah Caribbean Feminist Network
July 15, 2013