The Women’s Major Group is excited to launch our Position Paper for the 2023 High-Level Political Forum (HLPF). Gathering the intersectional analyses of feminists and gender equality activists worldwide, our position paper provides concrete recommendations and analysis to facilitate the transformative implementation of the 2030 Agenda building on the knowledge of Women’s Major Group members and highlighting relevant recommendations and analysis from other experts, such as UN treaty monitoring bodies and mandate holders. These actors have provided a rich body of rights-based guidance that we too rarely see incorporated into the High-Level Political Forum (HLPF) proceedings or implementation at the national level.We have repeatedly seen that the structure of the HLPF itself, and the focus on reviewing a small number of SDGs each year, undermines the interlinked nature of the Agenda. Our HLPF review position paper proposes a non-siloed approach, grouping multiple Goals under four pillars: economic; social; environmental; and cross-cutting. This paper follows that conceptual schema illuminating new linkages and understandings that reflect our actual lived experiences of the 2030 Agenda.  

We want to express deep gratitude to all the fierce feminists who contributed to this powerful advocacy tool, including Rachel Jacobson, who led in drafting and editing the paper. Please join us in sharing the paper widely with decision-makers, allies, and networks!

Cliquez ici pour lire et télécharger l’intégralité de notre document de position HLPF 2023 en français.

“We Will Never Give Up On Ourselves, Other Species and this Beautiful Planet.” – DIVA for Equality
 
Since we gathered last year, feminists and other movements have been protesting online and in the halls of power demanding accountability for rising inequalities and calling for urgent action for human rights, gender equality, social justice, peace, and the full implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. At this pivotal political moment halfway through the 2030 Agenda, the Women’s Major Group stands in solidarity with these tireless movements and remains committed to amplifying their visions, demands, and actions.

Now is the time to focus on immediate action for the full implementation of the SDGs, before rushing to create new frameworks that override our existing agreements. Failure to achieve the SDGs – let alone make significant progress towards them – would be catastrophic for ourselves and our planet. 

To avoid this catastrophe, we demand that governments match the political determination and persistence that feminists in all our diversity demonstrate every single day. Our resilience comes in the face of existential threats from underfunding, trivialisation, anti-gender attacks and intimidation, criminalization, and violence. Our resistance is against the increasing attacks on our personhood and bodily autonomy and the double burden of care we carry, the inaccessibility of our rights as a result of austerity and privatization, and the appropriation and degradation of natural resources. 

We call on governments to take the necessary steps to implement this critical, interlinked agenda as a matter of utmost urgency. We stress that these actions must be accompanied by strong accountability mechanisms in order to address the multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated and to accelerate the faltering progress toward the achievement of the SDGs. 

We insist upon the critical importance of both policy coherence in the effective implementation of the SDGs and a cross-cutting approach to centering and reaching gender equality in the implementation of all the SDGs. Too often we see that governments disregard global agreements, including the SDGs, when we attempt to bring them back home. 

We call on governments to reclaim their leadership from the private sector and other actors encouraging them to outsource, weaken, or abandon their human rights obligations. 

We remind governments that an independent and fully funded civil society is a prerequisite for the development of policies that will enable us to live our lives in dignity and equality. 

Sometimes the task ahead of us to achieve the SDGs feels daunting. The interlinked systems of oppressions that created the inequalities the 2030 Agenda should remedy continue to be upheld by actions and policies that centralize power and wealth and uphold and strengthen the patriarchal, racist, colonial status quo. 

And yet everyday members of the WMG lead actions to dismantle these systems. We will never give up on ourselves, on gender equality and the human rights of women, girls and gender-diverse people, our planet, or this agenda. We demand that governments demonstrate that same commitment and determination. This is the only way to achieve the SDGs!    

The following position paper provides concrete recommendations and analysis to facilitate the transformative implementation of the 2030 Agenda building on the knowledge of Women’s Major Group members and highlighting relevant recommendations and analysis from other experts, such as UN treaty monitoring bodies and mandate holders. These actors have provided a rich body of rights-based guidance that we too rarely see incorporated into the High-Level Political Forum (HLPF) proceedings or implementation at the national level. 

We have also repeatedly seen that the structure of the HLPF itself, and the focus on reviewing a small number of SDGs each year, undermines the interlinked nature of the Agenda. Our HLPF review position paper proposes a non-siloed approach, grouping multiple Goals under four pillars: economic; social; environmental; and cross-cutting. This paper follows that conceptual schema illuminating new linkages and understandings that reflect our actual lived experiences of the 2030 Agenda.