UNECE Regional Review Meeting on Beijing+30
22 Oct 2024, Geneva
Below text is our collective intervention delivered during the session "Item 9: Closing the gender gap: Effective policies to deliver on SDGs in the ECE region". It was delivered during the plenary, in a room full of Member States, UN Agencies, Civil Society and Youth. Learn more about the regional review here.
Thank you. My name is Lisa Philippo and I speak on behalf of CHOICE for Youth and Sexuality and Young Feminist Europe, holding the line for young people. When the Beijing Platform for Action was adopted in 1995, I wasn’t born yet.
Young people are not the future, we are the present. The Young Feminist Manifesto calls for shifting power to youth through resources, co-convening and agenda setting. It's time for young people to lead the way in the Beijing and 2030 Agendas.
Across the region, we are seeing backsliding on SRHR and increasing influence from anti-gender and anti-rights movements. Gender equality, and sustainable development cannot happen without unimpeded access to SRHR, self determination and bodily autonomy, including safe and medical abortion, and comprehensive sexuality education and upholding the rights of LGBTIQ+ persons and sex workers.
Our region is on track to only meet 20 out of 169 targets, and only 1 of the SDG5 targets. Women and girls with intersecting identities and marginalised communities, are those furthest left behind.
In order to achieve the 2030 agenda, it is critical that we place people and planet over profit, and our shared humanity over geopolitical interests. This includes being accountable for the devastating impact of our colonialist and extractivist actions through green growth and false solutions in our region and others. This needs to include providing reparations for historical responsibilities. To cancel debt. To uphold universal access to human rights. To not offer impunity for war crimes and environmental destruction. We want a wellbeing economy and degrowth.
Feminist organisations are holding the line for rights and democratic values in our region and across the world. Yet, feminist grassroots movements, women’s rights organisations, and youth-led organisations continue to be systemically underfunded. Women’s rights organisations only receive 0,13% of total ODA funding. Member states must include gender equality and feminist priorities in the Fourth Financing for Development Conference. Women, girls, and gender-diverse people — who are disproportionately affected by development finance decisions — remain inadequately represented in these spaces.
Last year’s SDG Summit Political Declaration was not gender-transformative. It sought comfort in UN agreed language – next year’s Beijing+30 Political Declaration must not repeat those failures.