FLOW +: International Women's Empowerment
The coming 2 years are crucial for future development cooperation. In the intergovernmental process on “Sustainable Development Goals”, the UN “Open Working Group” is preparing a framework for universal goals to follow the Millennium Development Goals
20.11.2013 | WICF Project
| Countries: | Worldwide |
| Donors: | Ministry of Foreign Affairs, The Netherlands |
| Issues: | Gender & Rights |
| Duration: | 11/2013 - 12/2015 |
The coming 2 years are crucial for future development cooperation. In the intergovernmental process on “Sustainable Development Goals”, the UN “Open Working Group” is preparing a framework for universal goals to follow the Millennium Development Goals.
The High Level Panel Post2015 report , and the consultation reports , are feeding into the Secretary General’s report on the Post 2015 Development Agenda. The SDG and the Post2015 processes are planned to merge and lead to one set of comprehensive, universal goals, which will set the direction for international cooperation on sustainable development from 2015 to 2030 and beyond . If women’s priorities and gender equality are not well defined in the goals, targets and indicators, it will be a major set-back.
It is a unique opportunity for women’s organisations worldwide, that this United Nations policy process has a specific institutional space for women’s participation, namely the Women’s Major Group (www.womenrio20.org), which was reconfirmed at the UN on July 9th. The Women’s Major Group (WMG) is co-chaired by WECF with DAWN , and in cooperation with WEDO and GFC . Through the Women’s Major Group, the women’s organisations globally have an institutional space to participate in the negotiations of the new global goals . The new global goals will be guiding for the more than 100 billion USD annual ODA funding, and influence major investments by states, private sector and IFIs.
In this additional 1-year FLOW project entitled “International Women’s Empowerment” (IWE), WECF and partners will therefore focus on the policy process of SDG/Post2015 development goals.
The IWE program will implement the following activities, which are monitored in parallel to the EWA Flow program, avoiding duplication of efforts.
- Training 6 global women mentors, who will coach and help emerge 20 more local women’s leaders in their countries and regions to understand the opportunities provided by the MDG and Post2015/SDG policy processes for advancing women’s rights and political & economic empowerment in their own communities and thus advocate for their implementation .
- Organising 2 regional and 4 national policy conferences on Post2015/SDGs, with a focus on women’s priorities for global development goals, lessons learned from MDGs implementation and recommendations for national positions and national implementation mechanisms with a gender equality perspective.
- Assessing national MDG/development policies from a gender perspective and developing concepts and global examples for gender-sensitive national implementation strategies for Post2015/SDG goals, in 2 countries.
- Global advocacy, coordinated by WECF and WMG partners, assuring continuous qualitative input by IWE partners and 450 other women organisations into the policy negotiations for gender-equality and women’s rights and priorities in the Post2015/SDG framework for 2015-2030.
WECF as co-chair of the WMG will inform the 6 IWE mentors and 450 WMG members (through a daily mailing list + twitter ), build their capacity during the negotiations , organise meetings with their country delegates, help the women prepare their speaking slots in the negotiations - based on WMG policy statements prepared in advance - and outreach to media/press.
Last but not least, we work together with a large number of women’s movements in the international women’s major group on sustainable development, including the Gender & Water Alliance and the Global Forest Coalition . GFC is one of the core group members of the women’s major group and actively involved in the UN discussions about women’s rights and sustainable development.
WECF will coordinate the policy proposals developed by the WMG for the Post2015/SDG process with women’s representatives and UN agencies for parallel UN policy processes