The Programme for Women’s Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights has published a brief, subtitled “Feminist Perspective from the Global South”, on the necessity of including women’s work in Financing for Development policies. The paper also discusses the shortcomings of privatized investment in developing economies and outlines critical steps toward an inclusive and equitable development agenda.
Read the abstract below, and find the full paper (in PDF format) here.
Financing for Development: Addis Ababa and Beyond
Feminist Perspective from the Global South
The publication is set in the context of preparatory debates on the Financing for Development (FfD), which have extensively highlighted the growing relevance of non-ODA financing modalities as mechanisms to address the post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As the Third International Conference on FfD in Addis Ababa is to address the drawbacks of the MDG framework and get United Nations member states to negotiate a political agreement on how to finance development for the post-2015 development agenda, the paper argues that the global negotiations on financing policies to address poverty reduction, social inequalities, sustainable infrastructure and climate change should look at the development challenges in a holistic manner. Stating FfD as a feminist issue, the brief argues that for financing to be effective in reducing poverty and delivering sustainable development, it needs to benefit women and men equally and contribute to empowering women and building equitable societies. The gendered division of labour, particularly unpaid work and gender-based labour market segregation, is not addressed properly in current discussions on FfD. As women carry the burden of poverty in and out of the households in the whole of global South, FfD needs to take women onboard in order to achieve financial development for the household, community, country and eventually, the entire region. The reach and efficiency of human rights instruments are limited by the non-scrutiny and unaccountability of various actors involved in larger macroeconomic policy decisions. A strong regulatory mechanism at country levels should be created to build institutional capacities to deal with private sector investments which violate human rights. All monitoring and regulatory mechanisms must be designed and implemented from a South perspective, fully adhering to the development realities of South. South governments should not be forced to work on the monitoring guidelines and frameworks developed by the North.
from PWESCR
