Source: Today's Zaman
An international summit in İstanbul, with women's perspectives on the United Nation's post-2015 Development Agenda as its focus, has called for women's empowerment as a condition for sustainable development.
"Women's empowerment is the cornerstone of sustainable and inclusive development," concluded the final declaration of "Women's Perspective on the Post-2015 Development Agenda," drafted by members of the İstanbul Summit Executive Board on Sunday.
The declaration stated that women's empowerment should encompass the promotion of women's rights in terms of access to health, education and productive resources and opportunities, including safe and secure employment conditions for the developing world.
Organized by the Journalists and Writers Foundation's (GYV) Abant Platform and Women Platform, the two-day summit kicked off on Saturday at the congress center of Fatih Koleji with a program dedicated to discussions on a variety of topics, including women's empowerment, gender equality and food security, as part of the post-2015 UN Development Agenda, from the perspective of women.
More than 400 participants from different parts of the world, including members of nongovernmental organizations, parliamentarians, academics, activists and journalists, discussed developing the Sustainable Development Goals that will be worked towards after the United Nations Development Millennium Goals Agenda, which has 2015 as its deadline.
Nafis Sadik, a special adviser to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, and Professor Shirley Randell, one of Australia's 100 Inaugural Women of Influence in 2012 in the Global Category, were among the participants at the summit.
The participants of the summit underlined the importance of equality between women and men and proposed gender equality before the law, in the workplace and in the home as a stand-alone goal as well as one to be integrated into all other goals.
While emphasizing the need for a smart, kind and inclusive sustainable development agenda that respects people and the planet, the summit also called for universal Sustainable Development Goals for all people in all countries.
The summit suggested that women's empowerment, the eradication of poverty, health, education, food security, water supply, sanitation, the environment, climate change, energy, sustainable economic development, peace and good governance should be determined as the priorities of the Sustainable Development Goals.
Encouraging governments to work in collaboration with civil society and the private sector, the summit urged participants to reach out and mobilize their networks and communities to actively engage in the post-2015 sustainable development agenda at the local, national and global levels.
The final declaration of the summit will be submitted to the relevant UN agencies and other stakeholders.
During the summit, attendees exchanged views on the topics of poverty, women's empowerment, health, environmental sustainability, education, food security, water supply and sanitation, economic development, peace and good governance.
Barbara Adams, senior policy adviser at the Global Policy Forum, suggested that the major agenda for the post-2015 world needs to be a new accountability framework that is evenhanded and will bring equality. She voiced a well-known slogan of women's perspective, saying, "Nothing about us, without us."
A special session of women parliamentarians from numerous states, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ghana, Japan, Kazakhstan, Switzerland, Ukraine and Norway, was also held over the weekend as one of the parallel sessions in which Millennium Development Goals and the commitments to the Sustainable Development Goals of respective countries were discussed. Participants in the parliamentary session agreed that "more girls should get education," saying, "Education is key for development."
Somali Cerise, a research specialist at the UN Women Research and Data Section, said the new framework for the UN's development agenda should promote gender equality and achieve changes in women's lives and goals.
Many civil society organizations and other stakeholders have been working on the post-2015 development agenda. The summit, organized by the GYV, which holds General Consultative Status with the UN Economic and Social Council, aimed to contribute to the new agenda for post-2015, which are defined as the Sustainable Development Goals, and to open the floor to women's perspectives and opinions on the proposed goals.
Summit aims to develop consistent perspective
Müşerref Özer, secretary-general of the GYV's Women Platform, took to the stage at the opening ceremony of Saturday's program to deliver a speech on the aims and importance of the summit. Offering a warm welcome to participants from 42 countries, including representatives from nongovernmental organizations, politicians, academics and journalists, Özer said the summit is a result of the GYV's wish to bring the interactive, open and bureaucratic model of UN meetings, which also value the opinions of civilians, to Turkey.
"We would like to dedicate the first summit on women's perspective on the post-2015 UN Development Agenda, as the development agenda is one of the most-discussed topics in the international area and it is also important for issues relating to women. But while doing so, we would like to develop a point of view where we can bring together multiple ideas together, develop a consistent perspective without negative connotations and lift women from the state of objects to subjects, instead of seeing them as beings who must be rescued," she said.
Özer pointed to the active participation of women in becoming a part of the solutions to international problems, such as May 13 Soma disaster, in which 301 miners died in the town of Soma, and the abduction of schoolgirls by terrorist groups.
Sadik, who also delivered a speech at the opening, pointed out the appropriate timing of the summit, adding that governments should take steps to help women gain power in society, in addition to the support from nongovernmental organizations. The adviser underlined the need for zero tolerance of gender discrimination, preventing child marriages and providing equality for women in all decision-making processes.
Following the opening, the first discussion session of the summit, "Civil Society and Development Goals," focused on the topic of conducting projects with a more human-oriented perspective. Renate Bloem, one of the speakers at the session, who is World Alliance for Citizen Participation (CIVICUS) UN representative of Geneva, briefly touched on the identity problems that women suffer. "In Bangladesh, for example, women do not have the right to choose their husbands freely ... they are often intervened by their parents and subjected to violence," she said.
"My Egyptian intern said they all know women participated in the Arab Spring uprisings. But when they ask for their rights, they are accused of giving priority to themselves rather than their national interests," Bloem added, saying that such issues must be addressed.
'Water scarcity also a problem for developed countries'
One of the most interesting sessions of Saturday's program was "Environmental Dimension" with a particular focus on climate change, food security, sanitation and water scarcity. Dr. Dionysia-Theodora Avgerinopolou remarked in her presentation, "Water scarcity is not only a problem of the undeveloped countries but also of developed countries." She underlined the significance of having appropriate infrastructure, integrated water resources management and making waste water usable again, along with partnership with neighboring countries for better water management.
Jai-Ok Kim, president of the Green Start Network in South Korea, said climate change has caused $25 trillion of harm to the world economy and that her country is battling against the problem by offering education on climate change and environmental issues to more than 500 business leaders. "Plans should be made to mitigate the dissemination of greenhouse gas and women have significant roles in establishing such aims," she said.
Randell gave Rwanda as one example of social change, as women had to work for themselves following the 1994 genocide in which nearly 1 million people were cruelly slaughtered, speaking in the "Social Dimension" session. "Social change is a path to recovery. People were killed, women were raped in Rwanda. After the genocide, 70 percent of the population was women. And these women led a huge transformation," she explained.
'Going forward means going together'
The professor emphasized the significance of investing in girls' education, challenging cultural attitudes, the political empowerment of women, recognizing women's equal rights and affirmative action to increase women's representation in politics and social life, elaborating on the example of Rwanda. "Going forward means going together," she ended.
Lawyer Rajat Khosla, who works as a human rights adviser for the Department of Reproductive Health Research at the World Health Organization (WHO), gave another interesting speech in the "Social Dimension" section. The adviser drew attention to the number of births from child brides, the insufficient health services for women and infant mortality during birth in his speech on sexual and reproductive health. The problem of 21 billion unsafe abortions, 222 million women who do not have contraception, 54 million unwanted pregnancies and the facts that six out of 10 women who do not want to have babies do not have access to the necessary services in low- and middle-income countries and an estimated 16 million births occur to young women between 15-19 years were among the most critical observations in his speech. "We should ask what is happening and why such things are still happening. When we talk about health care, we are not talking about mathematical problems, they are about humans. We need to push the health agenda forward," he exclaimed.
The last session was "Economic Dimension," with speakers Roxanne Alvarez, grants manager of the Women, Girls and Population team at the United Nations Foundation in Washington, D.C., Simita Tewari Jassal, a sociology lecturer from Ankara's Middle East Technical University (ODTÜ), and Professor Thomas Kesselring.
Alvarez, who participated in the conference online, mostly focused on the need to provide proper education for women, take risks, be open to competition, eradicate sexual discrimination and support the private sector so as to strengthen women's economic independence, while Kesselring pointed out the significance of changing gender stereotypes. Kesselring, on the other hand, also talked more about the increasing gap between rich and poor, not only on the national but also on the international level as well as political and economic liberalization and economic priorities.
