Source: Gender Links
The 58th of the Commission of the Status of Women (CSW58) started yesterday at the United Nations Headquarters in New York with participants calling for accelerated efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) before 2015 and a stronger post-2015 agenda.

Speaking at a United Nations (UN) side event titled Empowerment of women and girls: beyond MDGs 2015, Professor Aurora Javate de Dios, the Representative of the ASEAN Commission on the Promotion of the rights of Women and Children (ACWC) called for less focus on quantity and measuring numerical goals. "We should prioritise the quality of equality. It is time for states to commit to higher levels of commitment."

While participants noted that member states have made strides in advancing gender equality and women's empowerment, they highlighted the need governments to learn from the challenges in implementing the current MDG framework, to ensure that the post-2015 agenda is more effective.

"While the MDGs galvanized attention and resources, and MDG3 on gender equality put a spotlight on gender and women's empowerment, actual progress for women and girls has fallen short of expectations in the implementation of the MDGs," reads the forum's background note.

UNICEF Director of Programmes, Dr. Nicholas Alipui highlighted the problem of child and forced marriage. "In the last three decades 400 million women were married when they were children, between the ages of 15 to 19 years old. That means half a billion women were forced into early marriage during their childhood," explained Alipui.

Alipui pointed out that the children in the world continue to be mothers and children at the same time, "It is our view that the post 2015 Millennium Development Goal cannot move forward without having a clear indicator to end early marriage" he stressed. UNICEF aims also at prioritising girl's education, adolescent health and gender based violence in the post-2015 MDGs.

Nicole Ameline, Chairperson of the Committee on the Elimination all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), explained that to achieve MDG3, states need to align rights and development. "We need to have a clear vision of the cost of inequality and a new approach to help state parties to formulate a good roadmap."

The Southern Africa Gender protocol Alliance and Gender Links are also calling for a stronger post-2015 SADC Gender Protocol (SGP), which is a Southern Africa regional instrument and roadmap to equality that breaks MDG3 into 28 time-bound targets. The Protocol is currently being used by SADC Member States as a yardstick to advance gender equality in different spheres of society.

As much as the SGP can help inform and enhance the global post-2015 agenda on achieving gender equality, so too can the global agenda improve the post-2015 SGP targets, in areas like climate change and environmental sustainability; women's lack of access to information and technology and more explicit language on sexual reproductive health rights. These emerging issues must be addressed and need to be included in the post-2015 framework.

Sharon Kotok, consultant and former foreign affairs officer at the US Department of State, called for greater collaboration between all stakeholders to ensure that gender equality and women's rights are at the centre of the post-2015 development agenda. "We should leave no one behind. Gender should be mainstreamed in the entire human development agenda. No one person or organization has all the solutions. We are all in this together. Everyone can make a difference. When we collaborate we can change the world."

To see progress in bettering the lives of women and girls, we must hasten and deepen our efforts before 2015. Furthermore, all efforts need to focus on closing persistent implementation gaps by building on lessons and challenges and improving existing instruments like MDG3 and the SGP.

Lucia Makamure is the Alliance Programme Officer at Gender Links. Rachel Mkundai is the public relations officer for Christian Social Services Commission in Tanzania. This article is part of the GL News Service special coverage of CSW58, offering fresh views on everyday news.