Asia Pacific Civil Society Presents Asks for Beijing +20
STATEMENT for the 3rd Session of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN ESCAP)
CSOs welcome that member states in Asia and Pacific reaffirm their commitments at the fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing 1995, the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and subsequent reviews and the efforts in building consensus to accelerate the implementation of Beijing Platform for Action in the past two days.
We believe the intent and ambition of the Beijing Platform for Action can only be achieved by the sufficient financial support and transparent and participatory accountability mechanisms.
Therefore, we call on states:
l To commit to an accountability framework for the Beijing Platform for Action with concrete benchmarks and timetables
l To transform macro-economic structures that perpetuate women’s (and men’s) inequality and poverty and recognize women’s and girls’ economic, political, social, cultural and bodily rights and specifically to address inter-linked issues of care work as not only shared but also a collective social responsibility
l To fulfill 0.7% of Gross National Product (GNP) for official development assistance and 1 % to Least Developed Countries and developed countries and ensure that, consistent with the principle of international solidarity, North-South cooperation between States remain the cornerstone of international development cooperation.
l To create global funds for development derived from taxes on harmful industries and practice such as financial speculation, extractive industries and the arms trade where they unfortunately exist.
l To ensure an enabling environment for the realization of women’s human rights and gender equality through a commitment to trade, finance, and investment arrangements that complement national sustainable development efforts.
l To ensure that public financing must be prioritized over Public-Private Partnerships, especially in relation to the provision of the basic public services like health, water, sanitation, education and etc. and that public private partnerships be held to ex-ante, binding human rights standards.
l To create and strengthen binding accountability measures and mechanisms at the national, regional and international level, which is just, transparent and participatory that include financial, social and environmental well-being and human rights, with the participation and representation of women’s rights group and affected communities. And we emphasis this participation as both a democratic right to support participatory democracy that supports active community decision making and as a way to bring the depth of expertise and community involvement feminist and women’s rights organizations hold.
l This accountability mechanism should link or integrate with the accountability mechanism will be established for post-2015 development agenda, which includes the gender equality as its goal, in the national, regional and global level.