India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka
1
The Eighth Session of the Open Working Group on Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs)
3 - 7 February 2014
Statement by Ambassador Masood Khan,
Permanent Representative of Pakistan
On
Promoting equality, including social equity, gender equality and
women’s empowerment
Co-Chair,
I have the honour to speak on behalf of India, Sri Lanka and my own
country, Pakistan.
Our Troika aligns itself with the statement made by the distinguished
representative of Bolivia on behalf of the Group of 77 and China.
We thank the speakers and panelists for their substantive and
constructive ideas; and the Technical Support Team for their
historical synopses and constructive analyses on the issues before us:
equality, including social equity, gender equality and women's
empowerment.
Co-Chair,
We turn to equality first.
Recent reports and studies indicate that inequality both within and
among nations is startling and, if left unchecked, it would grow
rapidly in the years to come. It is our collective responsibility to
reverse this trend.
2
Income inequality at the global level is stark: an estimated eight per
cent of the world population has fifty percent of the world's income;
while the remaining ninety two percent earn the other fifty percent.
In a report on Inequality launched last week, UNDP has established
that at the global levels, the richest 1% of the world population
controls 40% of global assets.
Confirming this trend, Oxfam's findings indicate that 85 richest
people of the world own the same amount of wealth as 3.5 billion
poor people across the globe. It is the same world, where 1.2 billion
people eke out their living on US $ 1.25 a day or less.
Simply put, in a world of plenty, vast swathes of humanity are barely
surviving and remain economically deprived of opportunity and
income.
Co-Chair,
We are not here to quibble with the veracity of the statistics about
inequality or the comparative merits of various economic models. We
are here to deal with inequality within nations, and equally
importantly inequality amongst nations. This is an unfinished business
of the UN Millennium Declaration that underlined our collective
responsibility to "uphold the international principles of human
dignity, equality and equity at the global level".
By now, we all know that addressing inequality in regard to income
and opportunity as well as social inequity are core imperatives within
the evolving framework of sustainable development. These
imperatives cut across many sustainable development goals, which we
want to be action-oriented, concise and easy to communicate, limited
in number, aspirational, global in nature and universally applicable to
all countries.
3
The pivotal objective of our work, in our view, is that every adult,
every woman, every child, and, in fact, every nation should have a
starting point that does not undermine their opportunity to reach a
higher plane of economic growth and social productivity.
In sum, tackling inequality should be the front, center and end of our
work.
While tackling inequality, what we need is more not less economic
growth. At the same time, we need to mobilize and upscale
investments in social and human capital development – in education,
in health care, in rural development, in housing and in rural
infrastructure. We also need to rapidly create new productive job
opportunities for our people. Empowering people to benefit from
economic growth makes the growth more equitable. Such equitable
growth in turn generates more and sustained growth that creates much
needed resources to pull people out of poverty.
We must also be able to pay equal attention in our work to the
question of inequality between countries, which, as many speakers
have pointed out, in fact directly contributes to inequality within
countries. The role of unequal multilateral trade and subsidy rules, the
growing imbalance in the IPR regime, better regulation of global
financial markets, enhancing market access to Least Developed
Countries must all be part of our discussion on a deliverable on
inequality.
Co-Chair,
Our troika believes that the following elements can assist us in
crafting a holistic approach to tackling inequality in the SDGs:
(i) Moving x% of countries by 2030 from the World Bank’s low
and middle income category to a higher category respectively;
4
(ii) Reforming the rules for international trade, finance, business
accounting and intellectual property to ensure consistency with
the achievement of sustainable development goals;
(iii) Increasing cross border movement of skilled professionals from
developing to developed countries;
(iv) Enhancing people’s resilience notably to disaster, and violence;
(v) Increasing the share of industrial sector in the GDP of
developing countries;
(vi) Ensuring universal quality primary education;
(vii) Enhancing access to medicines and vaccines for preventable
disease;
(viii) Promoting the coverage of targeted cash transfers; and
(ix) Enhancing investment in social and economic infrastructure to
reduce imbalance between developed and underdeveloped
regions.
Co-Chair,
Moving to the second part of our theme, we would emphasize that this
Group would have to put gender equality and women's empowerment
at the very center of our discourse, because this too is a cross-cutting
theme that impinges on our goals for eradication of poverty and
sustainable development.
Evidence-based research shows that gender equality, women's
empowerment and promotion and protection of women's rights
catalyze a shift in societies and nations towards economic
development, social stability and equilibrium between human
population and environment.
5
Women in many countries continue to bear the brunt of poverty,
disease, violence, and disasters. They face discrimination, exclusion
and marginalization. Women also often do enormous amounts of
work in running and managing households, which is not recognized.
The best way to rectify this situation is to make gender equality a
transformative, stand-alone goal, mainstream it across all other goals
and assign measurable targets and indicators for it.
Fortunately, for this goal we do not have to start from scratch. An
SDG on gender equality and women's empowerment will be a
reincarnation of MDGs 3 and 5 to accomplish our unfinished agenda
by making more ambitious commitments. By now, we know what
works and what doesn't in the light of the experience we have
accumulated in the last 15 years while implementing these MDGs.
We have learnt that gender parity in education; reducing women
mortality ratios and universal access to reproductive health care have
fallen behind. Besides, MDG 3 did not include, for instance, violence
against women, access to credit, and equal participation in public
decision-making.
We must also recognize that just as women are the worst affected by
poverty and lack of economic opportunities, and therefore, they
should be the first beneficiaries of inclusive development. A robust
development-centric agenda that reduces poverty, boosts inclusive
economic growth, promotes infrastructure, and accelerates access to
modern energy is the best guarantee for women’s empowerment.
A development-centered and poverty-focused agenda therefore is the
first premise of promoting women’s empowerment.
Co-Chair,
This troika believes that the future agenda must be about development
and empowerment. To this end, we believe that the following
elements would be helpful:
6
i. increasing women’s political voice and economic participation
in all strata of life;
ii. Ensuring universal access for women to education opportunities;
iii. Ensuring equal access to economic opportunities and resources
including access to credit and ownership of productive assets;
iv. Eliminating violence against women and girls;
v. Ensuring equal pay for equal work.
In addition, Mr. Co-Chair, we believe that empowering women using
enabling technologies can be a game changer if harnessed and applied
to its full potential in developing countries. We can significantly
expand the ambit of applying such enabling technologies in particular
ICT technologies for women in education, access to clean drinking
water, healthcare, rural handicrafts and communications and
decentralize their uses by transferring the access, control,
management and ownership of such technologies to rural women
themselves and by doing so, bring about structural transformation in
the lives of millions of women across the world.
Co-Chair,
We would also like to highlight the need for addressing and
integrating the concerns of persons with disabilities. They have poorer
health, lower educational achievements, less economic participation
and higher rates of poverty and inequality than people without
disability. The sustainable development goals should holistically
address their concerns across several goals.
On a lighter note, our Troika believes that we should also focus on
ensuring gender parity in sports, particularly cricket. We believe that
all women of the world must have an opportunity to play cricket,
which in our part of the world is no less than a creed. We are happy to
7
announce that women cricket teams of Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka
have performed exceedingly well in a game that has hitherto been
dominated by men. As recently as last week, International Cricket
Council launched a Women’s World Cup. Our three nations look
forward to participating in the games for this Cup.
I thank you Co-Chair.
The Eighth Session of the Open Working Group on Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs)
3 - 7 February 2014
Statement by Ambassador Masood Khan,
Permanent Representative of Pakistan
On
Promoting equality, including social equity, gender equality and
women’s empowerment
Co-Chair,
I have the honour to speak on behalf of India, Sri Lanka and my own
country, Pakistan.
Our Troika aligns itself with the statement made by the distinguished
representative of Bolivia on behalf of the Group of 77 and China.
We thank the speakers and panelists for their substantive and
constructive ideas; and the Technical Support Team for their
historical synopses and constructive analyses on the issues before us:
equality, including social equity, gender equality and women's
empowerment.
Co-Chair,
We turn to equality first.
Recent reports and studies indicate that inequality both within and
among nations is startling and, if left unchecked, it would grow
rapidly in the years to come. It is our collective responsibility to
reverse this trend.
2
Income inequality at the global level is stark: an estimated eight per
cent of the world population has fifty percent of the world's income;
while the remaining ninety two percent earn the other fifty percent.
In a report on Inequality launched last week, UNDP has established
that at the global levels, the richest 1% of the world population
controls 40% of global assets.
Confirming this trend, Oxfam's findings indicate that 85 richest
people of the world own the same amount of wealth as 3.5 billion
poor people across the globe. It is the same world, where 1.2 billion
people eke out their living on US $ 1.25 a day or less.
Simply put, in a world of plenty, vast swathes of humanity are barely
surviving and remain economically deprived of opportunity and
income.
Co-Chair,
We are not here to quibble with the veracity of the statistics about
inequality or the comparative merits of various economic models. We
are here to deal with inequality within nations, and equally
importantly inequality amongst nations. This is an unfinished business
of the UN Millennium Declaration that underlined our collective
responsibility to "uphold the international principles of human
dignity, equality and equity at the global level".
By now, we all know that addressing inequality in regard to income
and opportunity as well as social inequity are core imperatives within
the evolving framework of sustainable development. These
imperatives cut across many sustainable development goals, which we
want to be action-oriented, concise and easy to communicate, limited
in number, aspirational, global in nature and universally applicable to
all countries.
3
The pivotal objective of our work, in our view, is that every adult,
every woman, every child, and, in fact, every nation should have a
starting point that does not undermine their opportunity to reach a
higher plane of economic growth and social productivity.
In sum, tackling inequality should be the front, center and end of our
work.
While tackling inequality, what we need is more not less economic
growth. At the same time, we need to mobilize and upscale
investments in social and human capital development – in education,
in health care, in rural development, in housing and in rural
infrastructure. We also need to rapidly create new productive job
opportunities for our people. Empowering people to benefit from
economic growth makes the growth more equitable. Such equitable
growth in turn generates more and sustained growth that creates much
needed resources to pull people out of poverty.
We must also be able to pay equal attention in our work to the
question of inequality between countries, which, as many speakers
have pointed out, in fact directly contributes to inequality within
countries. The role of unequal multilateral trade and subsidy rules, the
growing imbalance in the IPR regime, better regulation of global
financial markets, enhancing market access to Least Developed
Countries must all be part of our discussion on a deliverable on
inequality.
Co-Chair,
Our troika believes that the following elements can assist us in
crafting a holistic approach to tackling inequality in the SDGs:
(i) Moving x% of countries by 2030 from the World Bank’s low
and middle income category to a higher category respectively;
4
(ii) Reforming the rules for international trade, finance, business
accounting and intellectual property to ensure consistency with
the achievement of sustainable development goals;
(iii) Increasing cross border movement of skilled professionals from
developing to developed countries;
(iv) Enhancing people’s resilience notably to disaster, and violence;
(v) Increasing the share of industrial sector in the GDP of
developing countries;
(vi) Ensuring universal quality primary education;
(vii) Enhancing access to medicines and vaccines for preventable
disease;
(viii) Promoting the coverage of targeted cash transfers; and
(ix) Enhancing investment in social and economic infrastructure to
reduce imbalance between developed and underdeveloped
regions.
Co-Chair,
Moving to the second part of our theme, we would emphasize that this
Group would have to put gender equality and women's empowerment
at the very center of our discourse, because this too is a cross-cutting
theme that impinges on our goals for eradication of poverty and
sustainable development.
Evidence-based research shows that gender equality, women's
empowerment and promotion and protection of women's rights
catalyze a shift in societies and nations towards economic
development, social stability and equilibrium between human
population and environment.
5
Women in many countries continue to bear the brunt of poverty,
disease, violence, and disasters. They face discrimination, exclusion
and marginalization. Women also often do enormous amounts of
work in running and managing households, which is not recognized.
The best way to rectify this situation is to make gender equality a
transformative, stand-alone goal, mainstream it across all other goals
and assign measurable targets and indicators for it.
Fortunately, for this goal we do not have to start from scratch. An
SDG on gender equality and women's empowerment will be a
reincarnation of MDGs 3 and 5 to accomplish our unfinished agenda
by making more ambitious commitments. By now, we know what
works and what doesn't in the light of the experience we have
accumulated in the last 15 years while implementing these MDGs.
We have learnt that gender parity in education; reducing women
mortality ratios and universal access to reproductive health care have
fallen behind. Besides, MDG 3 did not include, for instance, violence
against women, access to credit, and equal participation in public
decision-making.
We must also recognize that just as women are the worst affected by
poverty and lack of economic opportunities, and therefore, they
should be the first beneficiaries of inclusive development. A robust
development-centric agenda that reduces poverty, boosts inclusive
economic growth, promotes infrastructure, and accelerates access to
modern energy is the best guarantee for women’s empowerment.
A development-centered and poverty-focused agenda therefore is the
first premise of promoting women’s empowerment.
Co-Chair,
This troika believes that the future agenda must be about development
and empowerment. To this end, we believe that the following
elements would be helpful:
6
i. increasing women’s political voice and economic participation
in all strata of life;
ii. Ensuring universal access for women to education opportunities;
iii. Ensuring equal access to economic opportunities and resources
including access to credit and ownership of productive assets;
iv. Eliminating violence against women and girls;
v. Ensuring equal pay for equal work.
In addition, Mr. Co-Chair, we believe that empowering women using
enabling technologies can be a game changer if harnessed and applied
to its full potential in developing countries. We can significantly
expand the ambit of applying such enabling technologies in particular
ICT technologies for women in education, access to clean drinking
water, healthcare, rural handicrafts and communications and
decentralize their uses by transferring the access, control,
management and ownership of such technologies to rural women
themselves and by doing so, bring about structural transformation in
the lives of millions of women across the world.
Co-Chair,
We would also like to highlight the need for addressing and
integrating the concerns of persons with disabilities. They have poorer
health, lower educational achievements, less economic participation
and higher rates of poverty and inequality than people without
disability. The sustainable development goals should holistically
address their concerns across several goals.
On a lighter note, our Troika believes that we should also focus on
ensuring gender parity in sports, particularly cricket. We believe that
all women of the world must have an opportunity to play cricket,
which in our part of the world is no less than a creed. We are happy to
7
announce that women cricket teams of Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka
have performed exceedingly well in a game that has hitherto been
dominated by men. As recently as last week, International Cricket
Council launched a Women’s World Cup. Our three nations look
forward to participating in the games for this Cup.
I thank you Co-Chair.