Zainab Shumail, APWLD,on behalf of the CS FfD Mechanism Intervention delivered at the Zero draft para by para comments: A global financing framework

Monday February 10, 2025

Thank you, Chair. I speak on behalf of the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development, and the Civil Society FfD Mechanism.

This is the first time in the history of FfD that civil society has been shut out of negotiations. We reject these modalities. FfD4 Seville’s legacy will be the shrinking of civil society space.

While FfD4 is expected to reinforce and renew prior commitments and existing efforts, especially those of the Addis Ababa Action Agenda (AAAA), we are concerned that the section on Global Financing Framework fails to take a structural approach in addressing systemic issues.

The text makes little to no mention, particularly, of the human rights and fundamental freedoms of women and girls in all their diversity, nor the continued violation of the rights of workers, migrants, indigenous communities, people by descent, people with disabilities and other disproportionately affected marginalised groups.

Gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls has been merely instrumentalised and mentioned in a tokenistic way, without recognising the structures that perpetuate discrimination and inequalities for women and girls. Given the 30th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, and the global trend on the roll-back of gender equality rights, it is essential that the Outcome Document prioritises a gender transformative approach and recognizes it as key to achieving sustainable development.

Feminists demand a systems approach that addresses the deeply patriarchal root causes of the crises, and prioritises rights-based development programming. We demand transformative structural solutions toward the objective of gender and race equity, including through scaling up non-debt creating public financing, gender-responsive and transformative solutions across all dimensions of sustainable development.

There is an urgency to reverse the neocolonial, neoliberal patterns for equitable financing for the Global South, and usher in a just, equitable and transformative financial architecture that is based on care, justice and reparations.

Specifically:

1. We call for incorporating a feminist approach to fiscal policies to achieve sufficient financing that guarantees women’s human rights and substantive equality between women and men, and between and within countries;

2. We call for a UN Convention Framework on Tax, and an explicit reference to global and domestic tax reform to raise revenue through progressive tax systems that recognise and promote women’s and girls’ rights, and reduce economic and gender inequalities;

3. We call for a UN Convention on Sovereign Debt for a multilateral debt resolution, which entails debt renegotiation processes, and debt relief, including cancellation of odious and illegitimate debts;

4. We call for a change in the instruments that manage tax systems and public indebtedness, such as fiscal rules and debt sustainability analysis. The austerity policies implemented to guarantee the sustainability of the debt have a disproportionate effect on women and girls, hindering the guarantee of their rights and the reduction of inequalities. Guaranteeing the benefits of capital cannot take precedence over the sustainability of life;

5. We also reiterate the call to prioritise public financing and provision of universal and quality services in public education, health and nutrition, water, sanitation, transport, social protection and care, and employment, as well as the implementation of programmes for mitigation and adaptation to climate change, which disproportionately affects women;

6. We call for a change in the vision of development financing centred on private financing, as proven experiences with public-private partnerships that do not have as their main objective to guarantee human rights but to generate profits for capital, ultimately have a higher public cost, including more public debt;

7. We call on FfD4 to recognize the crucial role of feminist organizations and civil society in shaping, implementing, and monitoring financial and fiscal policies. Their effective inclusion is imperative to ensure greater accountability and transparency in all processes, and to ensure transformative solutions that effectively respond to the realities of those most affected.