Finding finance for gender equality

Conference results in commitment to financing for gender equality.

The Third Financing for Development Conference (FFD3), held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, earlier this month, has now ended, and what has emerged was a clear recognition of gender equality as a critical element in achieving sustainable development.

During the conference, UN Member States adopted the Addis Ababa Action Agenda (AAAA), a global framework for financing for sustainable development, committing to action to achieve economic, social and environmental changes by transforming global finance practices.

In particular, States committed to “ensure gender equality and women’s and girls’ empowerment,” and in doing so reaffirming that this goal and the full realisation of human rights are essential to achieving sustained, inclusive and equitable economic growth and sustainable development.

UN Women engaged intensely in the negotiations of the AAAA, advocating for the inclusion of transformative financing for gender equality, which includes upscaling resources for the implementation of gender equality commitments and strengthening support for gender equality and women’s empowerment institutions.

UN Women will now work with a group of Member States to implement an Action Plan on Transformative Financing for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment, to ensure that the gender commitments that were included in the agreed text will be turned into actions.

During her four-day mission to FFD3, UN Women’s executive director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka contributed to official sessions such as the official opening and as a panelist on Roundtable 2 on “Ensuring Policy Coherence and an Enabling Environment at all Levels for Sustainable Development” – you can watch the archived webcast here – as well as several other meetings and side events.

She also engaged with key government officials and stakeholders in order to promote enhanced gender-responsive planning and budgeting and targeted investments towards gender equality institutions and programmes.

In each and all of the meetings she emphasised that the inclusion of gender-responsive financing in the AAAA was critical if sustainable development was to be achieved for all.

UN Women organised three high-level side events with key stakeholders to join forces in harnessing support for strong gender equality commitments in the AAAA, and UN Women’s deputy executive director Lakshmi Puri launched the Action Plan on Transformative Financing for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment with a select group of Member States.

Puri also spoke at the UN-Women-supported Women’s Forum and the Civil Society Forum 10-12 July, where she emphasised the important role of civil society in influencing global agreements and keeping their governments accountable, saying: “we have to work together to push our common agenda forward”.

At the start of the conference, Puri contributed to one side event linking financing of gender equality to human rights and economic justice, and at another side event organised by the Global Migration Group on remittances and the contributions of the diaspora to financing sustainable development.

“With these tools, we know WHAT needs to be done and HOW it can be done,” said Letty Chiwara, UN Women’s Representative to Ethiopia, the African Union and UNECA, as she delivered UN Women’s statement at the plenary on 16 July 2015 – which you can see on the archived webcast here.

“New and existing commitments on gender equality require unprecedented and transformative financing, in scale, scope, ambition and quality, from all sources and at all levels.”

Throughout her meetings, Mlambo-Ngcuka emphasised that the AAAA was a critical element in the move from policy to practice.

“We need to move from side events to the plenary. From Women’s Ministries to [being] the responsibility of Heads of States,” she said during the International Business Forum on 14 July.

And although the AAAA is a key document for the implementation of the SDGs, she stressed that previous commitments are already in place.

In the Political Declaration adopted this year in March at the 59th Commission on the Status of Women, Member States pledged to take concrete action to accelerate implementing the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action through significantly increased investment to close resource gaps, including through domestic resources and official development assistance.

Mlambo-Ngcuka emphasised that, starting from the 60th session of the Commission on the Status of Women, UN Women will start tracking progress on the implementation of the SDGs, the AAAA, as well as all other relevant commitments in order to achieve Planet 50:50 and “ban the term gender inequality by 2030”.