Strategising for Just and Sustainable Development for Women

APWLD is a member of the Women’s Major Group and we have contributed through the process globally and regionally.We aim to engage in all intersessional meetings and provide analysis of the various drafts. We will promote the centrality of rural and indigenous women to the document, their key content demands and argue for strong accountability mechanisms that include accountability to women.

Approximately 25 women from national and regional organisations in Asia Pacific will join APWLD for a two-day key regional preparatory event for Rio+20.

Regional Workshop:

APWLD held a workshop with women from Southeast Asia in Bangkok in January. During this workshop the Rio process was introduced to rural and indigenous women’s groups and discussions were held around their plans (or possibilities) to engage with the Rio process. Participants identified the key focus that they wanted to bring to Rio (and to CSW).
This next workshop will extend beyond Southeast Asia and will involve more focused strategising around targets, key messages and activities. It will provide the women who attend the workshop to share the analysis on the ongoing debates on the development architecture, envision the feminist development framework and strategise their advocacy.

Workshop Objectives:

• Build capacity of women’s organizations around development architecture;
• Facilitate the discussion on a just and sustainable development model (updating the current skeleton with inputs from participants);
• Strategise feminist advocacy towards, during and post Rio+20 Conference at national, regional and international levels;
• Map the various plans of women’s organizations to engage with Rio and also to continue with work on development cooperation and the post Busan policy implementation.

The workshop will enable participants to:

• Deepen their understanding on the issues and process of international development architecture;
• Have clearer and detailed advocacy plan towards Rio+20
• Work in solidarity to shift development models

Building on the achievements made in the areas of development effectiveness and sustainable development, and addressing the systemic and emerging issues, APWLD will facilitate discussion and development of the feminist model for sustainable development.  Diverse voices of women in the region will be consolidated, which will inform the on-going discussion on sustainable development and global development architecture.

The emerging Feminist Development priorities

APWLD will argue for a development model that is:

• Just and sustainable
• Focused on rights enjoyment
• Informed and owned by marginalised people (particularly women) in the global south
• Aims to ensure resources are more equitably enjoyed within and between countries
• Converges development frameworks in a democratic space (F4D, OECD DAC, MDGs, Rio)
• Has strong accountability mechanisms to its presumed beneficiaries (particularly RI women)

Four key goals that we will focus on:

1. Equitable access to natural resources such as renewable energy; land, food, water
2. Decent work, living wage;
3. Peace:  eradication of VAW and militarisation
4. Voice:  ensuring democratic ownership and meaningful participation of marginalised women and peoples

Outline of the sessions

DAY ONE (12 May)
Introduction of the workshop and participants
I. From Busan (HLF4) to Rio+20 and towards 2015 – political mapping

• Overview of  the discussion on the international development architecture;
• Prospects of post Rio+20 to 2015

II. Analysis of the current negotiations in the Rio+20 process

• Overview and updates from the process
• The key challenges in the negotiations
• Analysis of the draft outcome document

DAY TWO (13 May)
III. Planning and strategising our advocacy towards and during Rio+20

• Introduction of the advocacy plan by Women Major Group (global and regional)
• Introduction of APWLD campaign towards Rio+20 and activities during the Rio+20
• Advocacy campaign planning at national / community / regional levels
• Inputs to the Asian Women Major Group statement

Background

The UN Declaration on the Right to Development recognises development as a comprehensive economic, social, cultural and political process that through which all human rights and fundamental freedoms can be fully realised.  In reality, the dominant development framework has been primarily focused on ‘economic growth’. Increasingly civil society, researchers and human rights focused agencies recognise that economic growth is not synonymous with human development.   Conversely, this model has failed to remedy inequalities and reinforces income disparity. Unregulated growth models have also proven to be environmentally disastrous – both promiting unsustainable resource extraction, large scale land clearing and agro-business and fuelling global warming. The model has particularly failed rural, indigenous and migrant women who bare the brunt of climate disasters, are continually loosing access to land and resources and remain amongst the most economically marginalised.

APWLD believes a new development framework must be derived from those people that ‘development’ is supposed to benefit – poor, marginalised women of the global south. They are best able to identify both the problems and solutions. Their voices are rarely central to development policy setting and as such development frameworks have at too often been technocratic and ineffectual and, at worst, reinforced global and local inequalities and fuelled human rights violations.

A feminist vision for international development cooperation was developed as the Women’s Organisations Key Demands in the lead up to the 4th High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (HLF-4). It identifies transformation of power relations and the democratic redistribution of wealth, which counters norms and structures of injustice and war and the creation of new forms of relations based on respect, solidarity, equity, inclusion, non-subordination and justice for all as fundamental to development.

Towards Rio+20, APWLD has identified the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) also known as Rio+20, 20-22 June 2012 as a crucial policy making venue that will significantly impact on development frameworks. The zero draft of the outcome document, “The Future We Want” was released in January this year based on the inputs/proposals made by various stakeholders (member states, UN and IGOs and Major Groups).

APWLD is a member of the Women’s Major Group and has contributed through that process globally and regionally. If possible we aim to engage in all intersessional meetings and provide analysis of the various drafts. We will promote the centrality of rural and indigenous women to the document, their key content demands and argue for strong accountability mechanisms that include accountability to women.

APWLD will aim to ensure rural and indigenous women are visible and audible in the Rio+20 negotiations. A campaign, informed by rural and indigenous women, will take place prior to, during and after the Rio meeting. The campaign focuses on women’s rights to resources and development.  At national and community level consultations will be organised to reach out to more rural and indigenous women to build their capacity on advocacy as well as inviting relevant government sectors and other stakeholders to discuss their vision of development.