Working Together: Human Rights, the Sustainable Development Goals and Gender Equality

Abstract

This report considers the extent to which human rights and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) can work together to further substantive gender equality. It argues for a synergistic approach, which requires a reconfiguration of both development goals and human rights. The report highlights the central differences between a human rights approach to gender equality and that of the SDGs, but argues that there are nevertheless crucial spaces for synergies between the two systems. One of the risks of placing empowerment of women at the centre of the development agenda is that they will be regarded primarily as carrying the responsibility for development. Because the evidence shows that women are likely to prioritise their children’s welfare in using available resources, they are frequently seen as the key agents for poverty alleviation. For the SDGs to be truly transformative for women, it is therefore crucial to ensure that they are infused with a transformative understanding of gender equality. Rather than simply focussing on like treatment or aggregate outcomes, this requires attention to be paid simultaneously to four dimensions of equality: redressing disadvantage; addressing stereotyping, stigma, prejudice and violence; facilitating voice and participation; and systemic or institutional change. The report uses the lens of transformative equality to compare the ways in which the SDGs and human rights address two main issues: women and reproductive health, and women and poverty. The aim is to construct an evaluative framework based on a multi-dimensional understanding of substantive equality and apply it to selected topics to illuminate areas of potential synergy. The report emphasises that furthering transformative gender equality requires a concerted effort on many fronts. The SDGs, with their many interlocking goals touching on gender equality, represent great promise. However, their focus on aggregate outcomes pays too little attention to the qualitative dimensions of substantive gender equality; while the inadequacy of the accountability mechanisms leaves the attainment of the SDGs vulnerable to political will. The human rights framework, for its part, adds a greater level of accountability and more attention to the individual, as well as aiming to put in place ways to achieve the ultimate goals, and checking that these in turn are human rights compliant. However, the substance of human rights, through the prism of gender equality, is still contested, particularly in relation to women in poverty. Moreover, the accountability structures, while in principle legally binding, are only as strong as the political will of signatory states to implement them. Thus the report closes by reasserting that it is crucial for the two structures to work together in a synergistic manner to achieve transformative gender equality and to ensure that the ambitious promises of the SDGs are not simply fleeting hopes. This in turn depends on sustained civil society action, to hold governments to account both for their promises under the SDGs and under the human rights structure, mobilising all relevant forums both internationally and domestically. The importance of bringing together the SDGs and human rights within a framework of transformative gender equality can be seen by considering an issue of pressing importance: adolescent pregnancy. Pregnancy and childbirth complications are the second most prevalent cause of death among 15 – 19-year-olds, with as many as 70,000 adolescents affected every year. Early and unintended pregnancy also has major detrimental effects on adolescent girls’ social and economic opportunities, as well as that of their families and future generations. Addressing these issues requires a holistic approach encompassing all the dimensions of substantive equality. It has been shown that for each additional year of education, there is a 10 per cent reduction in fertility. At the same time, pregnant girls need to be supported to remain in school. Redressing disadvantage (the first dimension) needs to be accompanied by addressing stigma and violence (the second dimension), for example by providing safe school environments for girls, and protecting them against stigma if pregnant at school. This in turn entails facilitating girls’ inclusion in school and broader society, and ensuring their voice is heard (the third dimension). Behind this is a need for systemic change (the fourth dimension), including the provision of comprehensive sexuality education for both boys and girls, access to contraception and health services; and reducing child marriage. Both the SDGs and the human rights framework bring important resources to achieve these goals, but they need to be aligned and shaped to work together to achieve substantive equality in all its dimensions. Thus addressing adolescent pregnancy is a facet of SDG 1 on eliminating poverty, SDG 3 on promoting healthier lives, SDG 5 on gender equality and SDG 16 on building peaceful and inclusive societies. These set the aggregate goals to be achieved by 2030. But it is through the right to education, the right to health, the right to gender equality and the rights of the child that the specific measures become binding obligations on the State. If all these resources can be aligned and made to work together to achieve the overriding vision of substantive equality for adolescent girls, then the SDGs will be more than a set of grandiose but ultimately empty promises.