PREAMBLE
The legacy of Hiroshima is a profound commitment to world peace, born from the devastation of the first deployed atomic bomb in 1945. The 2023 G7 Hiroshima Summit provides the G7 leaders with an unprecedented opportunity to renew and strengthen their commitments to build an equal, just, and peaceful future, where militarism is overcome and the principles of non-violence and human rights are fully respected.
It has become increasingly evident that climate crisis, conflict, pandemic, natural disasters, and global inequalities have disproportionately affected women and girls in all their diversity, especially those from marginalised and vulnerable groups and of diverse SOGIESC. We have to emphasize also that women and girls experiencing intersectional inequalities and discrimination are often the most marginalized. Reasonable accommodation is not being adequately made to ensure their rights and freedoms. There are also concerning accounts from various parts of the world,of backlashes in the form of hate speech and/or physical violence, targeted at those who fight for gender justice, which sometimes take the most cruel and inhumane forms. Even women who simply wish to have a peaceful everyday life with their basic rights duly protected have been subjected to this backlash. Harmful and adverse impacts on women of recent advancement of digital technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) that destructively reinforces conscious as well as unconscious bias should be redressed.
This Communiqué of W7 Japan 2023 has been developed through discussions of feminist experts from 38 countries including youth and those from the Global South, and further refined through youth as well as public consultations with participation from around the globe so that voices and lived realities of those often unheard are reflected.
The Communiqué consists of five thematic areas. Let us emphasize that the perspective of intersectionality and the multiplicity of gender-based inequality and discrimination is placed as the overarching theme of the recommendations of each area.
It is the unyielding belief of the W7 Japan 2023 that peace is more than the absence of war. It requires dismantling of structural violence and injustice which marginalize certain groups of people, especially women and girls. We urge the G7 Leaders to commit to policies that build an equal, just, and peaceful future in a sustainable manner that firmly places gender equality and women’s rights including those of various SOGIESC at its core and take immediate, robust, and transformative actions to deliver on its commitments with tangible resources.
In realizing the commitments of the G7 Summit for advancing gender equality and women’s rights, we can never stress too much the important and critical role that has been played by feminist and women’s rights organizations and movements, especially those working at the grass-roots level. Sufficient and flexible financial, technical, and other resources and opportunities should be ensured to further support and strengthen their activities.
We strongly call on the G7 Leaders to take into consideration the recommendations of the W7 Japan 2023 and duly reflect them in their discussions and declarations. An equal, just, and peaceful future with gender equality at its core is certainly a future that benefits all.
Read the full communique here.
In her capacity as a W7 advisor, Sachini Perera contributed to the communique on behalf of RESURJ and the Alliance for Feminist Movements.