Regional Cooperation, Accountability and Modalities for Implementation of Actions on Population and Sustainable Development in Asia and the Pacific.
Remarks by Sachini Perera of RESURJ as Resource Person of Sub-theme 4 on “Ensuring accountability for commitments and policy coherence.”
Thank you for the introduction. Good morning, everyone. And thank you for the opportunity to make some brief remarks to add an outline to the discussion we’re going to have in this group. So, as mentioned, I’m from Realizing Sexual and Reproductive Justice (RESURJ), a global south collective. And I, myself, am from Sri Lanka.
So when we talk about accountability, as Harjyot has already mentioned, it’s about not just designing policies and programmes with human rights at the center, but also around implementation and state obligations, and also around what multistakeholderism looks like in implementation. It’s also about having the right policy mix and coherence around health, economics, education, social protection, because we understand that population and development cut across all of these different dimensions. And I think we heard from previous speakers about the importance of the whole-of-government approach as well as the importance of looking at the various frameworks and instruments that a lot of our governments are already subscribed to, including the 2030 agenda. And you know how that complements the ICPD programme of action, the Beijing Platform for Action, as well as the generation equality forum action coalitions that are in motion right now.
There are also the state legal obligations that come from the different treaty bodies such as CEDAW, the Convention on Economic Social and Cultural Rights, the Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities, and those other normative instruments. We heard from Rena already about a lot of the challenges to civil society participation. Yet again, multistakeholderism remains one of those key ways of implementing the commitments that are made. And I think there is a serious lack of political will across the region around what actually translates multistakeholderism from an idea into action and how that can look like, especially at the local and national level. This is not just about civil society, either, so for example, we must think about how public health actors feature in these kinds of approaches.
And then there is the private sector. Whether we are on board or not, we know that private financing is a huge part of how some of these implementations are happening. But when I say a “huge part,” I mean a huge part in our aspirations. We don’t see it in terms of the actual commitments, because public financing, as it should be, is still the main way in which we look at accountability. But if we are looking at private money coming into this, then what does corporate accountability look like in our countries? This is an essential question to ask.
I’d like to talk about how accountability is not only about our own governments, but it also encompasses extraterritorial obligations. There is a need for us to look at governments, especially from the Global North countries, who usually are the champions of – let’s say – SRHR, who are also complicit in the kind of neoliberal macroeconomic systems and policies that we are stuck with, which continues to engender the enormous debt and economic crises we are seeing around the region or are experiencing ourselves in all of our countries. We also see a lack of commitment to climate financing from those countries, even though we know the extent of impact that the climate crisis can have on SRHR, whether in the Pacific and the Small Island Developing States, in Pakistan, and all other countries in the region that are facing this.
Further, we have monitored how those dynamics played out around vaccine inequalities and the progression of the COVID-19 pandemic. We have identified migration and the aging population among the key issues emerging in the region, but are looking at the connection between that and the economic crisis and debt crisis? There is increased migration with people looking for employment overseas to escape poverty and unsustainable living conditions. Particularly young people whose aging parents and families increasingly lack care infrastructure including due to austerity measures and the privatization of essential services, which includes health services. Unpaid care work continues to go uncounted and discounted. We see a lack of wealth taxes in our countries. The richest are not getting taxed; it’s the poorest who have been affected by tax reform in a lot of our countries. And we see that a significant portion of public revenue from our governments is going into external debt servicing, instead of public services. And this also affects financing for data systems. Because we know that it’s all well and good to ask for disaggregated data, but actually implementing that takes significant financing. But many of our countries don’t have that kind of financing at the moment.
The Asian and Pacific ministerial declaration (APMD) covers a number of areas in the priority actions, but macroeconomic policies remain the missing link there. But it is essential to include macroeconomic policies when we are talking about financing, because it is not just the responsibility of our countries. Strategies such as debt cancellation and debt restructuring as well as the impact of Global North countries that have voting rights in the IMF and development banks – those have the power to actually make a difference which can ultimately enable more public financing in our countries.
In terms of the Nairobi summit commitments, very few of our countries have made commitments around financing and increasing budget allocations. And then all of the factors I mentioned earlier around the economic crisis and the effects of the pandemic impact this situation. So if I use my country as an example, Sri Lanka has made a commitment around increasing budget allocations for health. But last year, we saw a significant cut to the health budget in Sri Lanka. And we see this across the world–that when there is an economic crisis, health and education are some of the first budgets to be cut, but things such as the defense budget are left untouched. These are issues for us, people working in SRHR or in population and development, to keep a finger on.
Finally, I’ll speak a little bit about opportunities. One is around influencing Financing for Development conversations that are ongoing. There are the annual global forums, but we also know that there is an upcoming convening in the region about financing for development. We want to hear from ESCAP (United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific) colleagues about how we can engage with those. Then I think that G20 and BRICS are spaces to watch. I have not personally followed them closely so I do not know how population and SRHR issues are coming up in those conversations, if at all. But we know our governments are very much committed to some of these spaces. And we see that there is an attempt at shifting the power imbalances in the financing landscape through these spaces.
When it comes to SDGs reporting, we have said that coherence is really important. But we know that SRHR groups disappear from these processes unless SDGs 3, 4, and 5 are being reviewed. So there is a need for us to also acknowledge that our issues are cross cutting across these agendas, and try to engage with the different goals and targets as well, and for those who resource us to understand the importance of those links. Then there is a comprehensive review of the Global Indicator Framework that is coming up in 2025. So next year, there will be a lot of engagement both at national and regional levels around influencing this process, and we need to be a part of that both around the implementation and the gaps we are noticing in the indicators. Laos, Malaysia, Nepal, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Vietnam all have CEDAW reviews coming up in the next year, which is also a potential space to call for accountability around SRHR.
Then of course, what is happening after 2030 is a big conversation now. So the Summit of the Future is one of those spaces that is coming up. There is also call for 100% of official development aid commitments – the ODA commitments – to consider gender equality and for 20% of those funds to promote gender equality as a primary objective. So as SRHR activists, what is our call? Within those allocations but also apart from them, do we have a call around ODA? This is really important in terms of looking at accountability and financing. And then finally, we have multi-stakeholder spaces, like the Alliance For Feminist Movements, which are bringing governments, private philanthropies, women’s funds, and civil society together to have conversations about what the gaps are and how these groups can work together. I’m going to stop my remarks here, but I’ll share a few links about what I was referring to so that there is more information for you all. Thank you so much.