“The lack of investment in gender equality must be reversed”—Lakshmi Puri

[Check against Delivery]

I thank the Governments of Brazil and the UK for the invitation to participate in this High-Level Debate.

International human rights commitments, i.e. the Beijing Platform for Action, are essential to reinforce the importance of international cooperation as an instrument to promote action in favour of gender equality globally and to strengthen strategic partnerships towards achieving equality between women and men by 2030, as stated in the Planet 50-50 campaign.

The 20-year review of the Beijing Platform for Action shows that underinvestment in gender equality and women’s empowerment has contributed to slow and uneven progress in all of the 12 critical areas of concern. Inadequate financing hinders the implementation of gender-responsive laws and policies. The costs of national gender equality plans further reveal financing gaps often as high as 90 per cent.

UN Women appreciates and welcomes this Triangular and South-South Cooperation partnership, related to the promotion of human rights and gender equality. Increasingly South-South and Triangular cooperation, along with trade, investment and development assistance, are seen as an important complement to North-South cooperation in accelerating development particularly in Least Developed Countries (LDCs), Land-Locked Developing Countries (LLDCs) and Small Island Developing States (SIDS). We need to continue to leverage the opportunity of these important and innovative international partnership as a means to address the chronic underinvestment in gender equality and the empowerment of women.

Indeed, this cooperation has shown enormous potential to enable strategic and innovative international development partnerships between governments and the UN system to promote the empowerment of women and girls. Through the 59^th session of the Commission on the Status of Women’s (CSW) Political Declaration, Member States rightly stressed the urgent need for “significantly increased investment to close resource gaps, including through the mobilization of financial resources from all sources, including domestic resource mobilization and allocation and increased priority on gender equality and the empowerment of women in official development assistance to build on progress achieved and ensure that official development assistance is used effectively to contribute to the implementation of the Platform for Action.” South-south and triangular cooperation is certainly part of that strategy as it effectively allows the mobilization of innovative sources of financing for gender equality.

In Addis Ababa last year, Member States agreed on a global framework for financing sustainable development to 2030 that prioritizes gender equality and women’s human rights. UN Women strongly advocated for “transformative financing” for gender equality and women’s empowerment. Our advocacy stemmed from the fact that the lack of investment in gender equality must be reversed if we are to realize the transformative vision of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5 and the gender equality commitments across all the other SDGs.

Also, a number of Member States have laid out this vision by endorsing UN Women’s Addis Ababa Action Plan on Transformative Financing for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (GEWE). This Plan calls on all actors to adopt a number of strategic policy actions—at domestic and international level—to mobilize maximum resources to implement new and existing gender quality commitments.

For example, the Action Plan calls for a reorientation and reformulation of fiscal policies to increase fiscal space for gender investments, as well as, improving tax administration and compliance, and eliminating both the implicit and explicit gender biases in tax systems.

The Action Plan also calls for overseas development assistance (ODA) to be a dynamic driver for advancing gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls globally. To enhance and maximize the quality of gender equality-focused ODA, it should be targeted and mainstreamed across all sectors where spending remains inadequate such as in agriculture, water and sanitation, transport and energy—especially in the economic sectors.

Other actors should build on the lessons learned from gender-equality focused ODA. All sources of funding, including South-South and Triangular Cooperation, should be marked in their contribution to gender equality. In addition, there should be clear tracking of funding amounts going to the gender equality objective.

Reliable data is essential to effectively monitor the SDGs, including meeting financial commitments and effective financing allocations. The proposed indicator under SDG 5 that measures the number of countries which have set up systems to track gender equality allocations and to make those allocations public, will allow the collection of comparable data across countries to ascertain how much goes towards gender equality programming.

While States have the primary responsibility to deliver results for women, we know that the private sector will play an important role in financing the 2030 Agenda. This must be buttressed with strong domestic regulatory frameworks to make private actors accountable and ensure that private financing is fully aligned with national development and national gender equality objectives.

Private actors must take full account of the gender implications of their investments as well as its own internal operations. They must adopt UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights as well as the Women’s Empowerment Principles that set expectations for business to promote gender equality and empowerment of women in the workplace, market and community.

Women’s organizations at local, national, regional and global level must be adequately funded. Decisions on public spending and priority setting should be participatory and inclusive with adequate space, resources for women’s organizations to participate and influence outcomes.

Finally, let me stress that in order for financing for gender equality to be truly transformative, it requires efforts by all actors to address both the structural causes and consequences of gender inequality. Therefore, it is central for gender equality and women’s empowerment to build multi-stakeholder partnerships in order to achieve adequate, predictable and robust investment and financing. This cannot be done without the full and equal participation of women and women’s organizations in decision-making at all levels. We ask for women’s organizations to have a seat at the negotiation tables of the South-South and Triangular cooperation. This is to ensure effective and transformative gender equality results in any development effort.

I thank you.