For SDGs, women are subjects and actors, says Nabarro

One of the largest gathering of stakeholders in women’s health and empowerment held in Copenhagen to understand how to make 17 Sustainable Development Goals picked by world governments work for women. David Nabarro, special adviser to the UN Secretary-General on the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development and climate change, draws the task of working with […]

One of the largest gathering of stakeholders in women’s health and empowerment held in Copenhagen to understand how to make 17 Sustainable Development Goals picked by world governments work for women.

David Nabarro, special adviser to the UN Secretary-General on the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development and climate change, draws the task of working with member states and stakeholders to galvanise action on implementing the Agenda.

He told Daily Trust in Copenhagen, “Unless the [SDGs] are viewed through the eyes, hearts and souls of women, they won’t be got right.”

To what extent do the SDGs go to the grassroots? Or do we finish here and go back to our respective capitals and that becomes the end of it.

SDGs have been agreed by world leaders based on extensive consultation that went on for 2 ½ years, involving people at all levels within all countries of the world, including more than 7 million voting for their chosen goals and also consultation progress organised by the UN and civil society groups that really took in just about every country in the world.

But there is something else about this. If you look at these goals, they are amazingly interesting, because they cover just about every aspect of the basic existence of every human being in the world. They are not ivory tower, they are basic and real.

One of the reasons why they’ve taken a life of their own is that governments, communities, civil societies, businesses everywhere are saying, yeah, these make sense to us. Okay, they are 17—it’s quite a broad group of commitments, but they make sense because they reflect reality of life for an awful lot of people, including very poor people.

That’s why this was taken on, it is not because somebody’s come along and said SDGs are great, it is because actually this is what government and community organisations are talking about and what makes sense to them. In the past people have felt that what the international community was looking at and the realities of people’s lives were somewhat distant from each other.

We were referred to as working in ivory towers. This time, communities brought their needs to the international system and now we are actually turning round and saying okay we will reorganise ourselves around the reality of what matters to people everywhere.

A lot of concern about SDGs has to do with women. Is that a problem?

It is the reverse of a problem. It is a really brilliant thing that the SDGs include a watermark of gender equity and women empowerment that goes right across all of them—all the goals and all the targets. Indeed, there’s just no way that this ambitious agenda can be realised without the full engagement and participation of women.

It is not just saying women are the objects of development and we are going to make women’s lives better, no. It is: women are the subjects, women are the actors.

Those 17 SDGs in the 2030 development agenda just can’t be implemented unless women are right, front and centre of the implementation process. Because unless the goals are viewed through the eyes, hearts and souls of women, they won’t be got right. Because they are actually concerns that are much better felt by women than by men because they cut across the whole spectrum of what women do, which is to produce, reproduce, nurture and organise so much of human existence.

The status of women around the world will differ from place to place as to how quickly they are ready to step forward and take charge, participate. How is that going to work out?

I think women will be ready to step forward and participate everywhere. This is an agenda that fits naturally with the interests of women. I think the issue more is whether they will be enabled to do so, or whether factors, structures in society will actually inhibit their ability to do so.

If we look at what women do when they are in charge of things around the world, they tend to adopt approaches that very similar to what’s in the SDGs and they have been doing so for years. So I don’t think it will be difficult. So much of what’s in the SDGs is being done in good development programmes, particularly women-headed development programmes everywhere anyway. It is just a case of actually putting it down on paper and saying this is what the world has agreed.

Ask women anywhere what they have been doing in development for years. They have been looking after the natural resources with care, they have been paying attention to the atmosphere and reducing pollution, they have been looking after the interests of their children—nutrition as well as health—they have been trying to get education, they have been trying to make sure that we have institutions that resolve conflict peacefully without going to war, they have been working in partnership, because that’s what come naturally to them.

And I think men who are feminists are also doing things in a similar way.

And how do you plan to engage governments to be accountable for any or all of these goals?

Governments made a commitment to pursue these goals in September 2015, and they are accountable to their people and to each other for implementing these goals.

I don’t think we have to call them to account, I think governments themselves are doing it and they are going to be reporting every year in a high level political forum. Our job is to create the space in which that accountability can happen.

The UN secretariat is in this regard much more of a facilitator and a catalyst that an actual body to whom governments will be accountable. They will be accountable to their people, to each other, and we in the UN will create the context within which this happens and we will do this under instructions from our member states through a resolution of their forming.