28 March 2012: UN Women, in collaboration with the Governments of Brazil and Switzerland, hosted a special dialogue on the gender dimension, sustainable development goals and a post-2015 development agenda, in preparation for the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD, or Rio+20).
The dialogue, which was held on 21 March 2012, in New York, USA, with the Women’s Major Group, focused on how to better integrate gender equality into the international development agenda beyond 2015, once the targeted deadline for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have been reached, as well as into the sustainable development goals, which the Government of Colombia has proposed for adoption at Rio+20.
Participants at the dialogue agreed on four key principles as being critical to the upcoming global development agenda, including the need for the goals to be: framed from an equality perspective; holistic and integrated across different sectors and thematic areas; inclusive and emerge from strong participation and ownership at local, national, regional and global levels; and aligned with existing declarations and normative frameworks in order to facilitate implementation, monitoring and sustainable results. Participants also highlighted that the dialogue for the developments goals and agendas should be combined, in order to avoid duplication and parallel processes. Many participants stressed the need to build on the experience with the MDGs, including the success of the MDG on gender equality and women’s empowerment which has a “multiplier effect” across all the other development goals.
At the end of the event, participants agreed to establish an informal working group to ensure that a gender perspective continues to be placed high on the global development agenda, particularly at Rio+20. [UN Women News Release]