19 May 2014. El Sereif: School girls from El Sereif, North Darfur, perform traditional songs and dances during a cultural and sports event organized by UNAMID as part of the campaign “We need peace now”.
The fighting in Jabel Amir area over the goldmines between tribes Abbala (camel shepherds) and Beni Hussein (cattle shepherds) since 5 January 2013 resulted in a mass displacement of more than 100,000 people, mostly fled to El Sereif and Kabkabiya villages, provoking a serious humanitarian crisis. On 23 July 2013, both tribes leaders signed a peace agreement and, since then, no more clashes have been reported.
Photo by Albert Gonzalez Farran, UNAMID

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” Eleanor  Roosevelt

Today, here in the US, we celebrate Women’s Equality Day, marking 95 years since American women got the right to vote through the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. However, as a global community, we are still far from having true equality for girls and women. There are 193 countries that are members of the United Nations, representing more than 7 billion people— and not a single one of them can claim to have achieved gender equality, including the US. Gender equality does not imply that women and men are the same, but that they have equal value and should have equal rights, responsibilities and opportunities. It’s the female executive in the UK making less than her male peers while performing the same job, the young US college student who was raped with her case dismissed without a proper investigation, the twelve-year old girl in India married without consent, or the widow in Uganda stripped of her land—all are affected by the devaluation of girls and women and a lack of equal rights and opportunities. It’s 2015 and there is not a single country in the world where girls and women have equal rights, responsibilities or opportunities. But, this year, we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to change this.

Having a vision of the world we want is critical, but vision must be followed up with action, and action should be based on the best available evidence and lessons from the past.  Enacted fifteen years ago, the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) proved that when the global community mobilizes around common prior¬ities, we can make progress, saving and improving millions of lives. Millions of deaths from malaria and tuberculosis have been prevented, and we halved the number of women who die during childbirth. We eliminated the gender gap in access to primary education, and more children are in school than ever before. By providing concrete, measurable targets, the MDGs have shown us where we made progress and where we need to do better, including in areas like sexual and reproductive health and rights, violence against girls and women, women’s economic empowerment, secondary education for girls, and child marriage.

It’s 2015 and there is not a single country in the world where girls and women have equal rights, responsibilities or opportunities.

The new global goals, known as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) can do the same and more. They will be adopted by UN member states during a special summit in New York in late September, and will continue the work of the MDGs, while targeting the root causes of poverty and inequality. It’s a huge achievement to have 193 countries agree on a shared set of priorities that reflect the complexity and interconnectedness of today’s challenges, addressing social, economic, and environmental development. Interestingly, out of the 17 goals, gender equality (Goal 5) was one of the first goals that everyone could get behind—albeit with differences in what the targets for this goal should be. In addition, gender issues are integrated throughout the global goals, including in health, education, and access to clean water.

As we approach the historic adoption of the new goals, all the energy that was put into developing and agreeing to them will need to be channeled into implementation. Working together to reach the 17 goals will be the challenge of our generation.

“Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.” John F. Kennedy

In order to achieve these goals, we must take well-known lessons learned from MDG implementation, like the fact that governments alone cannot achieve development objectives, but also break out of our comfort zones and think of new and innovative ways of empowering girls and women. To be clear, there is a great deal of work we are already doing that must continue, particularly when it comes to countries that will not afford girls and women the most basic of rights. In addition to keeping up these efforts, I believe there is utility in thinking about what else we could and should do. There are three areas where I believe all of us, including those of working on women’s issues, must move beyond our comfort zones to create dialogue, partnerships, and innovation in order to be more effective and impactful.

Women sing the Libyan national anthem during a UN-sponsored event designed to encourage female candidates to participate more fully in the country’s first nationwide elections in nearly half a century. The 7 July 2012 poll produced a 200-member General National Congress that will select a new government and set the country on the road to full democratic rule.
(Iason Athanasiadis/UNSMIL)

2012: Women sing the Libyan national anthem during an UN-sponsored event designed to encourage female candidates to participate more in elections. “>

1. Universality: Unlike the MDGs, which were basically envisioned as a roadmap for developing countries, the SDGs are meant to be globally applicable. The new global goals are also meant to take into account different national realities, capacities and levels of development, as well as the need to respect national policies and priorities. However, when it comes to gender equality, universality allows us to link efforts to a larger, global movement, beyond the traditional North/South divide associated with development. This means there’s an opportunity to create more connections between domestic and international efforts—particularly around issues where there is so much progress to me be made everywhere, and not just in the poorest countries. Gender equality is one such issue that cuts across geography and affects everyone.

Although there are lots of reasons for keeping domestic and international efforts separate, and although there are significant differences from country to country around the issues that matter most to girls and women, there is a unifying and underlying thread to it all: the devaluing of girls and women and the lack of equal rights and opportunities. Better linking domestic and international efforts under common global goals can help create a much stronger and united movement for change.

Fatima Abdala, from Barakutili, South Darfur, rests in her small shelter in the Kalma IDP camp near Nyala, South Darfur. UN Photo/Albert G. Farran

2. Multi-sectoral Programming: There is a much better understanding today, as compared to fifteen years ago when the MDGs were adopted, that all actors (governments, private sector, civil society, etc.) need to be part of implementing the new global goals. However, less attention has been given to moving beyond rhetoric when it comes to working across sectors.  A big lesson from the MDGs is that multi-sectoral programming and policy doesn’t just happen because we know it’s a good idea. It’s critical to remove barriers and have incentives for such approaches. For example, funding streams that are earmarked for sectors (such as education, health, or water and sanitation), whether they come from governments, donors or multilateral organizations, incentivize siloed approaches to development. With the new development goals in place, and in going from eight to 17 goals, it will be even more critical to move beyond our comfort zone to incentivize innovative ways to ensure that different sectors come together, placing people and planet at the center. This is particularly critical for achieving gender equality, because there is no one sector that will achieve this goal alone.

One way to do this is for governments and funding organizations to set aside a small percentage of their total investments for innovative multi-sectoral programming.  This would certainly spur innovation at unprecedented levels, allowing, for example, an education program to pay for voluntary family planning services so that adolescent girls don’t drop out of school, or an economic development program to set up child care centers to enable more women to participate in trainings. An interesting sign of the lack of creative thinking on the issue was evident at the Addis Financing for Development Conference. There were a myriad of events organized around the conference, but only one (that I’m aware of) actively focused on bringing together multiple sectors to work together in creative ways—was on girls’ education and HIV prevention. When it comes to siloed programs, business as usual will not deliver the impact we need to make the new global goals a reality.

A young girl sits on a jerry can, as her mother fills up another with water, near the town of Jowhar, Somalia. UN Photo/Tobin Jones

3. People and Planet: Finally, there has been an increased, and welcome, focus on how intricately connected people and planet are—as evidenced in the change in nomenclature, from development goals to sustainable development goals. However, for a variety of well-founded historical reasons, there continues to be hesitancy (on all sides) to better connect the conversation between sustainability, population and sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR).

I recently read one of the best articles I’ve seen in a while on this topic, by Karen Newman and colleagues. I fully agree with their conclusions. Namely that those of us who care about SRHR need to work more closely with sustainable development advocates concerned with a range of issues, including climate change, environmental issues, and food and water security, and to demonstrate how these issues are connected.  Like the authors, and many others, I believe it’s is possible to care about population dynamics and care about human rights at the same time. Those of us working in this field know that empowering girls and women, and giving them access to sexual and reproductive health, including voluntary family planning has significant positive effects on a variety of issues, such as economic growth, population dynamics, and children’s health.

Gender equality is both the right thing to do and the smart thing to do. The critical connection between empowering girls and women and sustainability can become a catalyst for expanding access to voluntary SRH services, increasing access to education, and ending discriminatory policies that disadvantage women.

We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to make major global decisions for the prosperity of people and planet that can mobilize the world around a shared agenda to promote inclusive growth, equality, and opportunity for all while protecting the planet. As UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said, ours can be the first generation to end poverty – and the last generation to address climate change before it is too late. Ours can also be the first generation to reach gender equality—which is instrumental in helping to end extreme poverty and tackle climate change. I hope we don’t have to wait another 95 years to see this happen.

Image: A girl shows the paint used by the Palestinian children to break another Guinness World record for the largest handprinted artwork produced (5,922.2 square meters), at the event organized by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip. UN Photo/Shareef Sarhan.