CONFERENCE/MEETING: Joint Statement by Latin America and Caribbean Civil Society Organizations at the Regional Consultation for Latin America and the Caribbean: Challenges and achievements in Implementing the Millennium Development Goals for Women and Gir

Joint Statement by Latin America and Caribbean Civil Society Organizations at the Regional Consultation for Latin America and the Caribbean: Challenges and achievements in implementing the Millennium Development Goals for Women and Girls (Mexico 6 and 7 February 2014).

Networks, national and regional coalitions, campaigns and members of feminist and women's movements coordinated in a pre-Cairo+20 Regional Structure, have taken part in discussions about different United Nations agendas, particularly those related to Beijing+20 and the new post-2015 development agenda. With this as a start, and with the experience we have gained, we call upon our region's Women Ministers on gender equality.
Considered to be a year of dreams 2015 is now seen as a promise to be kept. In 2000 the nations together in a joint commitment to the Millennium Development Goals, but geopolitics prevailed over rigor, wealth over eradicating inequalities, averages that confuse over needed structural changes that now cannot be delayed. Currently in our region, the most unequal in the world, we have figures to try to account for a reality we have been unable to change. Equality between women and men is a fundamental sustainable development condition; however, we are far from seeing effective actions leading to a real cultural change that would eradicate misogyny and gender discrimination.
The present entreaty is called Post-2015 where two agendas converge. On the one hand the failed alchemy of the Millennium Development Goals that omitted giving full recognition to the rights of women -- half of the population - while imposing measures on southern countries to ensure human rights without asking for the same commitment from the north. On the other hand civil society refused to endorse the Rio+20 agenda because of its lack of ambition in an environment diminished by the prevailing predator and failed development model that wears out resources and people. It is essential to consider "other" agendas such as that of Cairo that contain matters so crucial to women's lives, such promising the full exercise of their human rights, particularly their sexual and reproductive rights.
In this context the 58th CSW 58 will be an opportunity to review and share lessons learned. It is you who have to provide this opportunity to emphasize our most urgent needs. There is the urgent need to recognize and guarantee all human rights for all people, in all their human diversity and throughout their life.
The urgent need to move towards models of shared responsibility between the State, the private sector, and rendering accounts to reduce corruption, the concentration of wealth and the obscene impacts it has both socially and environmentally; the urgent need to recognize the contribution made to the economy by women's unpaid work, as well as the historical equal pay for equal work demand; the urgent need for domestic work and unpaid care work to be shared between men and women and for equality in public and private decision-making; the urgent

need to prevent and remedy human rights violations, to eradicate violence against women and girls and to put an end to the associated impunity.
The feminist movement recognizes the importance of eradicating poverty, but you must not be deceived: we know that the bottom line is to eradicate the concentration of wealth and power to provide effective development alternatives. That is our Post-2015 hope.
We are aware that, while there no recipes, it is possible to produce new paradigms. It is no wonder that the most comprehensive proposals are reflected in the agenda of human rights of women because therein lies the most radical full citizenship demand, and it is a struggle women have waged relentlessly. We have, therefore, made a decisive contribution to designing regulatory and public policy instruments, as emphasized in Beijing.
States have clear obligations to respect, protect and guarantee human rights, including those set forth in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Woman. Additionally, there is Beijing Platform for Action as well as the Programme of Action adopted in Cairo and is the instrument par excellence that takes account of the extent of women's human rights, including sexual rights, reproductive rights and safe abortion.
Concerning the global context, the region of Latin America and the Caribbean is a great example of pressing for women's human rights and we have the most advanced regional documents on equality of which the best examples are the Montevideo Consensus on Population and Development (2013), Quito (2007) and Brasilia (2010), and the OAS resolution (2013).
The Post-2015 Agenda should clearly reflect this comprehensive vision that still continue and whose implementation is more necessary and urgent than ever to put a stop to the marginalization, inequality and discrimination faced by millions of women in our region. We do not want to choose between some rights or to reduce agendas. How human rights progress for everyone, women and men, and their enforceability, justiciability and portability are our inalienable rights, as expressed in the Guadalajara Consultation on Post-2015 Agenda.
Is this framework we also demand that it be recognized the most pressing inequalities are the result of historical marginalization, in our region and throughout the world, of different groups of individuals, communities and peoples because of age, sex, health condition, immigration status, ethnic and racial identity, among others, and that require different treatments. Our starting point is the Montevideo Consensus.
In short, with this Post-2015 framework, our aim is to achieve a world order not ruled by exclusion or privilege. To do so basic principles are required governing relations between States, citizens, the private sector, financial institutions and other stakeholders; human rights and the full enjoyment thereof, substantive equality between women and men, environmental

sustainability, within a framework of governance with transparency, participation and accountability.
This is an order requiring States to exercise their mandate to ensure a radical change in the development model with its patterns of production and consumption, reflecting two essential dimensions: the productive and reproductive. We cannot tolerate that this order remains in the hands of private financing or the goodwill of individuals. Solid States, by sharing responsibility and recognizing their citizens' full participation, must assume the task and comply with the commitments set by existing instruments.
The Post-2015 framework should transversalize gender. It should also have concrete targets that respond to how substantive equality is achieved and women's human rights guaranteed. These goals should be both qualitative and quantitative, and be founded on the international human rights framework. We do not want half-hearted commitments or words that are not backed by resources or by political will. It is not a question of arriving at a figure but of moving decisively to respect, protect, and guarantee human rights.
We hope that this meeting of Women Ministers of Latin America and Caribbean will help the mechanisms decided in Beijing in 1995 and in Cairo in 1994 and their subsequent instruments to lead the demands for a paradigm shift in the CSW and in Post-2015, to make substantive equality one of the cornerstones of the development model aligned to human rights.
Latin American and Caribbean women who have worked together and made steady progress, now ask that this alliance be maintained because together we all make our presence felt with clear and forceful proposals for our governments, foreign ministries and UN missions.
We urge Women Ministers to ensure that agreements made by the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women at its 58th period of sessions reflect the commitment of governments to recognize gender equality as an issue that is both specific and transverse in the entire Post- 2015 development agenda.
We should not speak of Post-2015 but discuss what should be taking place today and, in particular, demand that it be translated into the daily lives of everyone, women and men. The entreaty is called Post-2015. The solutions are called human rights for everyone, women and men.
• Alianza Latinoamericana y Caribeña de Juventudes rumbo a Cairo+20
• Amnistía Internacional
• Articulación Feminista Marcosur
• Asociación Latinoamericana de Población-ALAP
• Campaña 28 de Septiembre

• Campaña por una Convención Interamericana de los Derechos Sexuales y Reproductivos
• Caribbean DAWN to the Alliance
• Centro Feminista de Estudos e Assessoria: CFEMEA
• Círculo de Juventud Afrodescendiente de las Américas-CJAA
• Coalición Caribeña Población y Desarrollo
• Coalición Contra el Tráfico de Mujeres y Niñas en América Latina y El Caribe
• Coalición Nacional de Sociedad Civil hacia Cairo más 20 (Colombia)
• Coalición Salvadoreña de Mujeres rumbo a Cairo + 20
• Comisión Nacional de Seguimiento Mujeres por Democracia, equidad y ciudadanía-
CNSmujeres
• Comité de América Latina y El Caribe para la Defensa de los Derechos de la Mujer-
CLADEM
• Consejo Latinoamericano y del Caribe de organizaciones no gubernamentales con
servicio en VIH/SIDA- LACASSO
• Consorcio Latinoamericano contra el aborto inseguro-CLACAI
• Consorcio Latinoamericano de Anticoncepción de Emergencia-CLAE
• Consorcio Latinoamericano de Iglesias-CLAI
• Coordinación de Mujeres del Paraguay
• Coordinación Red Feminista Centroamericana contra la Violencia hacia las Mujeres-
CEMUJER
• Coordinadora de la Mujer de Bolivia
• Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era - DAWN
• Enlace Continental de Mujeres Indígenas de las Américas
• Espacio Iberoamericano de Juventud
• Fundación para Estudio e Investigación de la Mujer-FEIM
• Grupo de Seguimiento a Cairo- Bolivia
• Grupo de Trabajo en Sexualidades y Géneros. Argentina
• Grupo Internacional de Mujeres y SIDA
• International Community of Women living with HIV-AISD- ICW Latina
• International Planned Parenthood Federation-IPPF
• IPAS
• Lesbianas, Gays. Bisexuales, Trans e intersexuales de América Latina y El Caribe- ILGA
LAC
• Mesa por la Defensa de los Derechos Sexuales y Reproductivos Perú
• Movimiento Latinoamericano de Mujeres y VIH
• Plataforma de Seguimiento a Cairo en México - CAIRO+20MX
• Plataforma Juvenil Salvadoreña por los derechos sexuales y derechos reproductivos.
• Realizing Sexual and Reproductive Justices-RESURJ
• Red de Educación Popular entre Mujeres-REPEM
• Red de mujeres Afrolatinoamericanas, Afrocaribeñas y de la Diáspora

• Red de Mujeres Trabajadoras Sexuales de Latinoamérica y el Caribe-REDTRASEX
• Red de Salud de las Mujeres Latinoamericanas y El Caribe- RSMLAC
• Red Latinoamericana y Caribeña de Jóvenes por los derechos sexuales y reproductivos-
REDLAC
• Red Latinoamericanas de Católicas por el Derecho a Decidir
• Red Mundial de Mujeres por los Derechos Reproductivos, RMMDR
• Red Nacional de Jóvenes y Adolescentes por la Salud Sexual y Reproductiva- Argentina
• Youth Coalition