The 2018 High-Level Political Forum: Global Circus or Lever for Feminist Peace?
By Mikayla Varunok, United Nations Monitor
Members of the Women’s Major Group wearing dark blue scarves to raise awareness about the need to protect and engage women’s human rights and environmental defenders (Photo: WMG)
As part of our work to strengthen holistic action on disarmament, gender equality and peace, and mobilise awareness about the importance of local women’s peace work, WILPF engaged around the 9-18 July 2018 High-Level Political Forum (HLPF). We monitored the Forum around the issues relevant to gender, peace and means of implementation, launched the #WomenLead2030 Campaign and worked with our coalition Women’s Major Group to push for the implementation of the SDGs to work for women in conflict.
Our experience at the HLPF has demonstrated that the 2030 Agenda provides a unique opportunity to bring diverse constituencies together and mobilise action that promotes conflict prevention and creates a new kind of economic development that promotes women’s human rights and protects the environment. However, corporate power, technical approaches, lack of women civil society’s meaningful participation, as well as increasing distancing from human rights foundations mean substantial challenges to realising the SDG’s transformative intent remain. It is important to recognise that people are not just left behind by accident: They are excluded as a matter of design. To improve people lives, we need to disarm violence, invest in gender justice and build economies and political governance for feminist peace.
As we prepare for the 2019 review of SDG16, we invite you to call on the SDG16 leaders and those who will submit their reports for review in 2019 to put implementation of the Women, Peace and Security Agenda at the heart of their action on peaceful societies.
Read WILPF’s monitoring analysis of the 2018 High-Level Political Forum here>>
Find WILPF US’ Reflections from the 2018 High-Level Political Forum here>>
Learn more about WILPF’s #WomenLead2030 Campaign here>>