Caribbean Joint Statement on Gender Equality and the Post 2015 and SIDS Agenda

As the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) framework comes to a close in 2015, the Caribbean Region is advocating for a comprehensive and transformative Post 2015 and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) development agenda. The goal of advocacy efforts will be to ensure that Caribbean specific priorities for the achievement of gender equality and women’s empowerment are advanced. The emerging global development frameworks must address the structural foundations of gender-based inequality, including the recognition that inequalities are a consequence of the unequal relations of power.  We are therefore asking that the  global Post 2015 and SIDS frameworks take into consideration the social, economic and environmental vulnerabilities of SIDS, and the resulting challenges for sustainable, human rights-based and gender responsive development.

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[1]With the support of the UN Women Multi-Country Office for the Caribbean, the Joint Statement was generated by high level government officials and civil society representatives from CARICOM countries, with inputs from regional inter-governmental bodies and international partners in the Caribbean. The Statement represents Caribbean voices and expectations in the emerging Post 2015 and SIDS global agendas as it relates to gender equality. The Joint Statement emerged from a UN Women-supported “Caribbean Forum on Gender Equality and the Post 2015 Agenda” held in Barbados (22^nd to 23^rd August 2013).

In adopting the Joint Statement, participants committed to an advocacy strategy so as to ensure that the ”asks”, priorities and perspective contained in the Joint Statement are considered by decision-makers within the emerging global processes around Post 2015 and SIDS. Forum Participants endorsed the need for a stand-alone goal on Gender Equality in the Post 2015 Agenda, as well as mainstreaming of gender equality priorities throughout Post 2015 and SIDS.