Today we shared this wonderful quote from Ban Ki Moon:
"Rio+20 should also give voice to those we hear from least often: women and young people. Women hold up half the sky; they deserve equal standing in society. We should empower them, as engines of economic dynamism and social development. And young people — the very face of our future: are we creating opportunities for them, nearly 80 million of whom will be entering the workforce every year?"
Today was the final day of the preparatory conference. That means, that at the end of today, the management of the conference passed over from the United Nations to the Brazilian Government. This will pass back to the UN for the official conference days from 20-22 June.
Because it was the last day, it has been crazy with negotiations trying frantically to agree to the paragraphs of text on various issues in the outcome document.
In the morning, we went to the extremely crowded negotiation on trade, finance and sustainable development goals (SDGs). We had hoped t hear discussion on SDGs, but the part that we heard was on trade. We were a bit taken aback that the G77 proposed that the entire trade section just be deleted, and most countries seems to think it was a good idea. These negotiations are open, but only country delegations are permitted to speak. It is fairly controlled, and visitors are super careful to to be disruptive in any way, and not to approach delegates unless invited.
In the afternoon, the lobbying began in earnest for the inclusion of non-formal education in the text. We worked really really hard with the Major Group for Children and Youth rounding up as many countries as we could to tell them how important this was to our whole group. The Norwegian chairperson agreed to put the paragraph inclusion on the agenda. The meeting started at 5pm and was scheduled to finish at 11pm. We actually arrived early and caught the end of the Oceans negotiation which was chaired by Australia. As the chairperson was leaving, she spotted my uniform and said how great it was that we had come to the Australian government briefing, although she herself had not been there.
The gender, health and education negotiation was very long but so exciting. We knew that if our proposal was opposed by any delegation it would be withdrawn altogether, and if it was not agreed tonight, it would be withdrawn altogether. Switzerland kindly put forward our proposal. The G77 immediately said it was too late to be introducing things, they didn't think it was necessary and that they could not agree until they had met with their 132 member states tomorrow. We knew this was too late. The chair tried to close discussion there and move on, but the E.U. insisted on speaking out in support of the move, and the importance of not rejecting it, since it was the one point that has come unanimously from a major group. As the chair resigned herself to this discussion, Australia joined in promoting the importance of non-formal education, followed by USA who explicitly mentioned the value of Girl Scouts. The G77 was unmoved, so discussion moved on to health.
As a delegation, we were challenged by the arguments on this section from some delegations. Most notably, Holy See would not agree to the language "population dynamics", because they would not condone any kind of population control or reduction. Russia refused to agree to "population dynamics" and "women's sexual and reproductive rights" because he could not see what they had to do with 'Health and Population'. The Holy See continued to block any reference to gender equality and sexual and reproductive rights, despite the proposed wording coming from a previously agreed ECOSOC document. Because of the Holy See, the paragraph was not permitted to be put through as agreed ad ref.
The meeting closed unexpectedly at around 8pm as most of the delegations had another meeting to attend about cities and transport. Then the real work began. It was such a thrill for me to talk directly to the head negotiator for the G77. We told him how important this was to the Major Group for Children and Youth, and said that we were representing 10 million girl guides in 145 countries. He continued to say that he would meet tomorrow with the g77 (too late!!) To try and come to an agreement tonight we, along with other young people from the major group tried to find as many G77 delegates as possible, to get them to tell this guy that this was non-controversial and worth including. The negotiations were supposed to re-commence at 11pm after the "closing" plenary, but the plenary was pushed back an hour.
Having exhausted ourselves and our contact list, we found nine couches and tried to nap.
One of our fellow major group friends, along with some friendly youth delegates from Switzerland and the Netherlands came to tell us that the chairperson was meeting with the G77 negotiator. As midnight approached, we entered the closing plenary session, to hear the reports from all major groups on how much of the text they had agreed.
Our chair made her report. She said that through an unorthodox agreement process, our paragraph had been added to the text!!!
Education 2bis We encourage Member States to promote Sustainable Development awareness among youth, inter alia, by promoting programmes for non-formal education in accordance with the goals of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development.
Despite the serious (and frankly exhausted) tone of the meeting (which had around 500 people) there was an outbreak of applause from the back of the room. What an achievement!
We got back home and into bed at about 2.00am. Very hard work but such a great reward!
Location:Rio de Janeiro
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