"Development Justice" issues presented during the Preparatory Day of the 2nd Regional Meeting of the Asia and Pacific Region

The 2nd Regional Meeting of the Asia and Pacific region of the Policy Forum on Development started with a preparatory day dedicated to learning about the EU institutions and the Policy Forum, as well as hearing an update on the Post-2015 Development Agenda.

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Ms. Kate Lappin, Regional Coordinator of Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD), started her intervention with a presentation of the key issues and challenges in achieving Development Justice (DJ) via a new development model. Ms. Lappin first highlighted the issues of "Development Injustice" that necessitate a new model: “The richest 85 people in the world are more wealthy than the poorest 3 billion.” “In an entire year a garment worker will make less than the Walmart Family, makes in 1 single second.” So general inequality (such as wealth and gender) is increasing day by day. Therefore there is an urgent need for a new development model based on more equity and justice. That model, representing a unified civil society position of more of 400 organisations, is based around five pillars:

1)   Redistributive justice aiming at redistributing resources, wealth, power and opportunities to all human beings equitably;

2)   Economic justice aiming at developing economies that enable dignified lives, accommodate for needs and facilitate capabilities, employment and livelihoods available to all;

3)   Gender and social justice, aiming at eliminating all forms of discrimination, marginalization and exclusion that pervade our communities;

4)   Environmental justice restoring the commons for collective, harmonious development and ends harmful extraction of all forms;

5)   Accountability to peoples, requiring participatory, democratic governance. This lively presentation gave rise to a number of comments and remarks form the participants such as: How to reconcile large scale trans-boundaries projects and the development justice model?; Doesn’t the inclusion of cooperatives already reflect the principles of development justice?

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To see a video on development justice, please see click here.

After the Q&A session, Ms. Lappin presented the key points of the Post-2015 Development agenda. She started with the presentation of the Post 2015 Zero Draft Document prepared for the UN Summit to adopt the Post-2015 Development Agenda and which includes four main parts:

1)   8 introductory points;

2)   17 SDGs and 169 targets;

3)   Means of Implementation related to the 17 Goals and the Global Partnership;

4)   The follow-up and review processes at national, regional and global levels.

She concluded by raising what is missing in the Zero Draft document and highlighting next steps, including technical proofing of targets and civil society strategies post-adoption.