Working Paper: Human Rights, the Sustainable Development Goals and Gender Equality

by Dr Meghan Campbell

Year
2018
Number of pages
11

Summary

International human rights law and the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) contain strong commitments to gender equality and women’s empowerment. Each regime brings strengths to the struggle to achieve gender equality. The strength of the SDGs lies in mobilising global political will through a series of targets and benchmarks while the strength of international human rights law is in accountability. The synergy between these two regimes opens up exciting potential for refining and innovating international human rights law and development policies. The British Academy report Working Together: Human Rights, the Sustainable Development Goals and Gender Equality  (authored by Sandra Fredman FBA) explores this potential and goes into depth on the role of UN treaty bodies in holding States to account for realising the SDG to achieve gender equality and women’s empowerment. This background paper provides contextual knowledge on the complex multi-layered accountability structure at the UN. It analyses the role of the UN accountability bodies, the legal authority of their outputs and their potential to participate in realising the SDGs.


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