Q&A: Ignacio Saiz talks inclusivity, inequality and universal outreach
Ignacio Saiz moderates a roundtable session on U.N. inclusivity post-2015.
Center for Economic and Social Rights Executive Director Ignacio Saiz moderated one of the UN DPI/NGO Conference’s largest roundtables Thursday on the topic of inclusivity, entitled "(Really) Leaving No One Behind." The panel featured an insightful and diverse array of speakers, but we decided to catch up with the moderator himself after the fact to get his take on the topics discussed and the lessons learned from the event.
Cristiano Lima: You assembled a very eclectic panel with a wide arrange of constituencies, but could you speak a little bit about the issues that come with intersectionality and how you feel that past plans have failed in this regard and how you plan to improve upon them?
Ignacio Saiz: On this panel, we heard perspectives from people defending the rights of women, people with disabilities, the rights of young people, etc. and I think the same themes kept coming up, which is that there hasn’t been meaningful inclusion of these perspectives, of these communities and their advocates in the process to shape the agenda until relatively recently.
In terms of learning from mistakes of the past, the MDGs were very blind to issues of inequality and that’s largely because the process of devising the MDGs didn’t include these communities. Now it’s a completely different ball game. We’ve seen how the advocacy done by disability rights groups and others has led to really concrete results… I think that speaks to the importance of inclusion and also the interconnections between different issues of inequality.
People from the floor also raised other issues that weren’t represented on the panel such as discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, the rights of migrants. Hopefully events like this serve to build common platforms around those issues and those commonalities.
Lima: I’m a Brazilian-American. I come from two countries where there’s been a continual widening of the wealth gap, as in much of the Western world, and I was wondering if you could talk about that as a detrimental force in achieving equality and what you hope is achieved going forward?
Saiz: I think one of the biggest changes in this process as opposed to the MDGs is that the issue of widening inequality has been named as the issue of our time. Inequality is bad not just for economic growth. Inequality is bad in of itself, in that you have wealth concentration and an increasing number of destitute people and you have a tiny minority accumulating more and more of the wealth, sowing the seeds for human rights problems in the future and for further conflict and social instability and for inequality in access the services.
[In the sustainability plan] there are now some concrete commitments to things that you must do to reduce inequality and they were mentioned on the panel: wage protection, access to decent work and decent employment, progressive tax policies – Brazil is a case in point - it’s only through progressive taxation, fairer taxation that you reduce some of these income disparities.
Lima: We’ve discussed a lot about inclusivity and this was billed as a discussion about targeting the needs of the marginalized, but could you speak about the importance of determining those needs through cooperation with those communities? It’s a tendency of the Western world to dictate what advancements should be taking place abroad, so could you discuss getting that contribution to help people shape their own future?
Saiz: In this particular process member states from across the globe have been engaged and have an equal voice. Of course some states are more powerful than others and, as you say, the Western world tends to have a stronger influence in certain processes than others, but here the views of governments of the South are coming across loud and clear.
However, the real challenge is not representing governments from the South, but representing people at the more grassroots level who are at the forefront, who are facing poverty and deprivation and injustice in their daily lives. We heard a very powerful plea from [panelist] Violet Shiwutse for the voices and experiences of people at the grassroots level, particularly women, to be taken into account into the decisions that are made around the development and implementation of the agenda.
It’s not about including people as beneficiaries or including people as an act of charity. It’s about including people because they are the central agents of their own development and we must never forget that.
-- Cristiano Lima (@ludacristiano)