At the 2025 UNECE Regional Forum on Sustainable Development, the Regional Civil society Engagement Mechanism for the UNECE Region (ECE-RCEM) brought a strong and united voice for gender equality, social justice, environmental protection, and human rights. Through a series of interventions and panel contributions, we highlighted the systemic barriers faced by marginalised communities and called for urgent action grounded in intersectional feminist and anti-colonial principles.
Below is a summary of our contributions:
📢 Opening and High-level Policy Segment
We opened the Forum by urging governments to shift from extractivist, growth-driven models toward just, care-based economies rooted in human rights and environmental integrity.
🔗 Read the intervention
♀️ SDG 5: Gender Equality
Focused on leveraging data and understanding population dynamics, we made multiple contributions emphasising the need for inclusive, disaggregated data, and the integration of gender-transformative approaches:
⚙️ SDG 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth
We called for a redefinition of ‘work’ that values unpaid care, recognises informal workers, and upholds labour rights for all.
🔗 Read the intervention
🌊 SDG 14: Life Below Water
ECE-RCEM contributed to both panels, raising the alarm on environmental degradation, extractive industries, and the exclusion of local and Indigenous knowledge.
🏥 SDG 3: Good Health and Well-Being
We spotlighted the links between health, climate, gender, and human rights—calling for universal access to SRHR, mental health services, and care systems.
🤝 SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals
We underlined the importance of meaningful, well-funded civil society participation and accountability mechanisms in SDG implementation.
🔗 Read the intervention
🧭 Plenary Session and Closing
In our closing statement, we reiterated our collective demand for peace, democracy, climate justice, and feminist transformation of multilateralism.
🔗 Read the closing intervention
These contributions reflect the diverse voices of our regional constituencies, united in pushing for a future where rights, care, and sustainability are at the centre of development.
👉 For more on our advocacy work, visit ece-rcem.org/advocacy
