About GS19
19th Gender Summit – Global for SDGs
The UN SDG Agenda: Research and Interventions Agenda for the next 10 Years Seoul, August 2020
Guest of Honour and plenary speaker Mr. Ban Ki-moon, Former Secretary-General of the UN
19–20 August 2020
N.B. Due to COVID19, GS19 will now be a virtual event
Background
In August 2015, the participants in the 6th Gender Summit – Asia Pacific in Seoul (the 6th event in the series and 1st in Asia-Pacific) discussed a wide range of gender issues influencing quality of outcomes in research, innovation and development measures. Significantly, in expectation of the announcement in September of that year of the UN Sustainable Development 2030 Agenda, the participants at GS6 adopted The Seoul Gender Summit Declaration and Call for Actions to Advance Gendered Research, Innovation and Socio-economic Development12. Furthermore, they recommended that a letter is sent from the Gender Summit to the UN with the recommendations that all SDG targets, and not just SDG 5, should be viewed from a gender perspective to ensure that the outcomes of the implementation measures benefit women and men equally.
The actions taken in Seoul, were followed in the 10th Gender Summit – Asia Pacific, which took place in Tokyo in 2017. This was the second GS in the Asia Pacific region. The participants in Tokyo adopted the BRIDGE Tokyo Recommendations (Better Research and Innovation through Gender Equality) calling on all actors in science endeavours to integrate gender equality objectives into the implementation efforts to achieve the targets of all 17 SDGs.
At the 16th Gender Summit on 28-29th August 2019 in Singapore, the Centre for Gendered Innovation in Science and Technology Research (GISTeR) based in South Korea announced the plan to host the GS19 - Global for SDGs, in Seoul on 24-25th June 2020, with the goal to review from a gender perspective the research for SDGs in first five years of the implementation of SDG targets, to assess the progress made and to agree on where new gender research and implementation measures are still needed, and how to improve both the gender knowledge and its translations into effective practices.
GS19 – Global: Target participants, goals and outcomes
The primary goal of GS19 is to bring together key player organisations that are actively advancing knowledge and practice for effective implementation of SDG targets, and identify topics where gender is not given the priority it should. Example organisations that are being targeted include: research performing members of the UN Sustainable Solutions Network (SDSN); members of the International Science Council (ISC); multilateral institutions such as OECD and UNESCO; funders of research for development such as the International Development Research Centre in Canada; and capacity building programmes such as the collaborative GREAT (Gender-responsive Researchers Equipped for Agricultural Transformation) project involving Cornell (USA) and Makerere (Uganda) universities.
The target participants are acknowledged technical and gender experts and practitioners from across the different global regional familiar with SDG-related themes as well as with gender knowledge and experience relevant to different SDG targets.
The format of GS19 will follow the standard applied to all Gender Summit events, namely promoting evidence- and consensus-based dialogue between scientists, gender scholars, and policy makers, as well as stakeholders in science endeavours, innovation and development, leading to concrete recommendations for making improvements, and who should take action.
GS19 – Global: Programme
The programme of GS19 will be made up of a collection of sessions, each dedicated to a cluster of SDGs that offer the best opportunities for advancing impactful research, with panels of speakers representing the different sectors: research, innovation, development, policy, publishing and communiucation. The task of each session will be to offer an expert review and assessment of how gender issues have been addressed in individual and clusters of SDGs during the first five years of the implementation activities. The outputs will include advice showing where good progress has been made and where it has been lacking; where important still gaps in knowledge act as barriers to effective implementation; and where sufficient gender knowledge is available and can be applied to develop better and more sustainable interventions to enhance impact.
It is expected that the programme will include keynotes by leaders, and around 60 international expert speakers, with 200 participants from 40 countries, and the main output will be an evidence and consensus-based roadmap for integrating gender-sensitive approaches into research for SDGs, and applying existing gender knowledge into the programme of developing intervention measures for achieving SDG targets.
It is also expected to hold gender training workshops as part of the event for researchers and policy makers on how to integrate dimensions of gender into SDG-related research and intervention measures.
GS19 - Call for Partners
The framework for the GS19 content and outputs will be shaped and realised by GISTeR and Portia in partnership with the partnership of leading key player organisations.
We invite organisations from across the globe whose mission and core interests include research, innovation, or development agenda for the UN SDG 2030 Agenda to join the GS19 Partnership to help ensure that the next SDG implementation phase will benefit more fully from adopting excellent gender knowledge to guide intervention design and implementations for the benefit of all.
The role and responsibility of the Partners includes:
• Contribution to GS19 budget, which can be financial (e.g. a grant) or in-kind (e.g. providing a venue, sponsoring a reception/travel/accommodation for speakers)
• Contribution to GS19 programme, e.g. by nominating a topic for session and/or sponsoring important speakers
• Using own networks and channels to disseminate and promote the goals and outputs from GS19 Providing expertise/staff to record proceedings and produce the roadmap
• Carry out post-GS19 activities to help implement the roadmap and monitor progress.
To express interest in joining the GS19 Partnership please contact team-ap-2020@gender-summit.com
