Reflection on the High-Level Political Forum: “I felt the power of collective advocacy”

Travelling from Zambia to the High-Level Political Forum (HLPF ) in New York felt less like crossing borders and more like crossing thresholds in global advocacy for gender equality and sexual and reproductive health and rights. As a regional and global youth panel member on the Make Way programme, I had the opportunity to observe and learn from the global advocacy landscape on how far we have come in attaining the SDGs, particularly SDG 5 on gender equality and SDG 3 on good health and well-being (my personal favourite goals), which were among the goals under review this year.

This HLPF reminded me so much of the last HLPF I attended for the Make Way programme in 2023. That year, we conducted robust advocacy and popularised Zambia’s first-ever intersectional Independent Voluntary National Review (VNR), a process I had wholly devoted myself to with the support of Wemos and Akina Mama wa Afrika. This year was no different. From the moment I arrived, I sensed the weight of the moment and was eager to get answers to why, with only 7 years left to conclude the 2030 Agenda, we are still lagging behind on attaining gender equality.

In Zambia, where I am from, we feel both the promise of what development can do and the limits of what it can achieve. We have seen this in the shrinking funding space, the cuts in aid, and how momentum to achieve equality stalls when resources dry up and political will is lacking.

Standing with the Women’s Major Group, I felt the power of collective advocacy. We convened every morning to monitor trends, track opposition, and strategise our way forward. Speaking to the ministerial declaration, the Women’s Major Group read a statement on behalf of all marginalised groups across the world. We reaffirmed our stance and noted with regret that the ministerial declaration in its current form eroded the work we have done on SDG 3 and SDG 5 as pivotal goals for achieving the 2030 Agenda.

Bertha writing ‘Make Way for youth’ on the pavement, among many other advocacy messages, at the chalk-back session at the High-Level Political Forum.

As I travelled back home, I carried both urgency and anxiety. Urgency because 2030 is approaching quickly, and anxiety because efforts to attain gender equality seem to be regressing while civil society space is shrinking. I ask myself what this means for a little girl being born right now in the remote parts of Africa, and the kind of world she will inherit.

Still, I have hope. It is true that the SDGs will not be unlocked by declarations alone. They will be unlocked by people, by partnerships, and by our insistence that development is grounded in lived experiences. I have hope because of the leadership I witnessed in the Women’s Major Group and its supporters. It is hard to see, but this signals a future already under construction.

We concluded the first week of the HLPF with a chalk-back session. We wrote all our advocacy messages, got our knees bruised and dusty, our hands stained with chalk, and our hearts wide open. We wrote on the ground what policy briefs cannot hold, our grief, our hopes, and our demands. We named the institutions that carried us to the HLPF. We named the futures we refuse to abandon, because this future is in our streets, our homes. Broadly, we sketched a different kind of declaration, one that does not wait for signatures because it lives in us. We carry it with us until the words in the SDGs are not just promises, but realities that live under our feet.

Shout out to Akina Mama wa Afrika for relentlessly working to ensure that young people were represented through me at the HLPF, shout out to Wemos for the support, and to the entire Make Way programme for making way for young people!