And I think that we have to think and listen to what the leader is saying and doing, rather than judge what’s in the closet. - Amina J. Mohammed

The UN’s approach to that, as the secretary general firmly puts it in his vision, is: We have got to look at how we prevent conflicts and once we come out of them, how do we sustain the peace and development. And in the middle of this, we are saying that the SDGs are the frameworks that we need to invest in. There are therefore no quick wins in this discussion. If we are to have sustainable development, we cannot put a band-aid on things. And if you don’t address the root causes, we are never going to have sustainable development. Therefore, we have to go back to the drawing board and we have to be courageous about it; and the UN has to come together and be much more responsive in the way in which it supports countries, in order to move them forward.

First of all, I think Africa is trying to make those strides that are necessary to achieving SDG 5 (Gender Equality). But the approach to development in Africa has always been ad hoc, and I think we have been pitting some of our greatest challenges against each other in terms of making choices. For example, we will say, Well we have to make a choice between a woman and health. Or a woman and an education budget. And I think this is where we have got it wrong. The fact is that women are an integral part of any investment, be it in health, in education, in agriculture, etc. Africa needs to recognize that our human resources are the biggest asset base that we have, and to ignore investing in 50% of it, is just foolhardy and affects results, as well as the rights that women have in their lives.

And there has to be a huge amount of courage that what you’re doing is shaping the future. I mean, concretely, shaping that future for your people with what you know is the right thing.