G20 reporter's notebook: Social Summit Day 2

Ekurhuleni, South Africa — Today is an exciting day at the Birchwood, because — thanks to a former colleague of mine — I’ve finally gotten my hands on the calendar of Social Summit side events. It was unknown to me (and I guess all other journalists?) during the first day of the summit, so while I’m all thumbs up on civil society engagement, I’m a hard thumbs down on press access here in Boksburg. Grudges aside, there are 20 side events on deck for today, and they cover everything from using spirituality to inspire climate justice to regulating artificial intelligence in mental health tools. There are also several sessions meant to feed into the G20 Social Summit Leaders’ Declaration, a consensus document that will be negotiated on by civil society delegates throughout the week. As part of that process, attendees will discuss five core themes: •Digital inclusion •Trade and resilient value chains • Just energy transitions •Sustainable financing •Work to achieve both the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals and Agenda 2063, the African Union’s 50-year blueprint to transform the continent The resulting document will be presented to South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Thursday. “When the social contract weakens, society doesn’t break all at once. It unthreads quietly, one family, one community, one worker at a time,” said Ahunna Eziakonwa, UNDP’s assistant administrator and regional director for Africa, from the social summit stage. “That is why this summit is not a side event to the G20. It is the moral centerpiece.” Catch up: Day 1 of the G20 Social Summit ICYMI: What are the key issues at stake at the G20 Summit in South Africa? <div id="day2x1015am" style="border-top: 3px dotted #ff9900; padding-top: 10px;"></div> <span style="font-weight: bold; color: #636363; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; display:inline; text-transform: uppercase;">10:15 a.m.: Head to the classroom. </span> When Day 2 of the G20 Social Summit began, it really began — with breakdancers on the main stage, and Afrobeats blasting through the summit’s speakers. The introductions soon after were brief, and civil society reps went right into their sessions on the five main themes of the event. For weeks, delegates from the G20’s core engagement groups — such as the Civil Society 20, Youth 20, Women 20, and other organizations — have been working on the language for the Social Summit declaration. Today is the last chance for civil society reps to leave their mark, and speaker by speaker, room by room, people did just that. In the session on digital inclusion, for example, that meant displaying a Word document on an auditorium’s display screens and making notes on each attendee’s input as they took the mic. It almost felt like a university group project, with a flurry of recommendations popping up in halls across the Birchwood. “We’re working towards one document,” said one of the sessions’ moderators, who framed the process before it began. “We’re working on solutions rather than problems.” Those sessions are set to last the entire day. And in the meantime, the compound is packed with people buzzing to open and closed side events, which may or may not feed into the final outcome document of the summit. <a href="#day2xtop"><strong>Back to top &uarr;</strong></a> <div id="day2x1130am" style="border-top: 3px dotted #ff9900; padding-top: 10px;"></div> <span style="font-weight: bold; color: #636363; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; display:inline; text-transform: uppercase;">11:30 a.m.: A statement — and a signal. </span> While the working sessions revolve around those five main themes, others are trying to make their own development priorities heard. For Kadidiatou Toure, the communications and campaigns team lead at the Partnership for Maternal Newborn and Child Health, that meant lobbying for the Social Summit’s declaration to include the topics her group was named for, regardless — or perhaps because of — the G20’s lack of focus on health this year. “As soon as you have a shift in global health financing, women’s, children’s and adolescents’ health is the first to go,” Toure told Devex. “But when you get to spaces like the G20, if you’re able to negotiate language — or to highlight certain things as critical issues or priorities — that’s a signal that you’re sending. And today, political advocacy and diplomacy is more important than ever.” On Tuesday, the Partnership for Maternal Newborn and Child Health — which is hosted by the World Health Organization, and headquartered in Geneva — hosted an event with the Global Leaders Network, which convenes presidents, prime ministers, and other political heads from across the world. It was meant to raise the issue’s profile, especially given the politicization of reproductive health care and the decrease in official development assistance across the world. “We have seen some African countries, and some non-African countries, reverse progress since 2015,” Toure said. She identified several reasons for the shift. The first was a rise in women’s displacement, driven by climate change, conflict, and violence across the world. The result has left many women without access to functional health care services. The second was the COVID-19 pandemic, which strained essential health services across the world. And a third is political pushback against women’s reproductive rights — and services that support them — which has shifted policies and laws in countries such as the United States, and the nations it supports with foreign assistance. “We are seeing an already fragile area of work that is insufficiently funded being faced now with these different factors,” Toure added. But despite the need, integrating women’s and children’s health into the G20 processes hasn’t been easy, Toure explained. The partnership tried to get a mention of the topic into the G20’s health working group — but when that group released its outcome document, she said, there were no mentions of maternal or children’s health care within. The statement has not yet been published on the working group’s website. “It becomes even more important for the G20 to say something about this, precisely because it includes some of the countries that are pushing back [on reproductive health care],” Toure said. “If we’re able to get anything in this, it’s a statement that says: The few dissenting voices haven’t won.” <a href="#day2xtop"><strong>Back to top &uarr;</strong></a>