The 13th World Human Rights Cities Forum: Interview with Key Speakers
Ms. Garance Sarlat
Gender Associate Project Officer of UNESCO
Interviewed by youth reporters KIM BeomJun, KIM Riha, LEE Taeyoung
Youth Reporter: Regarding the theme of this year’s forum, could you tell me about the importance and timeliness of the content you have presented?
Ms. Garance Sarlat: My focus is really on women's empowerment, gender equality, engaging men and boys for gender equality. But this work goes within a framework that's much larger on fighting racism, fighting discrimination.
Nowadays, we know that with the COVID-19 pandemic, those inequalities and those discriminations have unfortunately increased quite dramatically and that we're still suffering right now from the consequences of the pandemic. So, the forum right now, focusing on poverty and inequalities, could not be more timely.
Why my presentation, I think, was related to the forum’s theme is because women’s poverty and the inequalities that women have to face are actually much more important due to the pandemic, where they were at the frontlines as healthcare workers. They were essential workers, having to do double or triple shifts while at home taking care of home-schooled children, taking care of sick relatives, and taking care of domestic work. And all of this combined with the usual gender inequalities that remain, such as the gender pay gap, the occupational downgrading that they face in the workplace, the fact that sometimes they cannot even work - those things are just accumulated.
The presentation I gave was on the importance of making sure that men and boys also did their fair share of the unpaid care work, which is one of the targets of SDG5 that we are not close to achieving, unfortunately. And so, it is something that we need to step up about.
This forum was a fantastic opportunity to discuss those ways thanks to the work of local governments. We have discussed very different topics, like discrimination against sets of ethnicities, women, and persons with disabilities, and how we should address those. And this is with social protection policies and programs with better infrastructures for social protection.
The concept that was discussed a lot and that is very important is the human rights-based economies that we need to create. This could sound weird, because how can you connect economies and the terrible impact that they have had on those vulnerable groups and human rights together, but this is something that we need to strive for, and that is why this forum is so important.
This is also a good opportunity for me to say that UNESCO has similar forums as well, such as for instance, the UNESCO Global Forum Against Racism and Discrimination that will take place at the end of the year from November 29 until December 1 in Sao Paolo in Brazil.
This is where we will also discuss the roles and the responsibilities of every single stakeholder in society, ministers, governments, parliamentarians, cities of course, mayors, but also corporate leaders, civil society, academia and youth. Because youth really has a lot to say, since we are building the world we're going to live in for a long time, so they really need to share their voices there also.
Youth Reporter: Could you share what left the greatest impression on you during this year’s forum, for example, the most impressive presentation or event?
Ms. Garance Sarlat: It is very difficult to pick one single moment from this fantastic forum, but what left the greatest impression on me were the presentations of the UNESCO Master Class Gwangju Series participants. Because those young people are in middle school, in junior high school, they arere very young – just 15 years old – and they delivered presentations that were incredibly professional, with research that you sometimes see at a master’s degree level. They were researching about inequalities, doing surveys with their peers and the elderly, and even met with the representatives of institutes and centers, and one team even went to a parliamentarian.
This is the work that we want to do. This is exactly what the UNESCO Master Classes were created for, and to see the result of those young people being empowered by the tools we gave them and actually taking it so much further beyond our hopes – this is so impressive. I was also very happy with the presentations – all of them were great. I mean, it is not as if just one was absolutely amazing – every single group delivered beautifully, and that is what touched me the most!
Youth Reporter: How should young people who are interested in the themes related to the forum act and what kind of mindset should young people have?
Ms. Garance Sarlat: I think this question is a bit tricky because, when it comes to the potential for action, we have many ideas and suggestions, but then taking it into practice might be complicated based on where you are, who you are, and the inequalities that you may be facing. Still, I have a few recommendations.
The first one, being at the level where you are, there are possibilities - if you're in school there's probably a school committee, a student committee, that you could join and take action with. If it's not a school committee or if you haven't been elected, you can still create a student organization. Those student organizations can gather the power of several young individuals and make sure that they lead actions to fight poverty, to fight inequalities whichever social justice agenda they would like to adopt.
And then beyond that, there is the city they live in. If they live in an urban place, in which case there are probably youth city councils, they could join the youth city councils. They could also join some, ocal organizations which, depending on your age (there might be some legal limitations regarding age for the organization to work) but you can still try and join. Furthermore, we have seen some incredible young people get elected as mayors. I believe that it's in the USA - the youngest mayor is 18, which is just the minimum age. Don't quote me on that, but I'm pretty sure that‘s the case.
And then for the global level, for the international level, this is where UNESCO is a great platform. We have a UNESCO Youth Forum where we give an entire platform to young people to share their concerns, their beliefs, their needs, their recommendations for policymakers. What's amazing about UNESCO is that we can be the link between our 194 member states. And then share the ideas for new policies to support youth empowerment, but also to fight the issues of poverty inequalities with the recommendations that youth have based on their own experiences based on their own work locally. This is a pretty important moment. It is an annual event and it is going to be held between November 14 and 15 this year.
Youth can get engaged in several youth networks, as well, in the meantime. There are international networks that have the same ideas and the same objectives. I think it is very important to join strength - the youth has to work together. Of course, civic participation, political participation - that can be an individual thing - but for true youth empowerment, you need to work together.
And this is what we've seen with the Master Class. Those are teams working together, thinking together, making sure that we have different perspectives and views. Especially when we talk about discrimination and inequalities, there can be almost as many discriminations as there are individuals, based on how they are felt. It is very important to make sure that you have several brains looking at an issue with different options on how to tackle it, so that you can find the best way forward.
