Our ambassador María Belén Papolla in United Nations.
Theme: Review of relevant United Nations plans and programmes of action pertaining to the situation of social groups. Twenty-five years of the World Summit for Social Development: addressing emerging societal challenges to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development
Thank your Chairman, President.
Current trends evidence that income inequality not only persisted but had also increased, undermining poverty eradication and social integration efforts at a global level. Twenty-five years after the World Summit for Social Development, we have great concerns on the course of action in this matter. We need to constitute a culture of cooperation and partnership across all the sectors to bring tangible solutions for those that are more affected.
Empowering the growth of disruptive sustainable small and medium enterprises, accounting for around 70% of jobs worldwide, plays a key role in stimulating economic growth and generating job opportunities for vulnerable groups such as poor and isolated communities, women and young entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, most of these enterprises operate completely or partially in the informal sector, where economic, social as well as environmental and legal rules and regulations are imperfectly (if any) enforced.
Specifically, the fashion industry is a platform to reduce inequalities and generate social development and decent growth. It is a 2.5 trillion-dollar industry which employees 1 in 6 people in the world and serves as a driver to eliminate the gender pay gap: 80% of the workers in the textile industry are women that aim at having a quality job. However, it is linked to human rights and environmental issues and also very much prone to informality. We need to convey efforts to generate a systemic change in the production models towards a more sustainable, transparent and fair.
Our nonprofit, Hecho por Nosotros, works to provide technical assistance in order to connect MSMEs to global markets and therefore help them reap more benefits while preserving sustainable methods. And our sister B-Corp Brand, animaná, is living proof of the enormous potential in the fusion between ‘small and medium enterprises’ and the power of using transparency to generate value added.
In order to achieve such goals, we (i) empower the growth of disruptive sustainable ‘small and medium enterprises’ including the facilitation of access to finance (ii) urge Member States to align economic policy frameworks with social policy goals to promote decent work; (iii) condense educational efforts as the premise for quality work being one of the most important drivers behind the declining trend in income inequality; (iv) unite efforts with the private sector to Harness technology for transparency across supply chains as a key driver to a paradigm shift to circular models as key efforts to eliminate barriers to social inclusion and to promote sustainable production models; (v) Raise awareness among consumers.
We invite all of you to contribute to this effort and help us change the face of the fashion industry to a sustainable paradigm as a powerful driver for social development.