ABSTRACT
The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) have become thede factoglobal instrument for ‘development’ from 2016 to 2030, replacing the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that were endorsed by the UN in 2001. This chapter analyses the record of the SDGs with regard to gender and health justice, and the prospects and possibilities of the SDG approach for improving on the MDG record. The analysis is situated in the context of the current global economic and ecological crisis and the ascendancy of private sector solutions to poverty reduction and ‘empowerment’ that are embedded in the norms, rules, and practices at the heart of the latest iteration of the global development project. The chapter questions whether the SDGs serve the project of consolidating the current global neoliberal socio-political and economic order; an order in which the bodies of women and girls become the objects of ‘development’ (through the governance of their sexuality and the exploitation of their life-sustaining work of gendered social reproduction) and hence ‘serve’ the needs of the already wealthy and powerful. It discusses what this means for the future of health security for women and girls.
