In September 2015, the UN adopted the Sustainable Development Goals to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all people. For the first time, these goals explicitly aim to bring human rights and economic development into conversation with one another. There are 17 Sustainable Development Goals to be realised by 2030, each with their own targets. Goal number 5 is to ‘achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.’ While gender equality stands alone as a goal, it also cuts across many of the other sustainable development goals. This raises some questions – about whether gender equality can ever be realised on its own, in its own right – or whether it has to be realised in context. Inclusion and empowerment of women and girls must take place at every level and in every development target. In this episode, we explore development issues that disproportionately affect women and girls and interrogate how the SDGs can do better to address them.

**This episode is part of a special series on “Working Together: Human Rights and the Sustainable Development Goals” a British Academy project led by Professor Sandy Fredman, Fellow of the British Academy and Director of the Oxford Human Rights Hub. As part of this project, the Academy convened a roundtable in January 2018 with academic experts, policymakers and practitioners from the UK and overseas to discuss the ways in which human rights and developmental goals can work together to achieve the SDG agenda and particularly gender equality and women’s empowerment. Isabel Cristina Jaramillo Sierra participated in the discussion.**

Produced by: Dr Kira Allmann (University of Oxford)

Interview(s) with: Isabel Cristina Jaramillo Sierra (Universidad de los Andes)

Music by: Rosemary Allmann

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