Ms Mary Van Lieshout:

I thank the Senator for the question. We all know that the big answer to the question is that sustainable development and the real, long-term end of poverty is going to be in the hands of the people in the countries in which we are currently working. It is going to be a coalition of government, civil society and private sector organisations. It was always the assumption behind the sustainable development goals that it would take partnerships across society as well as global solidarity. The big answer is that we have to help and empower civil society to take the solutions and to craft the solutions, and to support them in enabling those solutions. That is the ultimate role of our agencies. We are not going to make this happen. There has been huge disappointment that with these polycrises that we have all been talking about, there has been such an erosion in capacity in many societies, including during the lockdown. A lot of people talk about how civil society spaces have actually shrunk in the past ten years. I was at the UN conference on women and development in Beijing in 1995. Many participants in that conference say that we could not even get the text of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action through international discussions today, such is the growth of antipathy towards feminism and equality globally. There is a real issue of how we can ensure that civil society actors are protected, supported and promoted, and that human rights remains a cornerstone of our relationship globally. The solution is not short-term in terms of the crises that we are facing. The cost-of-living crisis is just one more crisis that we are now facing. It is known to be the solution, but that solution is going to take a lot of solidarity in these coming years. There is no doubt about it.