A/HRC/27/73 their periods for lack of sanitary pads as well as fear of using toilets and sanitati on facilities because they were unsafe and lacked water. He noted it was important to understand that the existence of slums was being exploited by cartels who profited from the higher prices charged for water, sanitation, rents (per square metre) and the fact that some politicians used slums as lucrative vote banks during elections. They would therefore not promote any slum improvement initiative that would reduce their number of votes if the informal settlements were decongested during improvement. That situation required urgent attention. 24. During the discussion, there was a consensus that the post-2015 development strategy must build on the gaps and lessons of the MDGs and around the inclusion of gender equality as a stand-alone goal in the new development agenda. States acknowledged the importance of continuing their efforts to mainstream gender equality and women’s empowerment across all of the goals especially health, education, poverty, food security and others. 25. It was noted that despite substantial progress towards achieving the MDGs, no country across the globe could claim to have achieved de facto gender equality. There could be no sustainable development without gender equality and the full participation of women and girls. The new development agen da must value women’s potential and their contributions, paid and unpaid, to families, societies and economies. Some States stressed the importance of financing required for achieving the ambitious goals of the new development agenda and warned that unless financing could be guaranteed through national resources, private sector investment and official development assistance, the goals would remain aspirations. 26. Accountability and adequate resources provision was a recurrent concern expressed by State representatives and non-governmental organizations. Several speakers referred to the need for monitoring and evaluation frameworks to be built into the development agenda. Sex-disaggregated data was cited as vital to progress, as well as specific attention to budgets for achieving gender equality. 27. The need to validate care and unpaid work as a positive social good was emphasized repeatedly, as was ensuring women’s access to productive resources, including credit. Violence against women and girls, including forced marriage, was also a topic raised by numerous speakers. Concern was further expressed about multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination against women and girls due to their age, race or sexual orientation, or because they were indigenous persons, persons with disabilities, migrants, or belonging to certain minority or ethnic groups. SRHR were also mentioned as an area that should be addressed by the post-2015 framework. 28. Responding to some of the questions, panellists emphasized the importance of allocating specific funds for mainstreaming and the need for a contextualized approach when considering financing mechanisms, for example, debt swaps pegged against delivery or issues around secure tenure and water and sanitation services. The importance of adolescent girls, and the need to have them explicitly addressed in the post-2015 framework was also addressed, in particular with respect to their bodily autonomy and integrity as well as their right to comprehensive sexual education. Panellists also emphasized the role of the judiciary in upholding the rule of law, including remedies and compensation. It was agreed that disaggregat ed data needed to factor in sex and age in order to capture the situation of adolescents and of older women. It was noted that data were particularly important in view of the experience with violence against women, which the MDGs did not address because there were no data. As a result, considerable effort had been put into ensuring there was adequate data on violence against women in order to ensure better monitoring. It 8