Redressing gender inequality in West Africa

“Although progress has been made by Governments across Africa towards the improvement of gender equality planning and programming, there continues to be critical challenges to fulfilling commitments and obligations to gender equality and women’s empowerment within the region”, Hon. Boya Gariba, Deputy Minister for Women and Children’s Affairs in Ghana observed.

This was during the opening of the 3 day UN Women Symposium on Women held in Ghana that was attended by Ministers of Gender and Finance from the West African Sub Region, civil society organisations, academicians the private sector and development partners from different parts of Africa. The Symposium held under the theme” Sustaining responses on gender equality”, was in line with the African Women’s Decade launched in 2010, it enabled the different countries to debate and recommend concrete steps for redressing gender inequality and to renew institutional commitments to raising the gender equality agenda in the overall aid effectiveness debate

Patricia Munabi presenting the FOWODE case study during the 

UNWOMEN Symposium on sustaining responses on gender

 equality in West Africa

Sustaining responses for gender equality, implementing strategies for gender equality, fostering national responses for gender equality and aid effectiveness, political participation; budgeting, planning and decentralisation were some of the issues discussed during the symposium. Forum for Women in Democracy (FOWODE) being one of the pioneer advocates for gender budgeting in Africa, shared her experience highlighting successes, challenges and future strategies. In this session it was noted that civil society in West Africa had to upscale its interventions in order to complement the work of the government departments and to hold governments accountable to their commitments to gender equality as is the case in Uganda.

Submissions during the symposium pointed to the fact that much needs to be done to ensure that commitments by governments are turned into concrete action. Various recommendations were made including the need to build capacity of civil society organisations to hold governments accountable for legal commitments made; encouraging partnerships between Gender Ministries and National Institutes of Statistics to fill the gap on disaggregated data for effective policy making and advocacy; and lobbying governments to make more binding commitments to address gender inequalities. It was also recommended that different players develop transformative partnerships with the private sector, government and civil society organisations in order to build a strong voice and work together towards a common goal of advancing the gender agenda. 

By the end of the 3 days, members re-affirmed their commitment to collaborate with member states. A communiqué was developed with key recommendations to be shared at the Meeting on AID effectiveness in South Korea. 

UN WOMEN SYMPOSIUM DECLARATIONS ON SUSTAINING RESPONSE ON GENDER EQUALITY IN WEST AFRICA 

We, the Ministers of Gender, Decentralisation, Planning of ECOWAS Member states, meeting at the high level Symposium on Sustaining Responses on Gender Equality in West Africa held from 13th -15th September 2011 in Accra, Ghana. 

Re affirming our commitment to collaborate with the member States and Regional Economic Communities in the sub region to advance women’s empowerment and gender equality;

Acknowledging that progress has been made so far in addressing issues related to gender equality in West Africa, while also recognising that major challenges and obstacles still remain;

HEREBY AGREE TO: 

1. Call on ECOWAS member States to take more binding commitments to address gender inequalities;
2. Recommend Regional Economic Communities to institutionalise dialogue and coordination between ministers of gender, finance and planning decentralisation and local governments;
3. Ask Governments to set up effective mechanism for similar dialogue at the national level;
4.  Commit to reinforcing institutional capacity of ministries responsible for gender to monitor implementation of those commitments;
5. Encourage partnerships between Ministers of Gender and National Institutes of Statistics to fill the gap of disaggregated data for effective policy making and advocacy;
6. Build capacity of civil society(including women’s organisations) to hols Governments accountable for legal commitments; 
7. Institutionalise gender responsive budgeting as a way of making Gender Equality central to planning and budgeting; 
8. Support strengthening of the Women’s Movement, with special focus on younger women and build capacity for emerging young women leaders; 
9. Raise awareness to build strong constituencies to demand for implementation of commitments; 
10. Share information on funding opportunities by exploring alternative funding mechanisms, including South-South cooperation by providing specific training if gender ministries, civil society in fundraising methodologies;
11. Make deliberate efforts to engage with processes of aid effectiveness through training and sensitisation campaigns, including participation of gender advocates in these processes;
12. Implement National Action Plans for UN Security Council 1324 calling upon support from SRSGs in the sub region;
13. Implicate women in security sector reform to maintain peace and security in the region;
14. Continue to engage traditional and religious leaders to eliminate harmful attitudes and practices against women and girls;
15. Positively influence mindsets in favour of women’s rights at sub regional and national community, and household level;
16. Engage men as partners towards gender equality; 
17. Call on development partners to support civil society and women organisations to better equip them in planning and budgeting; 
18. Encourage Public-Private Sector Partnerships for Gender Equality; 
19. Build on supply chain opportunities for economic empowerment.

Carol Namagembe, FOWODE Communications Officer