Recommendations of the 12 Thematic Group Sessions

Introduction:

The Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) convened the 7 African Regional Conference on Women in Addis Ababa from 7–14 October 2004. The overall objective of the meeting was to assess progress that Africa had made in implementing the twelve critical areas of the Beijing Platform for Action and addressing emerging issues that affect African women, and also to identify challenges and the way forward. The twelve themes discussed were: gender dimensions of HIV/AIDS, partnership with men and boys for gender equality, production and use of gender disaggregated data for poverty reduction, women and governance, institutional mechanism for gender mainstreaming in national policies and programs, gender responsiveness of NEPAD, the role of the judiciary in promoting and implementing women’s rights, partnership for gender equality: the role of multilateral and bilateral agencies, economic empowerment of women, women’s rights and rights to development, and the issues facing the girl child today. Each theme session identified the major issues of concern and made recommendations for the way forward.

Thematic Group Session 1: Gender and HIV/AIDS

Introduction:

The objective of this sessions was to facilitate discussions that will point to policy and action oriented recommendations and proposals, to address the different gender dimensions of the HIV/AIDS. The session addressed ways in which African countries can reduce/eliminate the vulnerability of women and girls to HIV infection, and the socially related negative impacts.

Issues:

The group identified the following issues relating to patterns of infection, as well as impact of HIV/AIDS on women and girls:

• Escalation of HIV infection for women and girls that gives the pandemic a female face. Women and girls are most affected by the impact of HIV/AIDS because of: lack of economic and social empowerment; unequal power relations that create gender inequality; and the fact that polygamy is widely practiced in African societies.

• The gender dimension of HIV/AIDS especially the impacts of social tolerance for gender based violence on women, and other types of abuse or neglect of women’s rights, such as denied access to anti-retroviral and prevention of mother to child transmission drugs.

In many countries, women lack access to: HIV/AIDS transmission prevention and materials; VCT services and of networks/care-taking and supervisory systems for the growing number of HIV/AIDS orphans.

• Of serious concern also is the persistent exposure of girls and women to harmful traditional practices, sexual violence and rape, which make them vulnerable to HIV/AIDS transmission and life-long suffering.

• The gender dimension of the orphan crisis and its impact on the girl child. In particular, the vulnerability and exploitation of young girls within their extended and foster families, the sexual abuse of young women by much older men, and the exclusion of girls from education.

Recommendations:

The session recommended that the following actions be put in place to address the above mentioned issues, to diminish the negative impact on women and girls:

1. Governments must play a leading role in bringing together decision makers (religious, political, traditional leaders) in order to initiate urgently needed changes in cultural and legal practices which violate and condemn women’s and girls’ rights.
2. Information on HIV/AIDS, VCT services, ART treatment and postnatal treatment and counseling should be made available to all women and girls.
3. Governments should create and ratify laws to protect women and girls from being infected with HIV/AIDS. Such laws should make education for all girls compulsory; prohibit FGM and early marriages; penalize HIV positive people who maliciously infect women; establish children’s rights and protect women’s inheritance rights of land and other family properties.
4. Mechanisms should be put in place for the caring and counseling of orphans, and for providing post exposure prophylaxes (PED) where necessary.
5. HIV/AIDS issues and interventions should be mainstreamed to all government departments, and prioritized in a community participatory way to empower local community representatives and to make local NGOs accountable for the implementation of their interventions.

Thematic Session 2: The production and use of gender disaggregated data in policy-making towards poverty reduction

Objective:

The objective of this session was to discuss the production and use of gender disaggregated data in the development of poverty reduction strategy policies and tools and methodologies to include gender in national statistics and in macroeconomic policies through national accounts and the State budget.

Issues discussed:

- The feasibility and adaptability of the methodological model for the integration of gender in policies, budget and national accounts developed by ECA/ACGD with reference to existing statistical systems;

- The possibility of integrating non-economic questions (such as health and violence) into the informal sector (which is steadily growing and employs most women) in the ECA/ACGD model;

- The need to measure the effects of (international and bilateral) trade agreements on poor households and on the paid and unpaid work of women;

- The link between the ECA/ACGD model and the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs), in which gender issues are treated scantily and marginally.

Recommendations:

Relating to the ECA/ACGD model

- Take into consideration the aspects listed below during finalization of the ACGD model:

For ECA/ACGD

- Make provisions for the approval and increased appropriation (for example, in the framework of subregional groups) of the model by the experts, the technical services involved and the different participants and stakeholders (NGOs), including the Annual Conference of African Statisticians and Demographers.

To member States:

- Strengthen the gender dimension to PRSPs and ensure, in particular, that all surveys undertaken in the framework include gender methodologies and tools;

- Make provision in the budget for sizeable resources to finance studies and research on households;

- Promote the consideration of gender in budgets and national accounts.

For NGOs and associations:

- Advocate the incorporation of new approaches that include gender in the preparation of macroeconomic policies to governments and technical and financial backers (World Bank and IMF);

- Carry out campaigns focused on women, in order to convince them of the importance of their work.

To research institutes and development experts:

- Support the carrying out of studies and continuous micro-economic (household) research in future;

- Contribute to the dissemination and improved consideration of the research by decision makers.

To development partners:

- Coordinate their efforts with a view to promoting the consideration of gender issues in all the surveys that are supported;

- Take into account the results of implementing the guide and new tools when planning their support for programmes and projects;

- Support the carrying out of time-use and household surveys and contribute to setting up follow-up/evaluation mechanisms.

Thematic Session 3: Partnership with Men and Boys for Gender Equality

Introduction:

The objective of this section was to explore practical ways of building partnership with men and boys for gender equality. The absolute significance of partnership between men and women for gender equality and sustainable human-centered development is already underscored in the Beijing platform for Action, ICPD and CEDAW recommendations as essential to democracy, good governance, and social justice and to successful fight against the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

Issues:

• The benefits from gender equality accrue to everyone in families, the community and society as a whole.
• Few men and boys understand the real meaning of gender equality and how this can benefit them, therefore they are apprehensive of the concept and any attempts to achieve equality between them and women and girls..
• Numerous obstacles have made it difficult to build partnership between men and women, and between girls and boys. These include: uneasy power relations between the opposite sex; misapprehension of gender equality; gender stereotyping and lack of communication between men and women on matters of health and sexuality, and cultural and religious practices and norms that set men and boys apart from women and girls.

Recommendations:

1. Policies in the workplace and the economy should be developed that do not hamper family life and that encourage men and women to take full advantage of labour policies. There should also be integration of informal work done by women in national wealth and equal pay for all.
2. Partnership should be built in family affairs by providing boys and girls with the same education; encouraging communication between parents and children; by father’s playing role models for their boys and by sharing domestic chores on an equal basis.
3. Partnership should be built around issues relating to sexual violence. Strategies include re-socializing girls, boys and men, establishment of conjugal advisers; facilitating dialogue between parents and children so that young people can freely discuss issues of sexual practices and related concerns and preparing, adopting and ensuring the application of legislation that protect mainly young girls from sexual violence. Collaboration should also be established between NGOs and Ministries of women’s and family affairs to fight violence against women.
4. The media, religious leaders, and traditional rulers should be called upon to sensitize men and raise awareness of violence against women and its consequences.
5. In building partnership with men and boys, it must be remembered that the same strategies cannot be applied everywhere. Cultural and religious difficulties should be taken into account to avoid social exclusion.

Thematic Session 4: Women and Governance

Objective:

The main objective of this Session was to discuss achievements and emerging issues regarding women’s participation in policy and decision-making structures.

Issues discussed:

The issues raised were stimulated by two presentations made at the session as well as the discussion that followed. Noting the problem of gender imbalance in decision-making and power-sharing, governance was defined as the use of power in implementing decisions of those who govern through institutions, actions laws, policies, structures, etc that legitimize their actions. Since the Fourth World Conference on Women, one of the lessons learnt is that increasing women in decision-making positions must be also take into consideration their capacity, effectiveness and commitment. Not all women leaders are interested in the gender agenda, and some succumb to the pressure to act as honorary. Women have learnt also that issues of governance must be understood at the various levels including the household, community and national levels. Women’s representation in parliament has improved since Beijing and in this regard, AU was cited as a good example with the adoption of gender balance policy in its structures. Other countries that had reached the 30% representation by women in parliament were also cited as good examples. However, Sub Sahara Africa had a long way to go before it reached the 30% representation target. Research has also indicated reduced levels of corruption with the increase of women in parliament. Women needed to build strong liberation movements and innovative strategies to pressurize politicians e.g. broadening their alliances. They also need to reach out to the disenfranchised groups, rural women, the poor and the elderly, poor men in order to encourage local initiatives. The use of local languages was stressed as important in building alliances.

Recommendations formulated:

The following recommendations were formulated:

1. Women need to come together and develop core values that include moving away from the patriarchal line of command to more inclusive approaches. They should also encourage consultative perspectives, integrity, transparency, and accountability.
2. Women should sustain their efforts to develop the critical mass in decision-making bodies.
3. Women should create new knowledge in line with their vision for change. They should also attempt to redefine certain roles such as leadership roles
4. The funding of political parties should come with conditionalities in order to reduce levels of corruption
5. Women should seek out men with feminist values
6. Stakeholders should be empowered to hold organizations and the state accountable.
7. The work of NGOs also needs to be more accountable in terms of effectiveness and impact

8. Women need to develop regional organizations that can help support those running for political offices. Regional social movements should also be strengthened
9. Women need to work across political, ethnic, religious, class and racial divides in order to include disadvantaged women and men in their struggles for gender equality
10. More emphasis should be put on getting information to women where they work and reside. They should also be educated politically in order to raise their political awareness.
11. African women must make their perspectives and presence felt on a wide variety of issues within international organizations
12. Global institutions should have a 50% gender representation similar to what AU has adopted
13. Researchers should learn to produce materials in a language that is appropriate for local consumption and for building bridges across boundaries.

Thematic Session 5: Institutional mechanisms for effective gender mainstreaming into national policies and programmes

Objectives:

1. Report the findings of the ECA Monitoring and Evaluation Programme carried out in 18 countries;

2. Address why gender mainstreaming has not yet been integrated into national policies and programmes.

Issues raised:

1. What are the findings of the ECA Monitoring and Evaluation Programme?

2. Why is there little progress in implementing institutional mechanisms for gender mainstreaming?

3. Who is responsible for implementing gender mainstreaming activities?

4. The inadequacy of budget allocation for gender activities in promoting women both in the gender machineries and line machineries;

5. What are the best practices?

6. Who is accountable to whom?

Recommendations:

- STRENGTHEN and harmonize UNDERSTANDING OF CONCEPTS and the approach to gender by providing guides and the necessary tools;

- Coordinate the identification and dissemination of good practices of gender mainstreaming and provision of information;

- Strengthen the capacities of all parties at all levels in considering gender by means of professionalization of gender.

Institutional mechanisms for gender mainstreaming

- National institutional mechanisms for gender mainstreaming should be evaluated and revised to enhance their performance. Governments should reinforce them by facilitating their connectivity and access to ICT;

- Sectoral ministries should train gender experts in different disciplines in order to facilitate gender mainstreaming and define the mandate of gender focal points, reinforce their capacity and resources in order to enhance efficiency;

- Governments should create an independent multisectoral Coordinating Mechanism at the national level with representatives from Governments, civil society, the private sector, development partners and other stakeholders.

National gender machineries

- Governments should review the current structures of NGMs to allow maximum utilization of the available opportunities;

- Their mandate should be explicit to facilitate the development of appropriate implementation strategies, performance indicators and necessary tools;

- NGMs, civil society, the private sector and other non-State stakeholders should establish strategic partnerships to address common areas of concern and to maximize opportunities for mutual capacity tapping. They should collaborate with the African Union leadership for the advancement of women and NEPAD structures for the advancement of women.

Accountability

Stakeholders (civil society in this instance) should:

- Include in their statutes indicators to measure the performance of policy makers that serve as a basis for removing them from office;

- Take the opportunities offered by democratic elections to replace leaders who have failed to meet their commitments.

Thematic Session 6: Women’s Voice In Conflict Prevention And Peace Building

Objective:

The major objective of the session was to come up with strategies and recommendations to strengthen women’s effective and systematic participation in conflict resolution and peace building processes as stipulated by UNSC Resolution 1325.

Issues:

- How should women peace organizations be strengthened at the national, sub-regional and regional levels so that their voices can be hear?
- How best should women peace organizations network with regional and international bodies working on peace conflict resolution and development?
- What are the proposed future actions in the area of peace building and conflict resolution beyond Beijing +10?
- How should the mandates of the African Women Committee on Peace and Development be effectively implemented?

Recommendations:

- The UN, the governments and the NGOs should promote mechanisms to reinforce their capacities and to insure that women are involved in the negotiation, conflict prevention and peace building phases.
- African women should strengthen their capacity to network at all levels as to undertake common effective actions to promote peace building and culture.
- Beyond Beijing +10 the governments, the bilateral and multilateral agencies and the civil society should identify strategies to implement and to sensitize populations on the UNSC Resolution 1325.

Thematic Session 7: Gender responsiveness of NEPAD

Objective:

The objective of this session was to propose strategies and actions aimed at the gender mainstreaming of NEPAD in order to build women’s capacity by enhancing their participation at the level of decision-making.

Issues raised:

The participants’ discussions related to the following questions:

- How to involve women in NEPAD at all levels?

- How can the NEPAD process be used to enhance participation of women?

- How can African women be involved in the setting up of monitoring and evaluation mechanism and implementation of gender mainstreaming in NEPAD?

- How can we ensure resources mobilized are used to fund gender interests within NEPAD?

Recommendations:

:: How to involve women in NEPAD at all levels?

- There should be government commitment at the national level to involve women in strategic decision-making processes so that they are able to engage in African Union (AU) structures that deal with NEPAD;

- There is a need to establish strategies for implementation of the AU Gender Declaration on the Advancement of Women in relation to the implementation of NEPAD as one of the guiding policy principles along side CEDAW and Dakar/Beijing PFAs;

- Governments and civil society organizations should have awareness building programmes about NEPAD using existing information on NEPAD and repackaging it for use by the public through traditional and new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs).

- The Government, civil society and other development stakeholders should agree on a communication plan with suitable support in order to promote NEPAD at all levels.

:: How can the process be used to enhance participation of women?

- Women should be appointed in the NEPAD and the African Union in equal numbers as men;

- Ministries of gender should work closely with AU gender directorate and NEPAD gender sector.

How can African women be involved in the setting up of monitoring and evaluation mechanism and implementation of gender mainstreaming in NEPAD?

- Women Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) that have easy access to information should endeavour to share any information on NEPAD with governments;

- CSOs should carry out regular evaluation of the implementation of the NEPAD process in terms of alternative reports in order to input into the national, subregional and regional reports;

- The gender desks and gender experts in the regional economic commissions should work closely with the NEPAD gender sector in monitoring the implementation of NEPAD and the AU Solemn Heads of State Gender Declaration;

- There is a need to synthesize and disseminate information on current best practices which have been used by some governments and civil society organizations on establishing common understanding of NEPAD by different interest groups.

:: How can we ensure resources mobilized are used to fund gender interests within NEPAD?

- CSO’s and gender machineries in ministries in charge of the advancement of women should lobby governments to allocate specific resources for gender mainstreaming to ensure that their concerns are taken into account in NEPAD;

- It would be necessary to establish within the framework of NEPAD, a mechanism to ensure timely release of financial commitments made by the international community;

- There is need to re-examine current poverty alleviation strategies so that they are also concerned with wealth creation for sustainable development for all.

Thematic Session 8: The Role Of The Judiciary In Promoting And Implementing Women’s Rights

Objective:

The objectives of the session were to generate discussions on the domestic application of women’s human rights in Africa and to raise awareness of pertinent issues affecting women in the judiciary and the different judicial systems that women are facing.

Issues arising from the discussion:

It was noted that several African countries had signed and or ratified international and regional instruments relating to the rights of women however, the fact that immediate steps are not taken to domesticate the instruments on ratification affect their effective implementation at the national level.

The conflict between statute and customary/religious law in countries operating dual systems also affect the enjoyment of women’s human rights as in some countries issues affecting women’s rights are dealt with under customary law, which usually is discriminatory against women.

Women’s access to justice is usually affected by a number of factors, including the high cost of justice, the fact that proceedings are carried out in foreign languages, the attitude of law enforcement officers, especially the police and societal pressures on women not to report cases of violence.

The lack of information on international instruments on women’s rights by lawyers and judges as well as the reluctance of some judges to use international human rights norms in deciding cases of discrimination were also noted as affecting the effective implementation of women’s rights.

Best practices from some countries in using international human rights instruments were noted. The role of civil society organizations in providing legal aid and creating awareness of women’s human rights were raised.

Recommendations:

1. Governments are to take immediate steps to domesticate the CEDAW as well as the protocol to the African Charter (for those countries which have ratified) for effective implementation at the national level.
2. All Governments are to take steps to sign and ratify the protocol to the African Charter on Human and people’s rights on the rights of women to ensure that the protocol comes into effect by the end of the year.
3. Review and repeal all laws and customary practices that discriminate against women.
4. Include women’s rights in the training of judges, lawyers and other law enforcement agencies
5. Document best practice case laws for dissemination across Africa.
6. Provide legal aid and counseling for women as well as creating awareness on women’s rights
7. Civil society organizations are to create coalitions and networks at nation, sub-regional and regional levels for promotion and protection of women’s rights
8. Governments and international donor organizations are to allocate resources to civil society organizations working to provide legal aid to women.
9. The judicial services and other law enforcement agencies should be adequately resourced to ensure effective administration of justice.

Thematic session 9: Partnership For Gender Equality: The Role Of Multilateral And Bilateral Agencies

Objective:

The objective of this thematic session was to identify action oriented recommendations and proposals for coordinating programs and activities of multilateral and bilateral organizations for effective promotion of gender equality in Africa.

Issues:

- What are the effective strategies and mechanisms for strengthening the BPFA implementation, advocacy and program outreach ?
- What would be recommendable actions and plans for moving forward Beijing +10 ?
- How best should gender equality goals of MDGs and those of the ICPD be integrated and coordinated beyond Beijing +10 ?

Recommendations:

- The bilateral and the multilateral agencies should create effective mechanisms of consultation and collaboration at their own level and with the different actors and/or partners in order to adopt common approaches and to promote the implementation of activities in terms of gender mainstreaming in development sectors.
- Focal points in all agencies and coordinators of plans and programs should be trained to use indicators and tools such as the AGDI (Africa Gender Development Index)
- Local expertise should be reinforced and taken into account in order to allow women to participate fully in the collection, analysis and utilization of gender-disaggregated data.

Thematic Session 10: Economic empowerment of women

Objectives:

The objectives of this session were to assess progress made in advancing women’s issues at different levels of the economy ( macro, micro, informal), articulate issues relating to the empowerment of women and to recognize and make visible women’s contribution to their economies. The session therefore sought to identify the main obstacles to the economic empowerment of women; how to improve women’s access to markets at national, regional and global levels; how women’s contribution could be taken into account especially in the household sector and in the macroeconomic policy and framework; how women could be involved in decision-making regarding the distribution and allocation of financial resources and capital; and to examine best practices of interventions for economic empowerment of women.

Issues:

Representatives of the African Development Bank, African Women’s Development Fund, the Network of African Women Entepreneurs, and the Office of International Migration presented their organizations, their mission and objectives and how they sought to address gender issues. Among the issues that were discussed was the need for ADB to work directly with women’s organizations besides governments. Participants felt that discrimination and socio-cultural obstacles, ignorance about women’s rights, lack of access to productive resources, lack of cooperation from the banks, absence of support services such as day care centers, lack of management skills and high interest rates of micro credits were some of the important constraints to women’s economic empowerment. Feminization of migration, the impact of conflict, war, displacement and migration on women, and the implications of migration on the issue of HIV/AIDS were also discussed. In this connection, the importance of knowing about organizations that are involved in traffic in women as well as knowledge of international conventions, treaties and networks on women and girls were stressed. Noting that the objectives and modalities of migration, the volume of remittances by migrants and the recognition of migration of women had changed over time, new strategies for handling the phenomenon were required.

Recommendations:

The following is a sample of the recommendations made by the participants:

1. The impact of actions taken to eliminate gender inequalities should be evaluated to assess the effectiveness of gender policies and programmes.
2. Impact indicators should be integrated into strategic plans for poverty reduction
3. Governments, financial institutions and NGOs should collectively ensure that gender concerns are integrated into development policies.
4. Economic strategies should take into account the fact that women are not homogeneous
5. Governments should take measures to facilitate philanthropy in Africa
6. To improve women’s access to markets at national, regional and global markets, women should improve their knowledge of international norms. Local and regional infrastructure should be improved as well as access to productive resources, information and ICT.
7. To take women’s economic contribution into account, measuring tools/indicators should be improved and women should be trained in gender concepts.
8. To better involve women in decision-making concerning the distribution and allocation of financial resources and capital, women should ensure that their concerns are included as crosscutting issues in poverty reduction policies. Women parliamentarians should be trained in the gender approach and “la budgetisation de la question genre; training programmes for girls should also integrate gender issues.

Thematic Session 11:Women’s Right’s and The Right to Development

Objective:

The main objective of this session was to discuss the interdependence between women’s rights and people’s rights to development and to answer the question if gender equality can be accelerated using the human rights approach to development.

Issues from discussion:

All human rights, civil and political rights, economic, social and cultural rights and the right to development are universal, indivisible, interdependent and interrelated. International instruments such as CEDAW, the Beijing Platform for Action, the POA of ICPD and the Regional instrument, the protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the rights of Women complement one another and are essential for the effective realization of the Millennium development Goals.

Human rights are applicable across all areas of life and therefore it is important to adopt an approach that exploits the synergy between the different programmes and instruments in order to accelerate development as well as the enjoyment of women of their human rights.

The following priority areas were identified for the realization of women’s rights. In the area of health, it was noted that in spite of the adoption of several health policies, lack of progress persist in women’s health, especially in reproductive health and HIV/AIDS. In education, whilst there has been appreciable progress in girls’ enrolment in primary school, there is a marked decrease in retention as they go up the educational ladder due to pregnancies and early marriage among other factors. It was also noted that education on human rights generally is absent from school curricula.

Micro credit schemes introduced in several African countries have not achieved the objective of reducing women’s poverty and thereby improving their economic and social status due to the limited reach and scope of these schemes. Women’s access to and control of resources also continue to lead to marginalisation of women in development.

Women continue to be marginalized in decision making at various levels in most countries except in a few where women’s participation in parliament has exceeded the 30% recommended under the BPFA.

African governments continue to commit to international instruments promoting and protecting women’s rights but there has been lack of effective implementation at the national level.

The role of the feminist movement in promoting women’s human rights was affirmed but it was also recognized that the responsibility for realizing women’s rights and the right to development lies with the whole society, governments as well as civil society.

Recommendations:

1. Human rights are applicable across all areas of life and should underpin all development planning
2. Ensure universal access to health services by increasing resources to the health sector with an adequate allocation to reproductive health.
3. Take, promote and strengthen incentive measures for girls’ enrolment and retention in school up to tertiary level.
4. Include gender and human rights issues in the formal and informal systems of education
5. Allocate an adequate percentage NEPAD resources to developing the economic capacities of African women
6. Create legislative framework to give women legal capacity to own and inherit land.
7. Adopt affirmative action policies to increase proportion of women in parliament
8. Accelerate the signing and ratification of international and regional instruments relating to the rights of women, in particular, the Protocol to the African Charter on human and Peoples’ Rights
9. Take steps to domesticate and implement international and regional instruments that have been ratified.
10. Create an enabling environment for effective government and civil society, especially feminist movement, partnership for effective implementation of women’s rights.

Thematic Session 12: Issues Facing the Girl Child Today

Objective:

The objective of the session was to articulate issues related to the empowerment of the girl child in preparation for their multiple social, cultural, economic and political roles and accompanying challenges. The session focused on issues of sexual harassment and existing mode of communication in regard to HIV/AIDS and other challenges; the emerging issue of trafficking of women and children within and from Africa, and an initiative for providing young women with higher education in Ethiopia and Africa.

Issues:

All the major issues were around the challenges an African girl child faces. Some of these are:

• Unfavourable and unsafe school environments where enrolment for girls are low, sexual harassment of all types are serious and persistent; there are very few female teachers and role models; male teachers are ignorant of what sexual harassment is; there are no counseling services for victims of harassment; and rapes result in teenage pregnancy and unsafe abortion.
• The girl child is disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS pandemic because of her vulnerability. They are exposed to risky practices such as FGM, infanticide, sexual abuse and rapes, poor nutrition, and the burden of caring for the sick and orphans.
• In the homes, the girl child is exploited as domestic servants and many orphaned from HIV/AIDS are forced to live as street children.
• The girl child is excluded from all issues, policies and programs affecting them. Those with disabilities are marginalized, deprived and abandoned

Recommendations:

1. Programmes should be designed and initiated that will involve and empower the girl-children to address and resolve their own problems.
2. Sensitize and engage parents, adults and communities to have a better understanding of the girl-child issues; to fight against exploitation of their girl-child as domestic servants, trafficking persons and sex workers.
3. Create favorable environment, to improve the situation of the girl-child by putting in place mechanisms that will address poverty; improve access to and use by boys and girls of information, and communication technologies; provide psychological and material assistance to victims of rape, sexual harassment and girls living with and affected by HIV/AIDS and disabilities.
4. Speed up the implementation of existing related national and international instruments. In particular establish and/or enforce laws to protect the girl child and punish criminals who abuse their rights; laws should also be passed against infanticide, FGM, early marriage.
5. Financial and human resource mobilization should target the girl-child. At the national level, efforts and resources should promote the rights, development and protection of the girl-child. An African Regional Fund for girls' education and resources from HIPC initiative should provide funding for programmes targeting the problems facing the girl child.
6. The health status of the girl-child should be given special considerations. In particular, policies should be developed that address the different dimensions and needs of children infected with HIV/AIDS. Additionally, HIV/AIDS prevention campaigns should be intensified in schools and in the community involving also parents and guardians.

Conclusion:

In addition to all the recommendations from the thematic sessions, three recurrent themes run through all the sessions. These are:
• The need for political will to implement all the commitments of African governments undertaken at the national, international and regional levels.
• Resource allocation for effective implementation of commitments, policies and plans.
• Gender mainstreaming at all levels of planning across sectors.