ECA's Strengthened Partnership with AU and UNIFEM in Gear

Addis Ababa , 08 July 2008 (ECA) - Over the past few years, the Economic Commission for Africa has been deploying sustainable efforts to strengthen the partnership it had forged with the African Union and its Women, Gender and Development Directorate (WGDD) as well as with UNIFEM Office in charge of liaising with the ECA and the AU. Last week, the three organizations convened a meeting with Addis based development partners to discuss joint activities and seek support for their implementation. The partnership also includes UNDP and other UN agencies especially UNFPA.

Since the beginning of this year, the three institutions have collaborated around the agenda of advancing gender equality and women's empowerment throughout the Continent, with the AU WGDD providing the political leadership, ECA and UNIFEM the technical guidance and assistance, and UNIFEM also ensuring that outcomes are translated and incorporated into national programmes.

The purpose of this specific meeting was to discuss and identify support for the implementation of the jointly planned activities for the short-term period extending from July to December 2008.

Collaboration between the three organizations was very clear and convincing as they all spoke with one voice about the need to accelerate the implementation of several global and Regional Conventions and Declarations to which Africa has committed itself.

One of the major achievements of this triangular partnership is the development of the gender policy for the AU as well as organizing the conference on Women's Economic Empowerment in Malawi earlier this year. In this regard, the AU WGDD Director acknowledged that the development of the final draft of the AU gender policy would not have been possible without the involvement of ECA, UNIFEM and UNFPA, among others.

Partners attending the meeting lauded the partnership and reiterated their appreciation for the successful operationalisation of this strategic relationship. It was agreed that lobbying should be accelerated to use the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) to report on achieving gender equality across the Continent. Reference was also made to the European Union Africa Strategy and the need for it to be engendered. The AU was tasked with formulating proposals on how to mainstream gender in the EU-Africa Strategy.

Assessing the partnership as a holistic framework, the three institutions acknowledged that not all programmes planned by each individual organization are implemented within the partnership, as there are some activities that are specific to each institution individually. It was agreed however that the aim is to collaborate as much as possible, and use the outcomes to the advantage of each institution.

Major partnership activities that the three institutions are actively involved in include the finalisation of the draft AU Gender Policy which will be adopted during the upcoming Conference of the Ministers of Gender and Women's Affairs (25 - 29 August 2008); the development of tools for supporting gender mainstreaming and implementing commitments on strengthening women's rights; capacity development of regional and sub-regional women's networks for greater strategic support to the AU WGDD, capacity building for and governments to deliver on gender equality. Another major activity is the preparation of the African Development Forum on Gender (November 2008), which will examine the most persistent challenges that are still inhibiting meaningful progress and effective breakthroughs in the achievement of gender equality and the empowerment of women in Africa.