Tunis Hosts ECA's First Sub-regional Workshop on Beijing+10 Follow-up Strategy
July 21, 2006
Over 40 senior government officers from key ministries will attend in Tunis, Tunisia, the first S ub-regional workshop on implementing the follow up strategy of the Outcome and Way Forward after the Seventh African Regional Conference on Women (Beijing + 10).
This five-day long workshop due on Monday 24 July 2006 will kick start a series of five sub-regional workshops that ECA is planning to conduct to help member countries
identify their priority areas and reach a consensus as to the way forward, with regard to achieving gender equality and equity and improving the status of women.
Each part will be presented briefly below.
Along with other regions of the world, Africa undertook a decade review of the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action in 2004. The review which was conducted at the national, sub-regional and regional levels examined progress made in the implementation of the Platform, the challenges encountered in the course of implementation as well as the measures that should be undertaken as a matter of priority to accelerate the implementation process.
The Seventh African Regional Conference on Women on Beijing + 10 that was the culmination of the review (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in October 2004), adopted the Outcome and Way Forward document. The document underlined the continued relevance of the Beijing Platform for Action as the most effective strategy for mainstreaming gender into development policies and programmes and underscored the imperative of continuing to implement it at an accelerated pace in the next decade.
In practically every critical area of concern in the BPFA, specific actions were singled out as necessary for the promotion of gender equality. These specific actions also took into consideration the 8 Millennium Development Goals that are outlined in the Millennium Declaration.
The critical areas are:
• Women and poverty: Women's economic empowerment, their access to trade and gender and debt cancellation
• Women in the economy: Land management to ensure access by women
• Women and health: Maternal mortality
• HIV/AIDS and its gender implications
• Institutional Mechanisms: Strengthening institutional mechanisms
• Women in conflict situations: Gender issues in conflict resolution and peace promotion
• Violence against women
• Women in power and decision making
• Human Rights of women: Women's human rights in law
• Education and training for women: Gender disparities in education
• Women and the media
• The girl-child
In order to implement the actions and recommendations stated in the Outcome and Way Forward document, ECA developed a Follow-up Strategy for the Implementation of the Follow-up and Way Forward on Beijing + 10. To facilitate its implementation, Operational Guidelines for the implementation of this strategy were also prepared as a tool to monitor progress made in the implementation process. The monitoring process will be a continuous one and reports based on the data generated by the monitoring exercise will be presented to the institutional structures that review performance regularly within the ECA and UN framework.
As the implementation process of the Follow-up Strategy at the national level requires building the capacity of the major actors entrusted with this task, ECA is organizing this series of sub-regional workshops to which representatives from 6 key sectoral ministries (sectors i.e. health, agriculture, commerce and industry, economic planning and finance, gender/women's affairs and statistics) have been invited.
The overall goal of this workshop, organized jointly by ECA's North Africa sub-regional Office and the African center for Gender and Development, aims mainly to help participating countries develop an action plan to implement the Follow-up Strategy. Its specific objectives are as follows:
• To familiarize participants with the selected priority sectors, the key issues and the strategic actions to be undertaken
• To train participants on using the monitoring tool to measure change over time in the course of implementation
• To help participants select the areas in which their countries will focus on in their follow-up activities and to develop a plan of action for their sectors
• To familiarize participants with the African Gender and development index (AGDI) and to share the experience acquired using the tool .
To expound current reporting mechanisms and procedures so as to help participants absorb the co mmon platform for assessing the progress made . .
It is expected that by the end of the workshop, participants will be clear about the priority areas/sectors selected by their country for implementation, as well as on the specific measures to be undertaken and by whom. Attendants will also be clear about the reporting system, the periodicity of the reports and the authority to be submitted to .
Last but not least, the workshop is expected to assist p articipants in identif ying how the data collected using the AGDI can support the monitoring of the implementation of th is follow- up strategy.
