North Africa Beijing +10 Evaluation Meeting

By Houda Mejri, Communication Officer, ACGD, ECA

Within the framework of Africa’s contribution in the Global Decade Review of Beijing Platform for Action on Women (Beijing + 10), ECA launched a series of subregional meetings at experts level to review progress achieved in the 5 subregions, and seek consensus as to what the gender-related priority areas in the subregions are for the next 10 years.

In this regard, the North Africa subregional evaluation meeting convened in Tangiers, Morocco (14-16 April, 2004), and brought together more than 30 participants who examined, over three full days, results achieved, major challenges pending, and emerging issues facing women in the subregion.

The importance of this meeting and the ones convened in the other subregions lies in the fact that for the first time, sectoral ministries are associated in the review process to gauge the extent to which gender has effectively been mainstreamed in national development policies and programmes as one of the major strategies recommended by the Beijing Platform for Action.

In conformity with the Decade Review mission to put emphasis on the accountability of all sectoral departments to mainstream gender in their policies and resource allocation, six ministries have thus been strategically selected for focus in gender mainstreaming. Participants included delegates from ministries responsible for Finance, Planning, Agriculture, Trade and Industry, Health, and Gender.

In their review, they focused mainly on:

1. Assessing the sustainability of political will and effective commitment to gender equality;
2. Evaluating the specific impact of major external factors on the status of women;
3. Assessing the level of interaction between governments and women’s civil society organizations; and
4. Building consensus on the gender–related priority areas of concern in the subregion for the next 10 years.

Regarding the major outcomes of this subregional decade review in North Africa, the meeting noted that progress was achieved in a concrete and convincing way in 3 major areas:

• Human and legal rights, with laws passed or improved to protect women;
• The political sector, with women’s participation in decision-making re-emphasized and in constant increase;
• The socio-economic sector (girls education increased, health services improved, access to micro credit, integration of gender concerns in national development planning and national budgets, strengthening of gender national machineries, increase of partnerships with NGOs in gender programmes…)

Participants also examined with much interest the constraints encountered while implementing the Beijing Platform for Action. These are socio-cultural, political, economic, and institutional.

The meeting issued recommendations that include 3 categories:

1- Recommendations to governments:

• Strengthen the mandate and resources of national gender machineries to facilitate their participation in the formulation, monitoring and evaluation of the integration of gender concerns in sectoral policies, programmes and budgets;
• Emphasize the regional dimension of gender-related problems in all the countries of the subregion;
• Enhance women’s participation in the decision-making process, namely through affirmative action, sensitization and training;
• Institutionalize gender mainstreaming in all sectoral ministries through sensitization and training of decision-makers;
• Develop adequate policies to promote women’s employment and entrepreneurship by encouraging female students to opt for science and technology;
• Develop indicators covering all social and economic sectors in each country, in order to facilitate the follow-up and evaluation of gender programmes;
• Harmonize national laws on women and family with international laws and instruments that the subregion has adopted; and
• Develop information networks on HIV/AIDS among countries of the subregion, and share good practices.

2- Recommendations to UN Specialized agencies:

• Coordinate UN specialized agencies resources so as to strengthen the impact of their action in the subregion;
• Harmonize and strengthen human and financial capacities of UNIFEM subregional office in order to consolidate and expand its intervention in the subregion; and
• Call upon FAO to extend its support to the agro-industrial sector so as to strengthen women’s capacity in using new technologies in agriculture.

Recommendations to the Civil Society:

• Consolidate the role of national NGOs to better serve gender issues and build women’s capacities; and
• Strengthen partnerships between governments and civil society in promoting gender mainstreaming and the implementation of related programmes.

Upon adoption of the final report, the outcome of the subregional review meeting was submitted to the meeting of the ECA Intergovernmental Committee of Experts in North Africa (ICE) for information.