SADC has been challenged to strengthen institutional mechanisms for the advancement of women by providing adequate financial and human resources.

The challenge was made by delegates at the southern African Sub-Regional Meeting for the decade review of the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action (BPFA) held in Lusaka, Zambia, from 26 to 28 April 2004. A meeting of Ministers of Gender or Women’s Affairs on 29 April endorsed the outcomes from the decade review.

After reviewing the 12 critical areas of concern outlined in the BPFA as obstacles to the advancement of women and gender equality, the meeting agreed that gender machineries in the SADC region are weak financially, technically and politically.

The meeting cited inadequate capacity to effect policy implementation, lack of accountability, and monitoring and evaluation as challenges towards a strengthened institutional mechanism for gender equality.

In its resolutions, the meeting noted that while the SADC region has scored progress in implementing the BPFA, important issues to gender equality and the empowerment of women remain unchanged.

The southern Africa Office of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) in collaboration with SADC organized the meeting as part of a worldwide evaluation ahead of 2005, the year marking the 10th anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women, which was held in Beijing, China, in 1995.

Participants included representatives of national gender machineries, and experts in the ministries of finance, planning, industry, commerce and trade, foreign affairs, health, agriculture from Angola, Botswana, Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, United Republic of Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Other participants included representatives of intergovernmental organizations in the southern African region and gender and women’s empowerment NGOs.

The meeting resolved that the established institutional mechanisms in the form of ministries, directorates, divisions, sections or units to co-ordinate the implementation of gender issues must be given clearer goals and strategic interventions that are results-based.

The institutional gender machineries at both the national and SADC regional levels are generally understaffed, inadequately funded and most of them are not strategically positioned within the government structures. This makes it difficult for coordination, monitoring and evaluating progress in gender mainstreaming in other line ministries.

The meeting noted that only a few experts in the national gender machineries have the requisite gender competencies and awareness on gender equality instruments to implement policies and assist in the mainstreaming of gender.

In terms of the sub-regional mechanisms, the meeting noted that the SADC gender unit is currently understaffed with limited financial resources.

Acknowledging the difficulties in ensuring enforcement of the existing national and regional gender policies, the meeting called for the alignment of such policies to the SADC Gender and Development Declaration to ensure enforcement and provision of adequate budgetary allocations.

The meeting further recommended annual reporting on achievements on gender by all national gender machineries. Governments should also establish benchmarks for monitoring implementation of the national, regional and global gender frameworks.

A working session for SADC gender and women’s empowerment NGOs convened on 25 April to consolidate input from the NGOs, presented a communiqué which among others, recommended that governments “rebuild the institutional mechanisms for advancing gender equality to well-resourced and adequately staffed offices placed at the level of full ministries or in the president’s office by 2006.”

The SADC gender NGOs further recommended that a fixed percentage of national budgetary allocations protected and guaranteed by an act of parliament be provided to the institutional mechanisms. They added that progress in this regard should be assessed at the SADC annual heads of states meeting.

The Southern African Research and Documentation Centre (SARDC), Women in Development Southern Africa Awareness (WIDSAA) convened the working session in collaboration with the Non-Governmental O rganisation Coordinating Council (NGOCC), the umbrella body of gender and development-oriented NGOs in Zambia..