By Singy Hanyona – SANF 04 no 36
Gender experts in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) have urged leaders in the region to domesticate international human rights instruments and gender frameworks in order to promote equality among women and men. One such framework is the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).
A SADC Sub-regional Decade Review meeting held in Lusaka-Zambia from 26-28 April recommended that there should be concerted efforts to eliminate harmful cultural and traditional practices if gender policies were to be effectively implemented in the region.
SADC has joined the rest of the world in evaluating the state of implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action in 2004 in preparation for the decade Beijing +10 in 2005. The meeting devised some strategies on measures to address the obstacles encountered in the implementation of the recommendations of the Beijing Platform for Action.
The objective of the statutory meeting was to review and appraise progress made in the implementation of the Dakar and Beijing Platforms for Action in Africa, during the past 10 years in the SADC region (Beijing+10).
The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) organized the inter-governmental meeting for Africa in conjunction with SADC. The meeting brought together experts from national gender machineries, ministries of finance, planning, industry and trade, health, agriculture and foreign affairs.
Representatives from Angola, Botswana, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe, noted the critical need to develop a mechanism to ensure gender mainstreaming in line ministries, with own budgets.
The meeting recommended that governments must adopt affirmative action to protect women and this should be enshrined in national constitutions. According to resolutions of the meeting, SADC should also revisit the 30 percent representation of women in decision-making, and as per African Union (AU) requirements, upgrade to 50 percent.
Dickson Mzumara, ECA Southern Africa Officer-in-Charge, says the decade review was important, especially since it is now almost 30 years after the first Global Women’s Conference, held in Mexico in 1975.
A communiqué from the SADC gender and women’s empowerment NGOs to the meeting called on all SADC countries to adopt pro-poor gender responsive budgeting as the approach for allocating resources at the national and local government levels by December 2006.
The Southern African Research and Documentation Centre (SARDC), Women in Development Southern Africa Awareness (WIDSAA) convened the working session for SADC gender and women’s empowerment NGOs a day before the UNECA meeting. This was in collaboration with the Non-Governmental Organisation Coordinating Council (NGOCC), the umbrella body of gender and development-oriented NGOs in Zambia to consolidate the NGO input to the bigger meeting. Regarding women in power and decision-making, the meeting heard that progress has been registered. For instance, Swaziland has elected a woman as Deputy Speaker in the House of Assembly, and a woman Deputy President in the House of Senate.
The DRC and Zimbabwe also have women Deputy Speakers. Zambia has a woman Clerk of the National Assembly, a woman Director of Public Prosecution and Auditor General. The country also has the first woman State Counsel in the history of the republic.
Experts at the meeting proposed that mechanisms to hold parliaments accountable for any gender disparities should be developed. They also proposed that networks for gender mainstreaming should be established at community level in SADC.
“Parliamentarians should be targeted for training to utilize gender equality instruments, which should be translated into local languages,” reads one of the resolutions from the meeting.
Delegates also tackled the impact of HIV and AIDS and poverty on the struggle to achieve gender equality and empowerment of women in southern Africa, as a serious emerging issue.
According to a SADC study presented at the meeting, the region accounts for over 70 percent of the people infected globally.
“Women and children suffer disproportionately as the scourge is hitting women hard,” says the study. After the Beijing international women’s conference in China in 1995, the affirmative action resolution, urged countries to strive for gender equality and the empowerment of women.
The impact of HIV and AIDS and the growing poverty exacerbated by economic structural adjustment, have frustrated these efforts. Individuals, men and women, families, communities and entire nations are destabilized by the epidemic.
Ministers responsible for gender and women affairs in the region also met to validate the outcomes reports of experts.
The outcomes of the meeting will be fed into the Southern Africa Intergovernmental Committee of Experts (ICE) and will constitute the SADC position in the Africa Regional and Global Review of Beijing +10. The experts’ meeting comes six months before the 7th African Regional Conference on Women, to be held in November 2004 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
The conference will be hosted by UNECA and is designed to enable Africa to assess progress made and to make decisions on the advancement of women, within the framework of Beijing +10. (SARDC)
