8 March 2007
Brussels — The European Commission and the United Nations are marking International Women’s Day by launching a programme to support action and advocacy to step up investments in gender equality as fundamental to the effectiveness of development assistance.
The programme, “EC/UN Partnership for Gender Equality in Development and Peace,” will convene consultations in twelve focus countries to explore how the commitment by developing and donor countries to the Paris Declaration — including its strong focus on national ownership and mutual accountability — is influencing support for gender equality and women’s empowerment. The Paris Declaration also calls for better coordination of donor activities and increased Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) to support achievement of the eight globally-agreed Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Gender equality is a goal in its own right, and central to the achievement of all the eight MDGs.
To advance the programme’s purposes, the EC is strengthening its cooperation with the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and the International Training Centre of the International Labour Organization (ILO). UNIFEM and ILO will work in partnership with EC delegations in developing countries to identify practical approaches to incorporating gender equality and women’s human rights into aid programmes supported by the EC. Through this effort, the partners hope to strengthen implementation of gender equality commitments in national budgets and in national development strategies. Efforts will also include strengthening implementation of Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security by ensuring that at least four of the 12 countries chosen for pilot activities will be crisis or post-conflict countries.
The programme will launch a website that offers updates, tools and inter-active features related to gender equality and aid effectiveness. It hopes to stimulate an increasingly broad range of multilateral, bilateral, national and NGO partners to become adept at making the case for stronger gender equality programming support. The upcoming Ghana High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in September 2008 will be key venue for groups that are promoting the need for a stronger gender equality dimension in the aid effectiveness agenda.