For Immediate Release:	November 10, 2005
For More Information:	Leigh Pasqual, UNIFEM, leigh.pasqual@undp.org, +1 212 906 5463
Sponsor Organization:	UNIFEM
UNIFEM and EC Organize Conference on Gender Equality, National Development Strategies and New Trends in Development Cooperation
United Nations — A conference, which opened today in Brussels, has brought 130 gender experts and advocates from the developing and developed worlds to discuss the evolving rules of development cooperation, and whether these are adequately targeting women’s human rights and gender equality concerns, especially as these intersect with efforts to eradicate poverty. The meeting, organized by the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and the European Commission (EC), follows on the heels of three important events in 2005 that have linked commitments to gender equality with development cooperation goals — the 10-year review of the Beijing Platform for Action, the adoption of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness and the 2005 World Summit. Recent years have seen a considerable reshaping of the structures and financing of development cooperation. The Paris Declaration, adopted in March 2005, reflects the changing nature of aid allocation as increasingly driven by partnership between donor and recipient countries, and ownership of the development process by the recipients of aid. These shifts have raised important questions about implementation and the accountability of all development actors. At the national and international policy levels, they pose new challenges and present new opportunities for reaching internationally-agreed development objectives, such as the Millennium Development Goals. Speaking at a press conference, Koos Richelle, Director-General of the Directorate for Europe Aid Cooperation of the EC, said that the main aim of the meeting was to see how to develop new ways to embed gender equality and women’s empowerment within the new trends in development cooperation. “After 60 years of development cooperation, its time to change the way we deal with this. Earlier, we had been too focused on inputs. Now we are focusing on outputs, on targets and results because these are measurable, promises are not,” he said. Out of the recent pledge by world leaders to increase aid by $50 billion a year by 2010, he said that $37 billion of this would come from the European Union. Coordination among the donor community, and close partnership with recipient governments would be critical to ensure this aid effectively enhances development, including ensuring that gender issues are not only mentioned in the new aid mechanisms but rea lly implemented, he added. “Because ‘ownership’ is central to the new aid strategies, it must include women, who are not only citizens but key stakeholders in their country’s development,” said Noeleen Heyzer, executive director of UNIFEM. “We need to look at how to improve women’s ‘ownership’ of the new aid instruments, and how to make governments and donors more accountable to achieving gender equality in their implementation of development programmes,” she said. “There is progress,” she added, pointing to the 120 countries with national gender action plans, the 180 signatories to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), and the 45 states that have concrete legislation to end violence against women. “But progress is too slow. Why?” According to Heyzer, the answer lies in a “crisis of implementation at the ground level.” “The gender ac tion plans are there but they are not being implemented. The challenge therefore is how to make them part and parcel of national ownership strategies, so that women as owners too, have their voices reflected in national priorities and decision-making.” Rehema Kerefu-Sameji of the Women’s Legal Aid Center in Tanzania was positive about her government’s attempts to increase ownership of the development process by all Tanzanians. “Our first Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) was not owned by the people, and when it was reviewed it was found to be quite negative. The second time around, the government has made a big effort to consult with people, including civil society, and really take our recommendations on board. For instance, in the first draft, not all our concerns were included so we spoke up and they came back to us with a second draft. Now it includes 60% of our recommendations. More importantly, in terms of gender equality, it actually includes about 80% of what we recommended,” she said. “So I’m happy about the document and that we participated in formulating it. But although it’s a good document, it’s still just a document. The challenge ahead is how t o use it to make practical change in the daily lives of women, especially in the rural areas.” Much of the conference debate around accountability within the new aid architecture will draw from a publication by NGOs Eurostep and Social Watch called “Accountability Upside Down.” The report examines to what extent gender equality is being promoted within the context of international efforts to eradicate poverty, by looking at a sample of nine bilateral donors’ aid programming. “The key question of the book is how do we make national ownership a responsibility of all sectors of a society, and how do we hold not just recipient governments, but donors, accountable for their policies,” said Mirjam van Reisen, author of the report and director of Europe External Policy Advisors (EEPA). The report concludes that there are few, if any, mechanisms for tracking accountability within the new aid architecture, and even fewer where implementation of national obligations to gender equality are concerned. It argues, however, that there is potential in the new aid modalities to advance gender equality. “One area is national capacity-building. As an analogy, we all use computers today, and the more we use them the more we need IT support, not less. The same applies to gender equality — the more we progress, the more capacity we need to build,” said van Reisen. “The stakes for women are high,” emphasized Heyzer. “We have made important gains in the last decade in terms of linking human development with human rights and human security, but as we keep seeing all too clearly, these gains can be lost and advances reversed. To make a real dent in removing gender inequalities and reducing poverty, things cannot be done on the cheap. The new development architecture now taking shape represents an historic opportunity to invest in strategies that actually work. We need to recognize this and commit the resources needed to apply them broadly, especially in the world’s poorest countries.” For more information: Conference Web Page: http://www.unifem.org/news_events/event_detail.php?EventID=31 Accountability Upside Down: Gender Equality in a Partnership for Poverty Eradication (PDF, 5.6MB): http://www.eurostep.org/docs/200503160000292960.pdf -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- UNIFEM is the women's fund at the United Nations, providing financial support and technical assistance to innovative programmes promoting women's human rights, their economic and political empowerment, and gender equality in more than 100 countries. For more information, visit http://www.unifem.org. UNIFEM, 304 East 45th Street, 15th Floor, New York, NY 10017. Tel: +1 212-906-6400. Fax: +1 212-906-6705.