EU/UN gender programme launched

Pg 24 Sat. March 15/08

Story: Rebecca Quaicoe Duho

AN European Union (EU)/United Nations (UN) Partnership on Gender Equality for Development and Peace has been launched with a call on the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) to collect a comprehensive data along gender lines for development purposes.
A comprehensive approach to data collection is said to be crucial to a sustainable and equitable economic growth and human development in the country.
The Chief Advisor to the President, Mrs Mary Chinery-Hesse, who made the call at the launch in Accra on Wednesday said, such a data was the surest way to systematically obtain useful information for the formulation of people-centred, gender-sensitive public policy.
The EU/UN partnership project which would be implemented by UNIFEM with support from the International Training Centre of the International Labour Organisation and the Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs is aimed at supporting the integration of gender equality as a key driver of development in the country.
The occasion was also used to begin a National Consultation on the mapping Study on Aid Effectiveness and Gender Equality in Ghana.
The EC/UN partnership aims to identify approaches with which to integrate gender equality and women's A European Union (EU)/United Nations (UN) Partnership on Gender Equality for Development and Peace has been launched with a call on the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) to collect a comprehensive data along gender lines for development purposes.
A comprehensive approach to data collection is said to be crucial to a sustainable and equitable economic growth and human development in the country.
The Chief Advisor to the President, Mrs Mary Chinery-Hesse, who made the call at the launch in Accra on Wednesday said, such a data was the surest way to systematically obtain useful information for the formulation of people-centred, gender-sensitive public policy.
The EU/UN partnership project which would be implemented by UNIFEM with support from the International Training Centre of the International Labour Organisation and the Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs is aimed at supporting the integration of gender equality as a key driver of development in the country.
The occasion was also human rights into new aid modalities, in accordance with the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness adopted on March 2, 2005.
The Declaration is an international agreement to which ministers, heads of agencies and other senior officials adhered and committed their countries and organisations to continue to increase efforts in harmonisation, alignment and managing aid for results with a set of monitorable actions and indicators.
Mrs Chinery-Hesse said “as we pursue the strategy of gender mainstreaming, we should recognise that especially in Africa, there should still be space to accommodate interventions that specifically target women’s needs, concerns and perspectives.
This she said can be achieved with high impact gender specific initiatives as a complement, with the ultimate objective of mainstreaming these activities at a later time.
In this way, she said “we would eliminate the risk of women’s needs being lost in the mainstream when conditions are not ripe for them to compete on the same footing as men”.
She said the importance of collecting and disseminating statistical information in respect of gender issues was crucial to planning and evaluation, adding that data assumes meaning and usefulness for this purpose if there is disaggregation along gender lines.
She called for the mapping studies to also take into account the paid and unpaid for economic contributions of women such as their role as mothers.
The Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, Prof. George Gyan-Bafour, said the government would continue to show commitment towards addressing gender equality and equity issues as reflected in the GPRS II.
He said that the national budget statement and the economic policy of government has shown strong commitment towards addressing gender equality and equity issues.
The Head of Delegation of the European Commission to Ghana, Mr Filiberto Ceriani Sebregondi, said the EU believed that investments in gender equality was fundamental to the effectiveness of development assistance and therefore it was contributing a total of 2.5 million euros which is part of the total cost of 4.7 million euro partnership programmes.
He said the European Commission had committed to channel 50 per cent of government to government assistance through national planning and budgeting frameworks, adding that for the EC, general and sectoral budget support would increasingly become the preferred mode of aid delivery.
He said the partnership programme would support the integration of gender equality as a key driver of development in the context of the aid effectiveness
The National Programme Coordinator of UNIFEM, Ms Afua Ansre, said the project would be focused on 12 pilot countries namely Ghana, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia.
The rest are Nepal, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine, Nicaragua, Honduras and Surinam.
She said there were five strategies — knowledge generation, capacity building, information sharing, advocacy and partnership building which the project will focus on and that at the national level there will be close collaboration with government departments, national institution for women and gender equality, women's NGOs and networks, civil society among others.
The Minister of Women and Children's Affairs, Hajia Alima Mahama, who chaired the launch stressed that the government was committed to addressing gender equality and had, among other things, demonstrated this further by coming out with modalities for gender budgeting, starting with the ministries of Agriculture, Health and Education.