THE Chief Director of the Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs (MOWAC), Mr Gershon Kumor, has called for a multi-sectoral approach to fast track commitments made on women’s rights by the government into real positive change for women in urban and rural areas.
According to him, although the country has shown commitment in promoting the rights of women, institutional arrangements and structures to accelerate implementation of policies and provisions have been a challenge, resulting in a slower pace than expected in achieving results for gender equality.
Mr Kumor made this known in a speech read on his behalf by the acting Director of the Department of Women (DoW), Ms Patience Opoku, at the opening of an implementing partners consultative meeting organised in Accra by the DoW as part of the country’s effort to implement the African Women Decade which spans from 2010 to 2020.
The AWD was declared at the 12th Ordinary Summit of Heads of State and Government in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in February 2009 on the theme “Grassroots Approach to Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment” and was launched in Ghana in June 2011.
The AWD, which has 10 thematic areas, has the objective of, among other things, creating awareness and mobilising national support and political will to implement the agreed international, regional and sub-regional decisions and gender commitments; re-invigorate commitment to accelerate the implementation of agreed global, regional and national commitments on the human rights perspective, focusing on priorities such as education, health, agriculture, women’s economic and political empowerment, gender-based violence; mobilise resources for implementing the decade and energise the African women’s movement with a focus on youth and grass-root women leaders.
Mr Kumor said since gender issues cut across all sectors and at all levels of development, there was the need for ministries, departments and agencies as well as civil society organisations, development partners and the private sector to work together so as to strategise together on how they could achieve a common goal of gender equality.
He said the realisation of women’s rights and the achievement of all the eight Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) particularly MDG three, through the effective domestication of the principles of the country’s international policy obligations, required the combined and complementary effort of different stakeholders.
He said it was in the light of harnessing efforts that the DoW, with support from the National Planning Commission (NDPC), has developed a Strategic Framework, which is based on the objectives of the African Women Decade, with the goal of “showing result for gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment in Ghana”.
A Policy Planning Analyst of the NDPC, Mrs Mary Mpereh, in a presentation on Ghana and the African Union’s (AU) Women Decade: Towards the Road Map, said the strategic thrust of the AWD was to identify gaps in the implementation of the CEDAW and Beijing Platform for Action, the National Gender and Children’s Policy, and harness advantages offered by ongoing national and international initiatives in order to strengthen Ghana’s quest for gender equality and women’s empowerment, as well as its reporting obligations on international and regional conventions and protocols.
She said more importantly, the AWD would be integrated into national development policies, sector and district plans, budgets and monitoring and evaluation frameworks.
The Director, Gender Unit of the Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs (MOWAC), Mrs Dorothy Ony who gave a status report on MOWAC’s re-engineering plan and other activities, said the country has domesticated a lot of international protocols and policies in its laws to show its commitment towards gender mainstreaming. She mentioned some of these to include the passage on the Domestic Violence Act in 2007, the passage on the Anti-Human Trafficking Act and the Children’s Act, among others.
Other activities she said include developing an Affirmative Action Bill to increase women’s participation and representation in governance and decision making positions, the development of the Ghana National Action Plan (GHANAP) 1325 on Women, Peace and Security for the implementation of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 and the development of sex/gender disaggregated data collection instruments with the collaboration of Ghana Statistical Service (GSS).
The Ministry, she said, was currently implementing its re-engineering plan of action which was aimed at improving its work processes through the development of a responsive organisational structure, improving its staff development and performance, enhance the knowledge and skills of MOWAC staff in gender mainstreaming as well as enhance MOWAC staff capacity in ICT to support Gender Management Information System (GMIS), among others.
Professor Takyiwa Manu, who co-ordinated the meeting, said gender equality could not work in isolation, hence the need for all to support it.
She said although the country had signed different treaties and protocols, the status of women had not changed.
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