UN Development Fund for Women urges embedding gender equality in aid programmes

Some 130 experts are meeting in Belgium at a conference organized by the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and the European Commission to highlight the role of gender in development assistance, as aid allocations are increasingly driven by partnerships between donor and recipient countries.

"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," Noeleen Heyzer, the executive director of UNIFEM, said.

"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.

The conference follows 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 that came out of the 1995 women's conference, the adoption of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness and the 2005 World Summit.

Ms. Heyzer said there has been much progress, including the fact that 120 countries have national gender action plans, 180 have signed the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), and 45 have concrete legislation to end violence against women.

But she added that progress had been too slow, and blamed a lack of action to carry through on commitments. "The gender action 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."

In the last decade women have made important gains in linking human development with human rights and human security, but it has become obvious that those gains could be lost and advances reversed, she said.

"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," Ms. Heyzer said, adding. "The stakes for women are high."