Partnership on gender equality launched

Saturday, March 15, 2008 (The Mirror Pg 15)
By Rebecca Kwei
The Chief Advisor to the President, Mrs Mary Chinery-Hesse, has called on the Ghana Statistical Service to improve the availability and quality of statistical data disaggregated along gender lines.
That, she said, would allow for a systematic study of gender differentials and gender issues.
She said the collection and dissemination of statistical information in respect of gender issues was critical to planning and evaluation, adding that such information was only meaningful when it was disaggregated by gender.
Mrs Chinery-Hesse made the call at launch of the EC/UN Partnership on Gender Equality for Development and Peace which was held in Accra.
The project is an initiative that involves the European Commission (EC), the United Nations Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and the International Training Centre of the International Labour Organisation (ITC/ILO).
The EC/UN partnership aims at identifying approaches with which to integrate gender equality and women's human rights into new aid modalities, in accordance with the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness.
Additionally, it will also provide support for national partners' efforts to fulfil international obligations on gender equality and to match their commitments to gender equality with adequate financial allocations in national development programmes and budgets.
Mrs Chinery-Hesse noted that a comprehensive approach to data collection was crucial to development, since it was the surest way to systematically obtain useful information for the formulation of people-centred, gender-sensitive public policy.
Apart from the launch, the day was also used to commence a National Consultation on the Mapping Study on Aid Effectiveness and Gender Equality in Ghana as part of the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness which was adopted in March 2005.
The commitments of the declaration are ownership, alignment, harmonisation, managing for development results and mutual accountability.
Mrs Chinery-Hesse was hopeful that "the gender mapping project will provide policy makers with sufficient baseline information to enable them to institute appropriate changes to policies in order to address the special concerns of women".
In her presentation on the EC/UN partnership, the National Programme Co-ordinator of UNIFEM, Ms Afua Ansre, said the project would focus on 12 pilot countries, namely, Ghana, Cameroun, Ethiopia, the 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 would focus on and that at the national level there would be close collaboration with government departments, national institutions for women and gender equality, women's NGOs and networks, civil society, among others.
Ms Ansre said the project would ensure "increased visibility of gender equality and its acknowledgement as a key development objective within the framework of the aid effectiveness agenda".
The Head of the EC Delegation in Ghana, Mr Filiberto Ceriani Sebregondi, said gender equality was essential for growth and poverty reduction and was key to reaching the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
However, he said gender inequalities were still ingrained in the cultural, social and political systems of many countries.
Mr Sebregondi said gender equality was one of the five common principles of EU development co-operation and that the EC was investing in the project because "we believe that investments in gender equality are fundamental to the effectiveness of development assistance".
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 that further by coming out with modalities for gender budgeting, starting with the ministries of Agriculture, Health and Education.