African Women’s Decade must be owned by Africans – Musyimi-Ogana
ECA Press Release No. 77/2011
Addis Ababa, 19 May 2011 (ECA) - As part of the effort by the 7th Session of the Committee on Women and Development (CWD) to assess where Africa stands on women’s empowerment, a session was held this week on the African Women’s Decade (AWD) to impress upon member states
The AWD
(www.africanwomendecade.org) was launched in October 2010 in Nairobi with the theme “Grassroots approach to gender equality and women's empowerment” and centers around ten themes, including fighting poverty and promoting economic empowerment of women entrepreneurship; agriculture and food security; health, maternal mortality and HIV and AIDS; education, science and technology; and violence against women and girls.
“The Decade has to be owned by us, the Africans”, said Litha Musyimi-Ogana, the
Director of Women and Gender at the
AUC. “This is why the launch in Nairobi Litha Musyimi-Ogana, the Director of Women and Gender at the AUC was an African event, using African money.”
She explained that the AWD will have two phases, 2010-2015 and 2015-2020. “This way we can see what the Decade will have done when the MDGs are reviewed in 2015.” Musyimi-Ogana underlined that through the grassroots approach of the initiative
“we have stopped thinking only top-down, we are now doing things bottom-up.”
Florence Butegwa, the UN Women Representative to the AUC and the ECA, stated that the Decade was a good opportunity to combine efforts in Africa, but she warned that the results depend on the Member States: “Countries that decide to focus on the AWD will achieve something”, she said.
Closing Gaps, Maximizing Opportunities: Beyond Beijing + 15 is the theme of the four-day meeting at the Headquarters of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia concludes on 20 May.
Ends.
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