Addis Ababa, 26 January, 2017 – (ECA) – The Africa Ministerial Pre-Consultative Meeting on the Commission on the Status of Women Sixty First (CSW 61st) ended in Addis Ababa Friday evening with African Gender Ministers coming up with an agreed position on the continent’s priorities on women with the aim of influencing the outcome of the global meeting in New York in March.
The CSW 61 will be held under the theme “Women’s economic empowerment in the changing world of work”.
ECA Deputy Executive Secretary, Ms. Giovanie Biha, praised the Ministers for building consensus on Africa’s position to the CSW 61 ensuring “Africa speaks with one loud voice on and for its issues especially gender and women’s issues”.
She said the strategic meeting had three major takeaways for her, including the need to make sure Africa, as the largest block in the United Nations, keeps the momentum at the CSW through their Gender Ministers by ensuring that their agreed position influences the outcome of the global conclusions as the meeting.
“Africa is consistent with its unprecedented desire to change its narrative, its development path towards a united, transformed and developed continent; and it collective considers the protection of women’s socio-economic and political rights including their rights to decent employment opportunities with equal pay, empowering working conditions, equal voice and strengthened agency as a prerequisite to such outcome,” said Ms. Biha.
Executive Director of UN Women, Ms. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, said Africa with its 54 member states, has the potential to influence key decisions in the United Nations, including outcomes of the CSW and other inter-governmental processes which can boost the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals as well as Agenda 2063.
“It is therefore important that Africa takes this strategic role and its place in history very seriously,” she said, adding the meeting had, among many issues, agreed to renew efforts to invest in young women and girls’ education, especially STEM – Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics – and to ensure that comprehensive and quality education is accessible as means to protect the youth from unwanted pregnancies, HIV and Aids and to protect their reproductive rights as envisaged in the Maputo protocol.
“Our deliberations here in Addis have produced forward looking conclusions and the strength of our ministers has been truly encouraging,” said Mlambo-Ngcuka.
“We also agreed that we will strengthen youth CSW as one of the platforms we will use to build young women and girls as leaders in their countries and in the world.”
Some of the issues agreed during the meeting include ending women trafficking on the continent, improving women’s land rights, the need to address persistent gender inequalities and gaps between men and women in the workplace, the need to pay more attention to women in the informal sector, the need for countries to ratify the ILO Convention on Domestic Workers, the need to recognize, reduce and redistribute women’s and girl’s disproportionate burden of unpaid care and domestic work and addressing the exclusion of women from the world of work.
For her part, outgoing African Union Commission Chairperson, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma emphasized the need for the continent to fight human trafficking which she described as a new form of slavery.
“We must stand up and defend our gains but also consolidate so that we can advance gender equality for future generations,” said Dlamini-Zuma.
She said one of the most crucial issues that need to be addressed to ensure African women start creating wealth and lift the continent out of slavery was access to finance.
“Lots of women have good ideas and they can be entrepreneurs but when it comes to accessing finance women find it difficult,” she said. “When they give us finance they call it micro finance and I have been asking them what is micro about us, there’s nothing micro about us, we need access to real finance. We must be at all levels of the economy.”
Dlamini-Zuma said Agenda 2063 is Africa-specific and not in contradiction to the Sustainable Development Goals, adding Africa’s 50-year development plan was “dealing with the roots not just the symptoms” of Africa’s issues.
She urged the UN and others to support both agendas.
African Ministers for Gender and Women’s Empowerment, Ms. Fatma Hassa, Vice Chair CSW61 Bureau, Denmark’s Equal Opportunities Minister Karen Ellemann and the AU Special Envoy for Women, Peace and Security, Ms. Bineta Diop, were among the delegates who attended the pre-consultative meeting on the Commission on the Status of Women 61.
Issued by:
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