Trade, Aid and conditionalities from the women's rights perspective

The international financial institutions leadership is not delivering sustainable development. There is a need for new policies framework to ensure a more equal and fair income distribution around the world. The aids programmes for developing countries have too much conditionalities, and those conditionalities asked by the donors do not take under consideration issues of human rights and gender equality.

The solution was then to put together an initiative called aid for trade In 2005, the organization for economic cooperation and development agreed upon the Paris declaration on Aid Effectiveness. 25 donors, 80 recipients countries and 25 multilateral institutions adhered the declaration. This became the new framework to improve aid delivery in developing countries.

The panelists pointed out some of the difficulties that they faces to implement this declaration. The question of conditionalities hasn’t been sorted out yet. Some of the donors are still asking to remove the references about the gender equality.

The presentation generated a lot of reaction from the audience. All agreed that despite all the challenges, there is a need to move forward, to regroup, to re-strategize, to mobilize, to educate the governments and institutions about gender equity, and mostly a need to challenge ourselves as women to understand the basic principles so we can have a better understanding of what we are talking about.