Save the date! The Accra Women’s Forum will take place on August 30th of 2008. It will be held at the Ellking Hotel, East legon, Accra (Ghana).
The Accra Women’s Forum is being hosted by the Network for Women’s Rights in Ghana (NETRIGHT) and co-convened by: WIDE, DAWN, FEMNET, IGTN and AWID, with the co-sponsorship of: African Women’s Development Fund (AWDF), UNIFEM and Action Aid International amongst others. This is to be held before the Civil Society Forum, to ensure women’s participation at both the CSO Parallel Forum, August 31-September 1 and the 3rd High Level Forum (HLF3) on Aid Effectiveness, 2-4 September 2008 in Accra.
Why is the Women’s Forum important?
In March of 2005 the OECD members and partner countries signed the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness. On September 2-4, 2008, donor countries and recipient countries will meet in Accra for the Third High Level Forum (HLF3) to review and assess progress in the implementation of the Paris Declaration (PD) on Aid Effectiveness and to agree on a new agenda for action. This will be the first opportunity for donors and recipient countries and civil society organizations, to review the progress on the implementation of the Paris Declaration since it was launched three years ago.
The main goal of the Paris Declaration is “to reform the ways we deliver and manage aid as we look ahead to the UN five-year review of the Millennium Declaration and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)”.
The Paris Declaration is supposed to increase the impact aid has in reducing poverty and inequality, increasing growth, building capacity and accelerating achievement of the MDGs.
The MDGs aim to reduce poverty by half to 2015. Today more than a half of the population living in poverty, are women. Women in developing countries have an “uphill” battle to wage. Not only do they have to confront the inequalities faced by living in poverty but they also have to face the inequalities society places upon them for being women.
Unless gender equality becomes a fundamental political commitment, and viewed as a central goal of the development agenda, we can not expect aid or development policies to deliver the required results.
The perspective that women’s rights organizations are promoting is that there is no aid effectiveness without development effectiveness and that gender equality, environmental sustainability and human rights must be recognized as crucial to development effectiveness. Their current status of crosscutting issues marginalized these areas, letting them as an accessory issue to development and the Aid Effectiveness agenda.
Recognizing that gender equality and women’s rights are crucial for development effectiveness, the voices of gender advocates and women’s rights organizations must be heard. This is why the Women’s Forum in Ghana is a vital space to create inputs into the CSO Parallel Forum and the HLF3.
Civil Society Organisations in the Aid Effectiveness Process
Even if the Paris Declaration recognized the role of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), CSOs did not have a formal space to participate until 2007, when the OECD/DAC Working Party on Aid Effectiveness created the Advisory Group (AG) on CSOs and Aid Effectiveness for this purpose.
Besides Government representations from donor and partner countries, six CSO networks have been part of this body, since the beginning, plus two women’s rights organizations (AWID and WIDE), which play the role of observers since February 2008.
Parallel to the AG body there has been a lot of mobilization mainly coordinated by the International Steering Group (ISG), a group of CSOs that has been following the AE agenda and will be organizing the parallel forum. The ISG is involved in a multi-stakeholder process of engagement leading towards the high-level forum on aid effectiveness, to be held in Accra, Ghana, in September 2008.
Active women’s rights organizations in the ISG are AWID, FEMNET, and WIDE. The main activity of the ISG in Accra will be the Civil Society Parallel Forum (August 31, September 1st 2008), and the main output of the parallel event will be a statement to be presented at the HLF3 during the Ministerial meetings.
What do we expect from the Accra Women’s Forum?
Women’s organizations have been actively participating in the Aid Effectiveness Agenda. Since 2005, many initiatives of women’s rights organizations and networks have mobilized to reflect and to share strategies and experiences on how women can engage effectively, both technically and politically, with the Aid Effectiveness agenda processes at all levels.
The Women’s Forum in Ghana is an opportune space to build upon the valuable work accomplished by women’s rights organizations involved in the Aid Effectiveness process!
We hope that at the Women’s Forum it will be possible to accomplish some of these goals:
For more information please contact: Michele Knab, mknab@awid.org
Source: Network for Women’s Rights in Ghana (NETRIGHT)