GOOD GOVERNANCE AND FINANCING GENDER EQUALITY PROGRAMME

UN Women Southern Africa Sub Regional Office (SARO) intends to implement a program on “financing gender equality” in the SADC region. The goal of the program is to reduce feminized poverty and exclusion of women from development benefits and opportunities. The proposed programme is rooted in a rights-based approach to development that emphasizes participation of women and women’s organizations in national and local development processes, non-discrimination and integrating measures to address gender inequalities, women’s empowerment and accountability of government towards the achievement of MDGs and gender equality goals.

This will be a five year program, with the following objectives:

(a)Enhanced capacities of rights holders to demand for the fulfillment of their rights by ensuring analysis, costing, implementation, monitoring of government plans, strategies and programmes and budgets from a gender perspective,

(b) a regional gender accountability mechanism in SADC to improve democratic governance practices and financing for gender equality

This program will work and support already existing initiatives on GRB in the Southern Africa region and will also collaborate closely with key government ministries such as finance, planning and developing and national gender machineries in promoting gender equality in the region.

THE GENDER SUPPORT PROGRAMME IN ZIMBABWE

The Gender Support Programme (GSP) is a fund that aims to enhance gender equality & gender equity in Zimbabwe. It evolved through a series of processes that begun in 2006/7 when a Gender Scoping Study (GSS), was commissioned due to shared concern over the fragmented approach to gender and women’s empowerment programming and lack of clarity on mapping of stakeholders in the gender sector. The study pointed to the need to establish an implementation and management structure that is well coordinated with harmonized approach in the development and implementation of strategies and actions in the sector.

A three year National Gender and Women’s Empowerment Strategy and Action Plan (NGWESAP) was developed to address the shortcomings in the gender sector. The strategy was agreed after consultative efforts by various stakeholders within the women empowerment sector and is a working framework for implementation of strategies and actions in the gender sector. The prioritized thematic areas are: Women and economic empowerment; Women and education; Women in decision-making; Women and health; and Women migration, forced displacement and trafficking. For all the above thematic areas there are cross-cutting issues, specifically Legal reform; Gender Budgeting; Disability; Gender and labour; Institutional Capacity Strengthening; Strategic partnerships; Research and documentation, Targeting and male involvement.

Consistent with the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, basket funding was recommended as the preferred option to support the gender and women’s empowerment sector in Zimbabwe. In this arrangement UN Women is the fund manager and administers EC’s funds for Women Coalition of Zimbabwe (WCoZ) membership and DFID funds for the generality of the gender sector under the Gender Support Programme. The GSP was officially launched on 17 June in Harare