High-Level Interactive Session of Ministers of Gender and Women’s Affairs in ECOWAS Member Countries

 

 

WEST AFRICAN WOMEN’S POLITIFCAL PARTICIPATION AND ISSUES RELATED TO WOMEN AND GIRLS’ EMPLOYMENT TO RESPOND TO THE CHALLENGE OF EMPOWERMENT:

ONE OF THE PRIORITIES OF VISION 2020 OF ECOWAS

17 March 2017 from 14.00 to 17.00 at the Permanent Mission of the African Union

 

 

 

Excellency Mrs Julia DUNCAN CASSELL, Minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection of Liberia,

 

Honourable Dr. Fatimata DIA SOW, ECOWAS Commissioner for Social Affairs and Gender,

 

Excellency Tanou Léon KONE, Special Representative of ECOWAS to the United Nations,

 

Honourable Ministers, Distinguished Guests,

 

I am honored to deliver FAO’s message of solidarity at this very important high level event. FAO is proud to be a partner of ECOWAS and its member States in empowering women in agriculture, food and nutrition security, and management of natural resources in the context of climate change.

Let me start by highlighting that the 2030 Agenda offers a vision for food and agriculture as key to sustainable development.From ending poverty and hunger to responding to climate change and sustaining our natural resources, food and agriculture lie at the heart of the 2030 Agenda.

FAO is fully committed to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and is working towards catalyzing greater political attention to address gender inequality. The Organization firmly believes in the principle of “leaving no one behind” and recognizes that we cannot achieve this agenda if stakeholders fail to bring gender in the center of the discussions without engaging all actors.

 

We all share the belief that women in ECOWAS member countries aspire to a brighter future through ownership of key productive assets such as land, finance and technologies, greater participation in shaping the laws, policies and programmes, and decent paid jobs and business development opportunities along agricultural value chains. Political and economic empowerment of women is the best seed to harvest sustainable development in ECOWAS member countries.

 

Women represent 43 percent of agricultural labour force in developing countries. They are thedriver of inclusive, resilient and sustainable development and we can see this in food and agriculture. But to fulfill this promise they need better access to natural resources, productive assets, financial services, and markets. Another challenge is to empower women so they have a greater role in decision-making at all levels from the family and community level to the highest spheres of power. These are some areas in which we have seen promising advances and we will hear today many inspiring examples.

 

With this in mind, I am pleased to share a few concrete ongoing initiatives of FAO in empowering women in agriculture and value chains in ECOWAS member countries.

 

• In the Gambia, FAO has provided technical and financial support to the Office of the Vice President for the formulation of the Agriculture Component of the Gambia Women’s Empowerment Programme.

 

• In Senegal, our initiatives include support to women’s cooperatives in urban and peri-urban areas in micro gardening for horticulture production, thus increasing their income to build assets and create wealth.

 

• In Burkina Faso, Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire, we are implementing the Project ‘Enable women to benefit more equally from agri-food value chains’ which focuses on empowering women in various value chains including fish, roots, tubers, dairy, and livestock. 

 

• In Liberia and Niger, FAO, IFAD, UN Women and WFP are partnering and leveraging their comparative advantages within the framework of a Joint Programme on “Accelerating the Economic Empowerment of Rural Women” which is already yielding great returns for rural women in terms of jobs, assets and income. We are also implementing a similar project in Benin, jointly with UNFPA.

 

• In Mali, FAO has a similar project on “Rural women’s economic empowerment in the context of food insecurity and climate change” which focuses on horticulture to reduce women’s economic and social vulnerability and boost their income.

 

• In countries such as Liberia and Sierra Leone, FAO is also providing policy assistance for the effective implementation of the “Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the context of National Food Security” which include strong gender equality provisions on women’s land rights.  

 

• Being custodian agency for more than 20 SDG indicator ,we are also working to enhance data quality on gender and agriculture, food security and nutrition through our technical and financial support for the collection, analysis and use of sex disaggregated data and gender sensitive indicators in national agricultural censuses.

 

To conclude, I would like to reemphasize FAO’s strong support to ECOWAS and its member countries in promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment and support countries’ efforts in implementing the new development agenda.

 

I would like to thank you for your attention!