DECISION ON CHAIRPERSON’S PROGRESS REPORT ON THE
IMPLEMENTATION OF THE SOLEMN DECLARATION ON GENDER
EQUALITY IN AFRICA (Doc. EX.CL/170 (VII)
The Executive Council:
TAKES NOTE of the Report;
COMMENDS the Chairperson of the Commission for the initiative undertaken to prepare a Draft Implementation Framework and Draft Monitoring and Reporting Guidelines, and for encouraging Member States to fulfil their commitments under operative paragraph 12 of the Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa;
ALSO COMMENDS the countries that have submitted their reports on progress made in gender mainstreaming and in championing issues raised in the Declaration, namely Egypt, Mali, Nigeria, South Africa, and the Sudan;
APPEALS to Member States to focus on strengthening their national gender machineries by:
Ensuring that responsibility for gender mainstreaming is vested in the highest level of government, with clearly defined mandates and authority;
Steadily increasing the annual budget allocation to national gender machineries to enable them to perform the various tasks of gender mainstreaming such as gender analysis, capacity building, tools development and monitoring;
Reviewing the expertise within national gender machineries with a view to endowing them with the capacity to integrate gender into economic policies and poverty reduction strategies;
Building the capacity of the Ministries of Finance and Planning as well as other relevant Ministries to ensure that their policies and activities incorporate a gender perspective;
Establish effective coordination mechanisms with clear lines of communication, roles, responsibilities and accountability for gender mainstreaming;
• Encouraging gender machineries to work together with women organizations so as to bring concerns of all women on board and thus enhance the legitimacy and credibility of these national machineries.
URGES all Member States to submit their annual reports on progress made in terms of gender mainstreaming and in implementing the Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa to the Summit in July 2006;
COMMENDS the historical role played by the Pan African Women's Organization (PAWO) in the struggle for the decolonization of Africa;
REITERATES its request to the Chairperson of the Commission to undertake consultations aimed at revamping PAWO and submit a report to the Executive Council in January 2006.