The curtain to the high-level Pan-African Parliament’s (PAP) 13th Women’s Conference successfully came down with a wide range of recommendations put forward. Key among them calls for African Union (AU) Member States to accelerate the process of signing, ratifying, and implementing mechanisms for the domestication of the Maputo Protocol.
Hosted by the PAP Women’s Caucus the 13th Conference on Women’s Rights was held under the theme: “Women empowerment and inclusion in governance” on the sidelines of the First Ordinary Session of the Sixth Parliament in Midrand, South Africa.
Officially closing the convention, the PAP President H.E Hon Chief Fortune Charumbira paid tribute to African women and expressed the commitment of the PAP Bureau to implement the outcomes of the conference.
“Deliberations over the last two days have been of a high level and as the PAP Bureau we are recommitting ourselves to promoting gender equality, this is a cause we cannot fail to support. Our assurance to you is that we will remain the number one supporter and promoter of women's empowerment and we will jointly work to implement recommendations that have come out of this conference. We will immediately start working on the next Women’s Conference,” said H.E Hon Charumbira.
Delivering the recommendations, the Chairperson of the PAP Women’s Caucus Hon. Amina Tidjani Yaya noted that violence against women and girls took various forms and called upon governments to prioritize their national strategies and action plans that address awareness raising on violence against women and girls.
“We note with regret that the causes and consequences of violence against women and girls are based on long-standing unequal power relations between women and men, reinforced by gender-based discrimination, and outdated negative societal norms. These restrict women’s full enjoyment of their human rights, the realization of their aspirations, their full potential, and their contribution to society. We, therefore, call upon governments and parliaments to promote awareness-raising campaigns and activities to encourage changes in social and cultural attitudes regarding the roles of men and women and to eliminate attitudes that lead to violence against women,” noted Hon Amina Tidjani Yaya.
PAP Parliamentarians were urged to call on their respective governments to accelerate the implementation of gender equality laws that provide for specific quotas for women and encourage Member States that have not yet adopted such laws to do so as a matter of urgency. National parliaments were invited to enhance and promote the active engagement and participation of women and youth in the policymaking and implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area and to develop interventions targeting informal cross-border trade with a view to protecting women’s trade and encouraging their formalization.
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