Kinshasa – On June 2, a meeting of SADC ministers in charge of gender and the status of women was held in Kinshasa. Under the chairmanship of Congolese Minister Mireille Masangu, this meeting saw new resolutions taken in favor of women’s rights.
During their previous meeting in Lilongwe, ministers endorsed the SADC study on women in politics and decision-making. They then invited member states to integrate the principles of equality between men and women, present in the SADC protocol on gender and development.
“. I am pleased to report that the decision to mainstream and institutionalize Articles 5, 12 and 13 of the SADC Protocol on Gender and Development has been adopted by the Council of Ministers and the Chief Executives Summit. of SADC State and Government during their meetings held in August 2022, here in Kinshasa,” said Joseph Nourrice, Deputy Executive Secretary for Institutional Affairs at SADC.
However, he underlined the difficulty of moving from an era of commitments to an era of implementation, requiring constant political will.
Mireille Masangu for her part spoke of the importance of budgeting for the implementation of gender equality in SADC member countries, as well as the need to bridge the gap between political intention and implementation. policy work.
The Congolese Deputy Prime Minister, Jean-Pierre Lihau, on behalf of the Prime Minister, also underlined the DRC’s commitment to making the women’s agenda effective.
The DRC has recently taken concrete measures to protect women against discrimination, in particular by developing a national action plan for resolution 1325, by setting up a national secretariat within the Ministry of Gender, Family and Children, and by developing a program for disarmament, demobilization, community and social recovery.
The meeting concluded with the handover to Angola, which is taking over the leadership of the community.
In short, this meeting made it possible to reaffirm the region’s commitment to promoting equality between the sexes, but also to underline the importance of the implementation of these commitments in the name of women’s rights in the member countries of SADC