[APWW-Meet] ACCRA WOMEN'S INTERNATIONAL FORUM STATEMENT:

[Nurgul@mail.isiswomen.org, Djanaeva@mail.isiswomen.org, [dnurgul@yahoo.com]@mail.isiswomen.org]

Welcome to the APWW-Meet
An announcement list of the Asia Pacific Women Watch network
working for the advancement of the status of women.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

ACCRA WOMEN'S INTERNATIONAL FORUM STATEMENT:
Recommendations for Action on Development Effectiveness in Accra and
beyond
On the 30th August 2008, more than 200 women's rights organizations,
women's empowerment organisations, gender advocates and experts from all
regions of the world attended the Accra International Women's Forum to
discuss the implementation of the Paris Declaration on Aid
Effectiveness. This statement, which emanates from the forum calls for
actions and recommendations for the 3rd High Level Forum.
Officials present at the Accra High Level Forum cannot ignore the
failure of their development policies and practices, particularly those
related to gender equality and women's empowerment. =20

According to recent figures today 1,4 billion persons live under the new
poverty line of USD 1.25, and the majority of these are women and girls.
It is essential to analyse the implications of the Aid Effectiveness
agenda for the advancement of gender equality, women's rights and
women's empowerment, and to consider how future aid management will
tackle this fundamental issue. It is crucial to understand the political
context of development policies and the challenges posed by the
implementation of the Paris Declaration (PD). We are concerned about the
persistent neo-liberal model that is clearly failing deliver the
promised results of growth for all, bringing instead, discrimination,
social exclusion, injustice and more inequalities. In addition, it has
decreased the possibilities of a fair and people centered development.
We are also concerned about the negative impacts of privatisation of
basic services , climate change and food insecurity which are
undermining any possibility of sustainable development.=20


Promises of aid made by donors have not been fulfilled.

Today the aid industry - defined, designed and mainly implemented by
donors - is failing to fulfil the right to development as stated in 1986
UN Declaration, as well as the right to gender equality and the right
not to be poor. The Paris Declaration is another expression of the
unequal aid architecture, lacking a holistic approach to build
sustainable development and social justice. Aid assistance should truly
support nationally owned and democratically adopted plans towards
implementing these commitments, rather than imposing them through aid.
To assure sustainability, it is urgent that the relation between the
multilateral trading agenda and the aid agenda is made explicit. Aid
cannot be detached from the larger context of global trade and the
financing system.

While the Paris Declaration is not a binding agreement, the
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, as well
as the Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination
against Women (CEDAW) among others, pose legal obligations to
governments regarding issues of development, human rights, gender
equality, and environmental sustainability. International treaties
endorsed by governments in the last decades must be the framework for
development policies and practices. Governments should be held
accountable for these commitments. Any efforts to implement the Paris
Declaration should be aligned with these international standards and
goals and must not serve to pursue political or economic interests.

The 3rd High Level Forum impacts on aid relations has to be considered
in the context of the broader development financing debates. It also has
to be recognised that in middle income countries wealth is highly
concentrated in the hands of a few, with the majority of the people
living in poverty.  The last draft of the Accra Agenda for Action (AAA)
has ignored the efforts of the various consultations that could have
meant an improvement. Broader civil society organisations (CSOs),
including women's rights organisations, are very concerned about this
25th July version. As stated in the International Steering Group (ISG)
comments on the draft, "not enough progress has been made in making aid
work for poor people", especially from the donors side.  The
consequences of a weak AAA could be inaction in improving aid quality
and impact.=20
Compared to 2005 when the Paris Declaration was gender blind, there are
now a few improvements in the AAA text. The 11th August AAA emphasizes
the central place of poverty reduction and human rights in development
policy and the importance of human rights, gender equality, and
environmental sustainability as cornerstones for achieving enduring
impact. The AAA also states that "developing countries and donors will
ensure that their respective development policies and programmes are
designed and implemented in ways consistent with international
commitments on gender equality, human rights, disability, and
environmental sustainability". It also recognises the need to improve
access to sex-disaggregated data.=20

However, it fails in explicitly recognising the need to allocate
resources and to bind support from the donor community. The use of the
qualifying phrase - "as appropriate" - obviously opens the door not to
do anything. In addition, advances in language are undermined by the
lack of new targets. Instead, existing targets are monitored by
indicators defined by the World Bank, which are widely contested by CSOs
and women's organisations.=20

Another world is possible=20

Our vision is a world where aid is no longer necessary, where
transformed relations of power and democratic redistribution of wealth
continually challenge norms and structures of injustice and war and
create new forms of relations based on respect, solidarity and justice
for all. Where the existing aid system is not an instrument for
oppression and policy capture nor for the support for any armed
conflicts, but an instrument for promoting democratic sustainable
development agendas which support the equitable distribution of
productive resources, decent work, and the provision of social security
for all, particularly for women. Last but not least, aid must be
delivered to catalyse sustainable dynamics of social organizations and
strengthen local productive structures in the face of globalization.=20
=09
Women's groups understand that legitimate space for norm-setting on aid
and international cooperation issues cannot be removed from the larger
global trade and finance system contexts. Systemic issues are best
discussed under the rubric of the United Nations, and the Development
Cooperation forum should be the space to advance and monitor progress on
aid and development effectiveness.

The Accra Women's Forum participants believe that there is no aid
effectiveness without development effectiveness. Aid effectiveness
without a gender equality and women's rights perspective will not lead
to effective development and will not contribute to reduce poverty,
inequalities and the achievement of the MDGs.
Women's recommendations to the Accra High Level Forum on Aid
Effectiveness
The Aid Effectiveness process continues towards 2010 by which time the
Paris principles will need to be met. Yet, there are no clear actionable
commitments to set up work-plans for the coming phase. To affirm that
there is political will to move forward in Accra, women's organizations
call donors and developing country governments:

*	To be consistent with the recognition of gender equality,
environmental sustainability and respect for human's rights, as
cornerstones for development; by treating these policy priority issues
as sectors with progress indicators and specific resources allocated in
national budgets.=20
*	To align the Paris Declaration implementation with international
agreed development goals (IADG) as suggested by the United Nations
Secretary General Report , particularly the international standards on
human rights, gender equality, decent work, and environmental
sustainability.

*	To deliver donors' commitment to increase Official Development
Assistance (ODA)  to 0.7% of their GNP. In addition, aid should be
additional to debt relief, and should be in ther form of grants, not
loans.=20

*	To provide transparent information on how ODA allocations
respond to policy commitments and people's needs, and developing country
governments have to provide transparent and publicly available budgets.

*	To consider how available resources are allocated. Donors and
governments need to ensure that special funds are available for women's
rights organisations and that effective mechanisms are in place to
ensure that the money reaches these organisations. Funding needs to be
diversified to ensure that the current focus on CSOs as instruments of
advocacy does not exclude other work that is critical for women's
rights, gender equality and poverty reduction. We recommend that women
are given opportunity to design and implement their own projects
according to their local priorities. Resources need to be distributed to
make provison for the use of local expertise instead of wasting
resources on foreign experts and consultancies.

*	To recognize the importance of the UNSCR 1820, and allocate
resources for mobilizing communities and the protection of women rights
and their organizations.

*	To integrate a strategic plan for financing gender equality  and
women's empowerment that is reflected in budget guidelines into the
monitoring system of the PD implementation. In addition, donor
(bilateral and multilateral) and developing country governments must
ensure and establish clear mechanisms for the participation of women's
rights organizations as part of civil society, particularly women from
excluded groups, in all the national development planning processes and
aid planning, programming, management, monitoring and evaluation.
Women's organisations should receive substantial, predictable and
multi-year, core funding.

*	To define democratic and participatory ownership as a vector
principle of the implementation of the Paris Declaration, without
setting new forms of process conditionality. Such an approach must go in
line with the recognition of national leadership (Monterrey Consensus),
the right to development, the right to self-determination, the right to
participation, and the right to non-violence.=20

*	To strengthen capacities, resources and authority of national
women's machineries to support and monitor line ministries, other
government bodies and parliaments in influencing national development
planning and budget allocations for gender equality and women's rights.
*	To accept that economic policy conditionalities have a negative
impact on people, particularly on women. And therefore, to remove all
economic policy conditionalities that undermine the principle of
ownership and stand in contradiction with the rights to Development and
Self-determination. This must include those conditionalities related to
gender equality and the so-called "positive conditionalities". Instead,
mutual responsibility, accountability and transparency of donors and
developing countries must be applied and strengthened towards gender
equality and human rights standards and goals.=20

*	To measure development results within the Paris framework by
adopting the existing reporting and monitoring systems for human rights
compliance, such as the Gini Index of Income Inequality, as well as
other processes such as CEDAW, MDGs, United Nations Security Council
Resolution 1325 (UNSCR 1325), etc. If new indicators are created, they
should be built within a more inclusive process that also takes into
account grassroots beneficiaries and local actors. It must be explicitly
stated how data for indicators are being generated, allowing civil
society, and women's groups, to participate both in generating data and
monitoring indicators. Allocating national budget resources for training
women's groups in monitoring and evaluating should be considered.

*	To measure outcomes on gender mainstreaming and gender specific
action such as access to health and education, changes in women's
employment and income, incidence of gender based violence, right to
reparation, right to inheritance, property, land use, women's
participation in decision-making.

*	To pay special attention to the needs and rights restitution of
victimized women in fragile states (states in conflict, coming out of
conflict or post-conflict situations) and in communities experiencing
localised conflicts and xenophobia attacks, by involving women in
peace-building processes and channelling specific development assistance
to women's organisations to address the concerns and needs of women
survivors, including, capacity building, access to sexual and
reproductive health, information and services and the stopping of
violence against women.=20

*	To promote the use of mix of funding mechanisms to ensure
progress on women's rights and empowerment, including general as well as
sector budget support, pooled funding through the SWAp and partnerships
with civil society organisations and UN agencies. General budget support
alone cannot lead to progress on development goals, especially for most
marginalised groups.=20
Conveners:
 =20
 	      	 	 	 =20
Co-sponsors:=20
NETRIGHT
Femnet
AWID
WIDE
IGTN
DAWN   =20
  	   	    	 =20

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
The APWW-Meet is a moderated list hosted by Isis International-Manila for
the APWW network. To unsubscribe, send an email to majordomo@isiswomen.org
and put the line "unsubscribe apww-meet" in the message body. To post
messages, send to apww-meet@isiswomen.org. For inquiries, send to
owner-apww-meet@isiswomen.org.