New Commonwealth Plan of Action

	Adi Asenaca Caucau, Minister for Women, Social Welfare and Poverty Alleviation, Fiji Islands, who chaired the 7th Commonwealth Womenís Affairs Ministers Meeting in 2004

A new Commonwealth Plan of Action for Gender Equality 2005-2015 was agreed at the 7th Women’s Affairs Ministers Meeting in Fiji Islands in May-June 2004. It positions the Commonwealth at the centre of global agenda-setting on gender equality, as the only intergovernmental organisation to have developed a new, forward-looking Plan of Action at the end of the Beijing+10 decade.
The 2005-2015 Plan of Action identifies four critical areas for Commonwealth action over the next ten years:

• Gender, democracy, peace and conflict
• Gender, human rights and law
• Gender, poverty eradication and economic empowerment
• Gender and HIV/AIDS

The Secretariat works to realise women’s rights and gender equality in these four action areas by:

• providing policy and technical advice to ministries of women’s affairs and other ministries, to strengthen institutional capacity for gender mainstreaming;
• advocating policy change and reform;
• holding capacity-building workshops for policy-makers and practitioners to develop effective approaches to addressing critical gender issues; and
• documenting and sharing Commonwealth best practices in the four critical areas.

A special meeting of Women’s Affairs Ministers in New York in February 2005 sent messages to the UN Beijing+10 Review and to the 2005 CHOGM in Malta. The Message to CHOGM reaffirmed the Commonwealth’s commitment to CEDAW, the Beijing Platform for Action, the MDGs, and UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on ‘Women, Peace and Security’. It called for the endorsement by Commonwealth leaders of the 2005-2015 Plan of Action and the allocation of necessary resources for its implementation. The meeting established a Gender Plan of Action Monitoring Group, comprising 20 representatives of governments and civil society across all regions of the Commonwealth.

The third MDG, which is to promote gender equality and empower women, has targets relating to girls’ primary education, women’s literacy, female political participation and employment. Gender equality and the promotion of the rights of women and girls are seen by the Commonwealth as essential to the achievement of all the poverty and human development-related MDGs.

In recognition of its work in promoting gender equality issues, the Secretariat has been invited to serve on a number of UN Task Forces under the Inter-Agency Network on Women and Gender Equality. It is also represented on the OECD/DAC Gendernet, a network of gender experts in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development member organisations.

Gender publications in 2003-2005 The Secretariat is recognised, in the Commonwealth and globally, for its gender mainstreaming publications on key sectors and development issues, which are used by international, regional and civil society organisations, and tertiary academic/training institutions. The publications provide new policy approaches, cutting-edge tools and methodologies, and Commonwealth best practices for achieving gender equality. The Gender Management System (GMS) Toolkit (published in collaboration with the Commonwealth of Learning) brings together the Secretariat’s series of GMS manuals on gender mainstreaming in key sectors, and includes a Trainer’s Manual, an Action Guide for individual learners, a Change Management Briefing, and a CD-Rom which includes the Toolkit and the entire GMS series of publications. Other titles published in 2003-2005 included: Gender Mainstreaming in Conflict Transformation: Building Sustainable Peace Mainstreaming Gender in Debt and Development Resource Management Gender and Human Rights in the Commonwealth: Some Critical Areas for Commonwealth Action in the Decade 2005-2015 Integrated Approaches to Eliminate Gender-Based Violence Report on Gender-Responsive Budgeting in the Commonwealth: Progress and Challenges Engendering Budgets: A Practitioner’s Guide to Understanding and Implementing Gender-Responsive Budgets Gender Mainstreaming in Poverty Eradication and the Millennium Development Goals Women and Men in Partnership for Post-Conflict Reconstruction Gender Mainstreaming in the Multilateral Trading System Mainstreaming Informal Employment and Gender in Poverty Reduction Chains of Fortune: Linking Women Producers and Workers with Global Markets Gender Sensitive Approaches to HIV/AIDS: A Training Kit for Peer Educators

Gender mainstreaming and capacity-building

The Secretariat continues to assist member governments in using the Gender Management System, a Commonwealth framework for integrating gender perspectives into mainstream decision-making in all sectors and development issues, and at all levels. The Secretariat has supported gender mainstreaming in The Gambia and Uganda. An African regional workshop on good governance and gender equality was held in Malawi for senior officials in the public service and public service training institutions.

A Commonwealth expert assisted in the preparation of the ECOWAS Gender Strategic Plan Framework and Guidelines for the Establishment of a Gender Management System. Gender experts have also been assigned to the South Pacific Commission and the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, and in Sri Lanka, where the focus has been on bringing gender awareness to peace-building efforts.

Further capacity-building activities have included the launch in South Africa, in June 2004, of the International Institute on Gender and HIV/AIDS for the SADC region, in collaboration with SADC partners, Dalhousie University of Canada, and UN agencies. Lessons learned from this initiative have been brought to the Caribbean, where this institute is now part of a multi-agency capacity-building initiative on gender and HIV/AIDS in the region.

The Secretariat takes a mainstreaming approach to gender equality in its own governance, planning, programme implementation and operations, with a dedicated Gender Section working to ensure that gender is mainstreamed into all policies and programmes of member countries and the Secretariat. On issues such as trafficking in women and promoting women’s reproductive rights and health, the Gender Section works closely with the Human Rights Unit, which also directs its project work, where possible, to promote women’s rights as human rights.