The chairperson for African Women Economic Policy Network (AWEPON, Mrs. Alice Abok has called on donor countries, international financial institutions and recipient countries not to ignore  funding NGOs and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) dealing with gender equality and women’s rights work in Africa in favor of new aid modalities, designed to align aid to nationally-determined development priorities.

Abok who was speaking at the regional workshop on practical approaches to economic empowerment of women in Africa held recently in Kampala said “The implementation of the new aid modalities though well intentioned, has to great extent affected the funding for gender equality and women’s rights work in Africa”.

“For aid to be effective, gender equality and women’s rights have to be integral to development priorities in the developing countries”.

The workshop was organized by AWEPON. AWEPON as an organization works towards realizing women’s empowerment and economic justice in Africa through research, economic policy analysis, capacity building, lobbying and advocacy with gender and human rights perspective.

The workshop was intended to indentify practical approaches to economic empowerment of African women in context of new aid modalities and their implication for financing women’s economic rights, promoting economic justice, identify indicators for economic empowerment of women and launch the three year strategic programme on women’s economic empowerment.

“For gender equality and women’s rights to be an integral part of aid effectiveness, African women need to be able to engage with country processes as well as shape the financial agenda. Women should also be able to asses the implication of the Paris Declaration in relation to the Beijing Platform of Action, CEDAW and other human rights internationally agreed protocols” She said.

She said the changing policy environment in African continent plays a signicant part in shaping initiatives to address poverty, women’s rights and gender equity interventions as manifested in the macroeconomic policy frameworks supporting increased trade liberisation, privatization of social services, can no longer be ignored when designing poverty eradication strategies at both micro and macro level.

She said the efforts to new partnerships and aid modalities, designed to align aid to nationally determined development priorities may be limited if donor and recipient ignore:-

·      To measure the effectiveness of aid against its exclusive purpose of poverty reduction and respect for human rights including gender equality.

·      The need barriers to local ownership resulting from continued donor imposed policy conditions and benchmarks attached to aid.

·      The limited transparency and accountability to citizens and parliamentarians of donor-approved country-owned reduction strategies.

·      The principles that guide unique roles for civil roles for civil society organization as development actors supporting democratic ownership and citizen’s initiatives for poverty reduction, which enables their response to priorities set by beneficiary populations, not donor institutions

·      The need for deeper, mutual donor-recipient accountability based on international human rights obligations.