Women meeting to kick off in Addis Ababa

Dinah Musindarwezo who is the Executive Director of the African Women's Development and Communications Network, Femnet. FILE PHOTO | NATION MEDIA GROUP

Key regional women rights, empowerment and development advocates, converge at Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to strategise on how the organisations will continue to contribute and influence policy and priorities ahead of the annual United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, (CSW).

The African Women's Development and Communication Network (Femnet) and the NGO-CSW, Africa, have convened the strategy meeting ahead of the sixty second session of the CSW conference in New York next month.

The two day regional meeting kicks off on Monday in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa, with participants expected to discuss perspectives and priorities to help achieve gender equality and empowerment of rural women and girls.

"The key outcome of the meeting will be to develop a common advocacy position and policy recommendations with key messages to lobby governments prior to, during and after CSW62,'' says Femnet's Executive Director Dinah Musindarwezo.

"The strategy meeting will also have a targeted emphasis on ensuring representation of rural women and girls across Africa, to amplify voices of rural women and ensure they are looped into broader sustainable development dialogues and strategies,'' she added of the forum to be held from Monday February 19 at Azzeman Hotel.

This year's Commission on the Status of Women will be held from March 12 to 23 at the UN headquarters in New York, with the theme, "challenges and opportunities in achieving gender equality and women's empowerment of rural women and girls.''

Ms Musindarwezo says that this year, members of the NGO-CSW Africa are keen on ensuring that women rights organisation contribute and influence the priorities of the key UN annual commission. This, she adds, would be done by providing avenues for a defined continuum, strategic and effective engagement through the entire Commission on the Status of Women process.

Femnet, a pan African membership women rights organisation, which has been supported by UN Women Eastern and Southern Africa regional office, says it is critical that African women's rights organisation participate effectively before, during  and after the New York conference and side events. Consequently, last October, the organisation and NGO- CSW Africa convened, in South Africa to discuss opportunities and challenges, "of ensuring that the knowledge and expertise of civil society organisations and women rights groups inform the discussions at the CSW 62.''

Monday's meeting is expected to bring together 40 representatives of women right's organisations from the region, and aims at developing a common advocacy position and recommendations on policy to be used to lobby governments ahead of the sixty second session of the UN CSW conference.

The organisers also hope that the regional meeting would sustain the advocacy momentum and "African women's exchange of ideas, information and strategies using social media platforms.'' 

The targeted emphasis, they say, will be on rural women and girls.