sly@wlsazim.co.zw

ECOSOC agreed conclusions 1997/2 : ..the process of assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action, including legislation, policies and programmes, in all areas and at all levels. It is a strategy for making women’s as well as men’s concerns and experiences an integral dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and all programmes in all political, economic and societal spheres so that women and men benefit equally and inequality is not perpetuated. The ultimate goal is to achieve gender equality.

Meaning depends on the focus

- to integrate gender dimensions ( women’s and men’s concerns) into development programming and planning, development models.

- To get every department and division to use gender analysis in their work

- To develop the responsibility of ensuring gender awareness in all sections and staff agency

- To ensure that all programmes serve to promote equality

- To ensure that issues of women are incorporated into policy making machinery

- To make it impossible for people or agencies to ignore, forget, overlook or fail to take account of women’s and men’s issues

means the process of identifying gender gaps and making women’s, men’s, girls’and boys’ concerns and experiences integral to the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes in all spheres so that they benefit equally;

Gender equality is the goal Gender mainstreaming is a strategy GM is concerned not only with women

but the relationship between women and men for the benefit of both.

Specific actions may be required in addition to remove the inequalities between women and men which have been identified

Participants will be divided into three groups

The group work will be based on Gender based violence as identified in the SADC Protocol for Gender and Development Article 20.

Each group to select a person who will report back

The question is How can we as MPs mainstream gender in any of the issues involved? At Constituency level, at Parliamentary level?

all acts perpetrated against women,men, girls and boys on the basis of their sex which cause or could cause them physical, sexual, psychological, emotional or ,economic harm, including the threat to take such acts, or to undertake the imposition of arbitrary restrictions on or deprivation of fundamental freedoms in private or public life in peace time and during situations of armed or other forms of conflict;

(2) State Parties shall, by 2015, ensure that laws on gender based violence provide for the comprehensive testing, treatment and care of survivors of sexual offences, which shall include:

(a) emergency contraception; (b) ready access to post exposure

prophylaxis at all health facilities to reduce the risk of contracting HIV;

and (c) preventing the onset of sexually

transmitted infections.

(3) State Parties shall, by 2015, review and reform their criminal laws and procedures applicable to cases of sexual offences and gender based violence to:

(a) eliminate gender bias; and (b) ensure justice and fairness are

accorded to survivors of gender based violence in a manner that ensures dignity, protection and respect.

(4) State Parties shall put in place mechanisms for the social and psychological rehabilitation of perpetrators of gender based violence.

Groups report back