VP Mujuru launches women’s decade

decade instead of following what donors want, Vice President Joice Mujuru has said.
Officially launching the African Women’s Decade Zimbabwe Chapter at a banquet held on the sidelines of the international women’s conference underway in Harare on Wednesday night, Cde Mujuru said the country has set its strategic plans for the decade.
She said tangible and sustainable projects should be identified to improve standards of living at household level.
“Similarly, we should have properly defined targets as part of that roadmap so that we can assess our progress even on an annual basis.
“In my view we should seek to prioritise those thematic areas that we believe are more relevant to our needs rather than simply being guided by what the donors want to prioritise,” Cde Mujuru said.
Launched at regional level last year in Kenya, Nairobi, the African Women’s Decade has 10 thematic areas to be addressed between 2010 and 2020.
These are:
l fighting poverty
l agriculture
l health
l education
l environment
l peace and security
l governance and legal protection
l finance an gender budgeting
l women on decision making and young women movements.
Cde Mujuru said inclusion of men in setting out and implementation of the decade’s strategic plan was of paramount significance as it makes the whole process inclusive.
She urged delegates attending the conference to frankly exchange ideas and experiences so that the conference generates meaningful ideas relevant to the implementation of the women’s decade agenda.
Soon after declaring the Zimbabwe chapter officially launched, women from various women’s organisations, members of parliament from all the three political parties, business entrepreneurs from various sectors and female chiefs at the banquet broke into ululation and dance.
The police band provided entertainment on the function.
Earlier, in her welcome remarks, Deputy Prime Minister Thokozani Khupe lamented the little involvement of women in decision-making positions and recognition in society.
This is despite several instruments put in place for gender equality and empowerment.
DPM Khupe said the 2010-2020 decade should provide a platform for women to take charge of their destiny.
“This is a defining moment for women in Africa. It is high time to take charge of our destiny,” she said.
Explaining the decade, the African Union’s director of women, gender and development Mrs Litha Musyimi-Ogama said the aim of the decade is to advance gender equality by accelerating implementation of agreed regional and international commitments through a bottom up approach.
“The decade is geared to-reinvigorate commitments to accelerated implementation of agreed global and regional commitments of gender equality and women empowerment,” she said.
She said each member state is expected to set up national committees, which will propose one good project each year.
The project per year would be supported per theme per year with funding from the newly established fund for African women.
“As a result, 53 projects will be supported for each of the 10 years, leading to 530 projects being supported during the decade,” Mrs Musyimi-Ogama said.
Adding that projects to be supported are those already existing but requiring additional support to boost them for a year.
Upon this background, the AU has since opened the call for proposals on a chosen theme for this year, which is Health, maternal mortality, HIV and Aids.
The deadline for submission of proposals is May 15 this year.