RIGHTS-DEVELOPMENT: Next EU/ACP Agreement Must Be ‘Engendered’

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Debbie Singh and Niccolo Sarno

BRUSSELS, Jul 10 1999 (IPS) - The challenge for the 71 African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries and their partners at the European Union (EU) is to focus trade and development policies on women, youth and the poor, civil society groups agreed here Saturday.

The issue of gender, in the context of a successor agreement to Lome IV – the trade and aid pact between the EU and former European colonies- was among the topics addressed at a hearing on the Lome Convention and civil society held here Jul 8-10.

Both European and ACP non governmental organisations (NGOs) recognised that “social and economic development cannot be secured in a sustainable way without the full participation of women.”

“They (ACP and EU negotiators) have said gender is a cross- cutting issue, ” – Brita Bastogi of the Brussels-based Eurostep Network of European NGOs said – “but there are no mechanisms in the ACP mandate to implement measures related to gender.”

In their documents, ACP negotiators reportedly bring together “gender and youth” but participants here claimed that “the definition of gender even is not understood by key policy and decision makers within the EU and ACP.”

“The absence of a gender analysis policy framework within the context of the Lome convention leaves very hollow steps towards the mainstreaming of gender equity into political, economic and social aspects of the next agreement,” warned participants of a gender working group during the hearing.

Recommendations drafted by working groups will be submitted to ACP and EU negotiators as a contribution from civil society, before their next ministerial meeting, due in Brussels on July 29-30.

The current Lome convention expires on February 1, 2000 and the successor agreement currently being negotiated by the parties will be based on the overarching objective of poverty eradication.

The EU negotiating directives set out three guiding principles “for systematic application in all areas of cooperation”, including “gender mainstreaming and gender equality.”

However, the text of the next agreement, which is currently being drafted, does not bring forward a coherent policy approach focused at the empowerment of women, according to participants at the hearing.

Civil society activists and NGO representatives also underscored the need for greater inclusion and participation by these sectors in the implementation of the successor agreement.

“Benchmarks keep moving” – said Pat Made, Africa director of IPS (Inter Press Service) – “and we continue to stand still. Negotiators speak the language and progress continues to seem far away. We are constantly treating the symptoms.”

Made underscored the need for harmonisation of policies which had emanated from major United Nations international fora such as the human rights, environment, population, women’s and social development conferences to ensure consistency and progress.

Kena’e Ka’au, of the South Pacific-based Melanesian Solidarity for an Independent and Nuclear Free Pacific supported the inclusion of gender as a development concern in the successor Lome pact but warned that the meaning of gender is still not widely understood in the Pacific.

“Many in the Pacific think that gender is about women, but it is a much broader issue,’ Ka’au said.

“In the Papua New Guinea and Melanesian context the issue of gender balance or equality is important…It must be equality and not just a notion of equality. If this is not done, women will be left out,’ he warned.

Ka’au said an additional challenge for the Pacific concerned how the whole concept of gender in the successor Lome pact would be translated and made effective on the ground.

He suggested the need for awareness-raising before the gender issue could become part of the successor agreement but also pointed out that this would need to be done in the context of national capacity and availability of resources.

“To be honest, we need to look at home first before looking elsewhere,” Ka’au said, stressing that in the Pacific there is a need to consider governments that were not responding to people’s needs.

Calls for the engendering of development policies from their evolutionary stages have also been heard in Brussels but Hellen Felter, vice-president of the European Women’s Lobby agreed with Ka’au in that, even among negotiators, “people don’t know what gender is.’

Felter said that out of the 20 appointments as European Commissioners on July 9, only five were women (the European Commission is the EU’s executive branch).

“And gender has to do also with changing the structure that has been put up by men,” she said, pointing out that at the Brussels hearing “there was not one female chair”. “And this is Europe ,” she added, suggesting that the situation is worse in most ACP nations.

Jagjit Plahe of Kenya stressed the need for existing human rights agreements to be used as a threshold when discussing trade agreements in terms of determining whether trade is assisting with the eradication of poverty.

“Let us not romanticise about words like poverty eradication and good governance. There have been claims that half the world’s poverty will be eliminated by the year 2015. But which half are we talking about ?’ she asked.

“The EU and other international organisations need to invest in awareness-raising to build capacity and inform poor people about Lome to enable them to make informed choices,’ Plahe added.

Ramesh Jaura, Chair of the Global Cooperation Council in Bonn, said there is a need to look beyond the successor Lome pact in terms of the democratisation of international relations.

There is a need for treaties and mechanisms for monitoring these treaties, and said it is civil society’s role to demand more transparent measures of democratisation in terms of trade, aid and investment, Jaura said.