Most African countries have now established institutional mechanisms for advancing gender equality and the majority of these are at the highest level of government, according to the synthesis report on this aspect. Some countries have established gender advisory groups or National Women's Council's to support the work of this machinery. South Africa has created an independent Commission on Gender Equality in addition to an Office on the Status of Women in the President's Office. The latter chaired the workshop, even though it failed to submit a report to the Sixth Africa Regional Conference on Women, claiming it had been too busy conducting a gender audit. Lack of resources and analytical capacity continue to dog gender structures. Sub-regional organisations, especially the Southern African Development Community are miffed by the lack of recognition of efforts to institutionalise gender at sub regional level. SADC Heads of State have signed a Declaration on Gender and Development. There is a gender unit in the SADC secretariat and gender units are being established in all the sector co-ordinating units.

Women and Environment
Women remain largely absent at all levels of policy making, formulation and decision making in natural resource and environmental management, despite their skills and experience in this area, the workshop on women and the environment heard. The common area of concern for most countries was to enhance the important role that women play in environmental preservation.

Issues stressed include: the close relationship between environmental resource management and poverty eradication; mechanisms to assess the impact of development and environmental policies on women; integrating gender concerns and perspectives in policies and programmes for sustainable development; involving women in environmental decision making at all levels and in the implementation of national plans of action. The workshop recommended that women be trained in essential environmental management skills.

L'évaluation thématique de la mise en œuvre de la plate-forme d'action de Beijing, Section J, est présentée dans cet atelier. L'évaluation thématique note le progrès dans ce domaine prioritaire. Il y a beaucoup d'initiatives nouvelles dans ce domaine. Les exemples donnés sont les radios communautaires qui sont dirigées par et pour les femmes au Mali, au Malawi et en Afrique du Sud. Les autres exemples incluent des projets sur les TICs qui s'adressent aux femmes, comme ceux de l'APC au Sénégal et Women'sNet en Afrique du Sud. Le site-web Flame/Flamme, sur le processus d'évaluation de la mise en œuvre de la plate-forme en Afrique, est aussi une grande réalisation.

Les recommandations de l'évaluation thématique mettent l'accent sur le besoin d'améliorer l'accès des femmes aux moyens de communication et aussi sur le besoin d'améliorer la représentation des femmes dans les médias.

Les contributions à l'évaluation soulignent la nécessité d'incorporer et de soutenir la communication informelle ou traditionnelle des femmes (comme l'art, les chansons, etc) et d'établir des systèmes de communication bilatéraux.

Les autres contributions notent que les initiatives nouvelles de communication pour les femmes avaientété développées sans des lois et des politiques qui s'adressent à la dimension genre. Il est nécessaire que les femmes s'impliquent plus dans la formulation des lois et des politiques sur les médias et les télécommunications.

Reproductive Health

The report is shallow and does not address the real issues like AIDS which is really a big concern and yet it is not adequately covered in the report", a delegate to the reproductive health workshop fumed. The workshop focused on what countries had done on the five key areas set out in the Beijing Conference: abortion and maternal care; Female Genital Mutilation (FGM); HIV/AIDS; and adolescent women. Dr Kama Rogo of Kenya asked governments and NGOs to address unsafe abortions, which are claiming many lives every year. Speakers at the workshop expressed concern over the governments' silence on issues affecting adolescents, especially girls.

"Apart from dying from unsafe abortion, girls aged between 15 and 19 are eight times more likely to be infected with HIV/AIDS. This is due to lack of adequate information on their sexuality," said a delegate from Botswana.