It has been a long trek from Dakar to Addis Ababa - literally and figuratively. Tired delegates arriving yesterday told of similar harrowing travel and connection stories to those heard at the Fifth African Regional Conference on Women in Dakar, five years ago. Air connections across the continent have not improved much - but the networking has. There is, in the words of one delegate, beginning to be a genuine African women's movement: not just a regional or national one.
Africa can pat itself on the back for another reason. The regional conference taking place here is the first of the regional conferences in preparation for Beijing Plus Five in which NGOs are taking part as full delegates. NGOs are split among themselves over whether they can be most effective from the inside or at a distance. But the message that the ECA is sending out is that governments must not come here to put on a public relations show, but rather account honestly for what they have done.
It is all in all a refreshing approach to a UN conference: extensive preparations, analyses and syntheses in place of individual country reports; open debate between governments and NGOs; sub-regional caucuses and in-depth workshops that will try to go beyond the shopping lists that emerged in Dakar. And, unlike Dakar, which was marred by technical hitches that led to a few heads rolling in the ECA, the secretariat has the advantage of home base.
Ingredients for success? We certainly hope so. May Africa, the cradle of civilisation, emerge the flame of gender equality in the new millennium.
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