1 Gender equality and women's empowerment
in development
| (35635)
17432/13
SWD(13) 509
| Commission Staff Working Paper: 2012 Report on the Implementation of the EU Plan of Action on Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment in Development 2010-2015
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| Legal base | —
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| Document originated | 3 December 2013
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| Deposited in Parliament | 11 December 2013
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| Department | International Development
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| Basis of consideration | EM of 20 December 2013
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| Previous Committee Report | None; but see (34490) 17135/12: HC 86-xxvii (2012-13), chapter 10 (16 January 2013); also see (33615) 17880/11: HC 428-l (2010-12), chapter 13 (8 February 2012 ) and (28464) 7257/07: HC 41-xviii (2006-07), chapter 8 (25 April 2007)
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| Discussion in Council | To be determined
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| Committee's assessment | Politically important
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| Committee's decision | For debate in European Committee B
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Background
1.1 Gender equality is one of the eight Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs) that, in 2000, the UN set itself to achieve,
most by 2015 — the others being to eradicate extreme poverty
and hunger; achieve universal primary education; reduce child
mortality; improve maternal health; combat HIV/Aids, malaria and
other diseases; ensure environmental sustainability; develop a
partnership for development — each with associated targets
and benchmarks to measure progress.[1]
The 2007 Commission Communication
1.2 Commission Communication 7257/07, Gender Equality
and Women Empowerment in Development Cooperation, was considered
by the then Committee at its meeting on 25 April 2007.[2]
In sum, the document noted that efforts thus far had provided
the basis for capacity building within the Commission on "mainstreaming"
gender equality in Community development cooperation. Its overarching
aim was to promote progress in achieving:
— equal rights (political, civil, economic,
employment, social and cultural) for women and men, girls and
boys;
— equal access to, and control over, resources
for women and men; and
— equal opportunities to achieve political
and economic influence for women and men.
1.3 The Communication envisaged a twin-tracked approach,
setting as its objectives increasing the efficiency of gender
mainstreaming and focusing on specific actions for women's empowerment
in partner countries. Within the area of mainstreaming, priorities
included ensuring that issues of gender equality formed part of
the regular political dialogue with partner countries; integrating
gender equality analysis and objectives into country strategies
and indicators for measuring performance and impact; and building
institutional capacity both within the EU and partner countries.
The strategy also noted the need to ensure that gender equality
issues were adequately addressed in budget support arrangements.
In terms of work aimed specifically at supporting women's rights
and empowerment, the broad priority areas identified were: governance
(including human rights and political representation, and role
of women in conflict and post-conflict situations); employment
and economic activities; education; health (including social protection
measures and sexual and reproductive health) and tackling gender
based violence (e.g., through legislation, victim protection,
awareness raising and education).[3]
The 2010-15 EU Plan of Action on Gender Equality
and Women's Empowerment in development
1.4 The 2010-15 EU Plan of Action on Gender Equality
and Women's Empowerment in development (GAP) aimed to increase
the impact of gender equality policies in development cooperation
through reinforcing EU coordination, in line with the principles
of the OECD DAC Paris Declaration and the Accra Agenda for Action,
which centred on the key issue of aid effectiveness. It proposed
a series of activities to be carried out by Member States and
the EU for the period 2010-2015, built around a three-pronged
approach (combining political and policy dialogue, improving the
inclusion of gender issues across development policy and programming)
and actions targeted to address specific issues; based on existing
resources, instruments and mechanisms; and focusing on areas where
the EU has a clear comparative advantage. It was designed to:
— strengthen the lead role of the EU in
promoting gender equality in development cooperation;
— build in-house Commission capacity on
gender equality issues in development cooperation;
— place gender equality issues systematically
on the agenda of political and development policy dialogue with
Partner countries;
— ensure that all EU funded general budget
support and sector support programmes used gender-disaggregated
data and gender-sensitive performance indicators;
— prioritise in-country civil society participation,
capacity building and advocacy on Gender Equality and Women's
Empowerment;
— improve EU monitoring, accountability
and transparency on allocation of funds for Gender Equality and
Women's Empowerment;
— strengthen EU support to partner countries
in combating gender-based violence in all its manifestations,
as well as discrimination against women and girls;
— support partner countries in fully implementing
United Nations Security Council resolutions (UNSCR) 1325, 1820,
1888, and 1889, which recognise the importance of women's role
in building peace and security in situations of conflict and sexual
violence as a tactic of war.
1.5 The GAP contains nine objectives, 37 actions
and 53 indicators which the Commission, Member States, the European
External Action Service (EEAS), including EU delegations, are
committed to implement and report on annually to the Council,
on the basis of the deadlines agreed for each indicator. The indicators
mainly reflect the GAP's key focus, on strengthening the capacities
of Member States and the EU institutions in their roles as partners
in development, supporting developing countries' efforts to improve
the situation of women with regard to equality, rights and empowerment.
Some indicators are quantitative, making it possible to use benchmarks
and measure numerical progress; others are qualitative, making
the assessment of progress more challenging.
1.6 The GAP was adopted by the Council in its Conclusions
on the MDGs in June 2010. [4]
Implementation was to be monitored jointly by the Commission and
the Council. All Member States, as well as the 117 EU delegations
that have external cooperation activities, are obliged to report
annually on the GAP indicators for which they are responsible.
Reporting is not conducted against every indicator in every year:
the annex to the 2010 Council Conclusions sets out against which
of the indicators reporting is required, by which organisation
and in which year.
1.7 Details of the 2011 and 2012 reports are set
out in our most recent Report under reference.
1.8 When we considered the latter, we noted that,
though the Minister made no mention of it, the Commission website
said that a mid-term review of the GAP was to be conducted in
2013. We looked forward to receiving a copy of it from the Minister,
together with an Explanatory Memorandum setting out her views
on it and how she intended to tackle whatever recommendations
it makes and any other questions that arise.[5]
The 2013 report on GAP implementation
1.9 This report covers the period July 2012 to June
2013 and finds that "overall, the general impression which
emerges from this year's reporting exercise is that whilst progress
is on-going, it is extremely slow and may need to be accelerated".
The Government's view
1.10 In her Explanatory Memorandum of 20 December
2013, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Department
for International Development (Lynne Featherstone) welcomes the
publication of the third report and professes herself pleased
that, as in previous years, the report highlights not only the
achievements made in promoting gender equality through development
cooperation, "but also frankly highlights the persisting
challenges and areas where more work needs to be done".
1.11 She describes the report's conclusion that,
overall, progress was "extremely slow" between July
2012 and June 2013 as "very disappointing", saying:
"In particular, EU Delegations are "still
very far" from meeting the target of 75% of all new project
proposals scoring G-1 or G-2 on the Organisation for Economic
Cooperation and Development's (OECD) Gender Equality Policy Marker
scale (which are assigned to projects that include gender equality
as a "principal" or "significant" objective,
respectively). Of the 45 EU Delegations reporting on this indicator,
only nine declared achieving the 75% target. The report also
notes that the main tools for achieving gender mainstreaming (the
Gender Screening Checklist for appraising the gender-sensitivity
of projects; and gender equality assessments in Results Oriented
Monitoring (ROM)) are not universally implemented by staff in
EU Delegations, despite being compulsory. The report says that
this largely stems from a lack of understanding of gender issues
amongst EU Delegation staff."
1.12 The Minister also says that there has been better
progress in some other areas:
"The report notes, for example, that gender
equality is becoming a more established issue for dialogue with
host governments and civil society: 36 out of the 79 reporting
Delegations regularly put gender equality on the agenda for political
dialogue, while 73 of them maintain regular dialogue on gender
issues with civil society. 12 EU Delegations have produced Gender
Country Profiles, which assess the status of gender equality in
a partner country as a baseline to inform programming, and 13
others plan to do so. Gender equality is being included in the
assessment and monitoring of programmes in an increasing number
of sectors: whereas in 2012 gender-sensitive indicators were included
in projects or programmes in only 5 sectors, in 2013 they are
included in 18 sectors.
"The report also notes that the EU institutions
and a number of Member States remain highly committed to prioritising
gender equality in global negotiations, including as part of the
post 2015 development agenda. To ensure the credibility of the
EU's position in these negotiations, it is very important that
the EU delivers on its own commitments to integrate gender equality
in its development programmes."
1.13 The Minister continues her comments as follows:
"The UK Government is committed to putting girls
and women at the centre of international development, and has
made this one of the six priorities specified in the Department
for International Development's (DFID) Business Plan 2011-2015.
We believe that investing in girls and women has a transformative
impact on growth, poverty reduction and the MDGs. The UK lobbied
hard for the Commission to create its Gender Action Plan in 2010
and DFID has been a key member of the EU Gender Experts Core Group
since its inception.
"The Multilateral Aid Review (MAR), published
in 2011, identified the need to "strengthen gender mainstreaming
in practice and measurement of impact of gender work" as
a reform priority for the European Commission. Our recent update
to the MAR, published in December 2013, finds that, while around
50% of the GAP targets have been met, "more attention is
needed, particularly by senior management." In our follow-up
to this assessment, we will continue to press the EU to step up
to the mark and meet the targets set in the GAP. This will require
stronger, more visible support from EU senior management, and
improved technical capacity at a working level, particularly producing
and using gender-disaggregated data. Action needs to be
taken both in Brussels and in EU Delegations to improve coordination
and commitment to delivering results on gender. We want to see
faster and deeper progress than has been evident so far, and we
have made this clear to the Commission including through senior
DFID staff visits to Brussels over the last three months. In
particular, we will work with the EU institutions to strengthen
action on the issue of violence against women and girls, an area
in which the UK is a key player, including through my role as
International Violence Against Women Champion.
"EU GAP reporting covers progress in Member
States as well as in the EU institutions. 16 Member States provided
information for the current report, including the UK. DFID's
"Strategic Vision for Girls and Women" aims to unlock
the potential of girls and women, to stop poverty before it starts.
It empowers girls and women, enabling them to have voice, choice
and control. Achieving this requires an enabling environment
of strong, open and inclusive economies, societies and political
institutions. This includes addressing the social norms and relationships
that underpin how girls and women are valued in society, and which
influence the opportunities they can seize. Progress against
four interlinked "game-changing" outcomes is critical:
(i) girls' completion of primary and secondary education; (ii)
economic empowerment; (iii) ability to live free from violence;
and (iv) universal sexual and reproductive health and rights."
1.14 With regard to the request in our Report on
the 2012 GAP implementation report, the Minister says:
"This review has not yet been completed. We
will continue to press for completion of the review as soon as
possible, and make clear that further slippage against the Commission's
own timetable is not acceptable. We will provide the Committee
with a copy of the review once it is published."
1.15 Looking ahead, the Minister says that discussions
on the report in the Council working group on development (CODEV)
are on-going, and that Council Conclusions are likely be drafted
in early 2014, for subsequent adoption by the Council.
Conclusion
1.16 Three years on, this is an unimpressive picture.
The Minister is quite right in wishing to see faster and deeper
progress than has been evident so far, and we have no doubt that
senior DFID staff have indeed made this clear to the Commission.
There can also be no doubt of her or the Government's commitment
to working with the EU institutions to strengthen action on the
issue of violence against women and girls. At EU level, however,
it is lamentable that, against a background of fine-sounding rhetoric,
the reality is: inadequate support from EU senior management,
inadequate technical capacity at working level, and inadequate
coordination and commitment to delivering results on gender in
both Brussels and in EU Delegations. It is thus no surprise that
the review promised for 2013 is nowhere to be seen.
1.17 We suggest that now is the time for these
matters to be debated in European Committee, and so recommend.
1.18 In the meantime, we shall retain the Commission
Staff Working Document under scrutiny.
1 For a full discussion of gender equality and women
empowerment, see the April 2003 UN Millennium Project Background
Paper of the Task Force on Education and Gender Equality "Promises
to Keep: Achieving Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women"
at http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/documents/tf03genapr18.pdf. Back
2
See headnote: (28464) 7257/07: HC 41-xviii (2006-07), chapter
8 (25 April 2007). Back
3
For full background on the EU's approach to Gender Equality in
development, see http://ec.europa.eu/europeaid/what/development-policies/intervention-areas/humandev/genderequ_en.htm. Back
4
The Council Conclusions are available at http://ec.europa.eu/development/icenter/repository/EU_council_conclusions_MDGs_20100614.pdf. Back
5
See headnote: (34490) 17135/12: HC 86-xxvii (2012-13), chapter
10 (16 January 2013). Back
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