Ms Vitoria Odurowa Fato, Focal Person, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) at the Volta Regional Coordinating Council (VRCC) has called on development agencies to make gender mainstreaming an integral part of their mandate to ensure both men and women benefited equally from development.

She said there was the need to champion Sustainable Development Goal five on gender equality by tailoring gender needs into all programmes so as "not to perpetuate gender inequality ".

Ms Fato, who was speaking at the opening ceremony of a two-day gender mainstreaming workshop organized by the Department of Gender and the VRCC with funding from the UNFPA and the District Coordinating Planning Unit (DCPU), said gender mainstreaming amongst others promoted social justice and human rights.

She noted that females constituted a majority of the world's population hence the need to remove all obstacles that hindered them from fully participating in all spheres of life. Ms Fato bemoaned how two out of every three women suffered from the effect of gender-based violence and called for an end to the menace.

She called on the participants, mainly planning officers at the local Assemblies to use the skills and knowledge gained through the training to develop their Medium-Term Plans and Action for the various local Assemblies.

Madam Lena Alai, Volta Regional Director, Department of Gender, said the workshop was timely in an environment where awareness needed to be created on gender mainstreaming.

She said it was unfortunate that, though there was a national gender policy decentralized at the local levels, there was still a section of the society that had not been equitably represented in policies and decision making processes.