Women's rights hold meeting on dev’t financing

NETRIGHT, a network of women's rights in Ghana on Monday held a day's consultative meeting on Financing for Development (FfD) and post 2015 agenda in Accra.

It was a prelude to the third international conference on Financing for Development (FfD3), which is taking place in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia this month.

It serves as a platform for women groups and other actors to interrogate the FfD3 and processes from a gender perspective and make policy recommendations for the Addis Ababa and the post 2015 meeting in September, 2015 and beyond.

The Addis Ababa meeting is a follow up to the previous FfD international conference, which was held in 2002 and Doha in 2008.

Participants are drawn from a cross section of women’s rights organisations, gender equality activists, ministries, departments and agencies, civil society organisations, development partners and the media.

Prof Akua Britwum, Convenor of NETRIGHT, a women's rights organisation said the women’s activists have been making critical contributions to the FfD discussions and have an important role to play at the Addis Ababa meeting and beyond.

She said as part of interventions to ensure that the voice and perspective of Ghanaian women are taking on board the regional and global interventions by women’s rights and feminist groups on FfD and post 2015 a series of consultations were made in the last quarter of 2014.

She said the NETRIGHT-led national process would mobilise all actors to discuss development financing and how the outcome of FfD3 would impact on the implementation of the sustainable development goals and make appropriate policy policies to influence decisions of the government before Addis Ababa and beyond.

It is expected that the capacity of the women’s movement in Ghana as a whole would be strengthened to effectively engage in the FfD3, post 2015 and other regional and international processes on women’s rights and gender equality as well as influence development financing at the country level from a gender perspective.

She expressed hope that the meeting would come out with a common voice and position for women’s groups in Ghana participating in the FfD3 process and post2015 agenda.

Mrs Patricia Blankson of NETRIGHT, giving an overview of financing for development and post 2015 process; “Locating women’s rights and gender equality in FfD,” said the current FfD3 process would develop a new framework that would continue the Monterrey and Doha meetings and also support the financing and implementation of the post 2015 framework on the new sustainable goals.

Mr Gyekye Tanoh of Third World Network Africa, speaking on the topic understanding the trends, shifts and priorities in financing development and the post 2015 agenda called on global leaders at the meeting to looks critically at the issues that perpetuate inequalities and make efforts to address them.