ADDIS ABABA (ILO News) - The International Labour Organization (ILO) team headed by Aeneas Chapinga Chuma, Assistant Director-General and Regional Director for Africa, will highlight ways to promote employment and social protection for women at the Ninth African Regional Conference on Women (Beijing+20).
The Conference which will take place from 17 to 19 November 2014 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia will review progress in Africa and worldwide in promoting gender equality and women’s rights twenty years after the adoption of the Beijing Platform for Action.
ILO gender specialists will focus on key challenges and opportunities for women entrepreneurship and empowerment to better inform discussions at the Ministerial Session and come up with innovative strategies to promote the gender development agenda.
Participants will also consider the main findings of the Beijing+20 report, including gender equality and women empowerment, youth empowerment with a focus on young women, women in the Post-2015 Development Agenda, Women's Human Rights, Health and HIV/AIDS..
The purpose of the Ministerial Session is to ensure that the Africa region is fully prepared to participate in next year’s global review of progress worldwide toward meeting the commitments to gender equality and women’s rights first pledged in Beijing in 1995.
The Conference will also come up with key strategic messages to inform the 2015 AU Heads of States and Government Summit: “Year of Women’s Empowerment and Africa’s Development for the concretization of Agenda 2063”.
The ILO contribution will help to shape the African position and perspective that will feed into the Global Beijing+20 Review in CSW59 in March 2015 and reports will be uploaded onto this website.
The meeting will be attended by African Member States, the African Union Commission, the UN Economic Commission for Africa and key international strategic partners, including UNWomen, the ILO and the African Development Bank.
For more information, interviews requests and media queries; please contact Guebray Berhane, ILO Regional Office for Africa: [email protected], Tel: + 251911218115 – www.ilo.org/africa
