26 Mar 2015

The Botswana Association of Local Authorities (BALA) programmes officer, Mr Moemedi Tsimanyane, says the Southern African Development Community (SADC) are embarking on the post 2015 agenda.



Speaking at a Gender District Summit Gender Links and BALA in Maun, Mr Tsimanyane said that was because the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and SADC Protocol on Gender and Development were coming to an end this year.



He said the MDG’s, which had eight critical areas such as poverty eradication and gender equality by 2015 come to an end, there should be reports on how countries performed. 



Mr Tsimanyane said the world through the United Nations had a new agenda called Post 2015, which had 17 critical areas called Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which also had issues of poverty eradication and gender equality.


Unlike the MDGs, the SDGs, he said were sponsored from bottom up in that they should start at the local level and people should own them.

He said the MDGs were sponsored from the top by international bodies down to countries and then to locals.



The programmes officer said the aim of the SDGs was to leave no one behind and pointed out that the same applied to the SADC Protocol on Gender and Development, which started in 2008 and comes to an end in 2015.

Mr Tsimanyane said although Botswana was not a signatory to the SADC Protocol on Gender and Development, she was a part of many treaties, which advocated gender equality.



He noted that some law reviews such as the abolition of marital powers and domestic violence acts were aligned towards achieving what the SADC Protocol on Gender and Development called for.

Botswana and SADC, he said, had to evaluate their  performance with regard to the SADC Protocol on Gender and Development.



He further said as part of the 2015 post agenda, BALA would undertake surveys to get the locals’ views in informing the report as well as to map the way forward.


Meanwhile, Mr Tsimanyane said some men should refrain from associating gender issues with women only. He said gender issues affected development of countries, therefore, needed robust reforms.

He noted that women were born in patriarchal societies, which influenced them to belittle themselves hence the need for structural reforms.



Mr Tsimanyane cited that South Africa implemented robust reforms and managed to attain the 30 per cent women representation in politics on SADC Protocol on Gender and Development while Botswana’s performance regressed from 18 per cent in 2004 to 11 percent in 2009 and nine per cent in 2014.



Gender Links country manager, Ms Gomolemo Rasesigo, said the district summit was meant to educate district councils on information technology advocacy for effective communication skills towards attaining gender equality as well to measure progress on SADC gender protocol and their partnership with BALA.
 ENDS