22 May 2018

Minister of Nationality, Immigration and Gender Affairs and International Working Group World (IWG) Conference on Women and Sport patron, Dorcas Makgato says Botswana has lived up to its promise of hosting a successful conference when bidding to host the event four years ago.

Botswana was awarded the rights to host the 7th IWG conference in 2014 at the 6th IWG conference in Helsinki, Finland.

“It should, therefore, go without saying that our individual and collective efforts have indeed delivered a successful conference when bidding to host the event four years ago.

I can only trust that these presentations served the purpose of not only educating and informing us, but also stimulating debate in our issues as women in sport,” she said.

She was hopeful that the presentations had added value to the progress already made, and inspired all into the future of driving the agenda of eliminating gender inequities and bringing about the necessary parity in sport.

 “At the end of it all, the conference should have helped us to evaluate how much of our strategic objectives we have achieved,” she said.

Makgato said Botswana had done its level best in putting together the conference. She said it was not easy but given the international activities that the country hosted in the past year, they have accumulated experience to host such events.

She appreciated the private sector support to augment government efforts. She said much had been achieved, and that much was still to be achieved.

“There is the general consensus from the conference that culture and faith remain the barriers to progress. There is also a general consensus that a lot of work has gone into research studies, and we now need to put the recommendations into practice,” she said.

She said going forward, the focus would be on conducting an audit and formulating and implementing more gender-sensitive policies for sport in order to contribute to gender mainstreaming in sport. She said they would also continue international relations and partnerships they formed over the past four years. She added that they also want to stimulate increased participation and the need for female involvement in sport at all levels.

For her part, IWG co-chairperson, Ruth Maphorisa said participants contributions during the sessions shaped and gave the context of what was desired.
“Conferences can only give a platform for consensus building in determining the course of action.

What we will be judged on is not what we said during the conference, but rather our actions post the conference,” she advised.

Maphorisa noted that during preparations they received support from some national and international bodies towards capacitating the secretariat and other human resources that were needed to deliver the event.

“Along the way, we were invited to join the HeForShe campaign, a United Nations campaign then spearheaded by our Ministry of Nationality, Immigration and Gender Affairs. We entered into partnerships with local entities in driving the campaign strategic objectives and in the process delivering our mandate,” she said. Ends