By Kenneth Thompson
The strategic planning committee of UN Women in Sierra Leone has identified women’s rights issues as major challenges confronting the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals and the government’s agenda for prosperity.
Acting head of the group, Melrose Kargbo, told a national consultative meeting that such rights issues were serious challenges to gender mainstreaming in particular and the need to ensure sustainable and inclusive development in general.
She said they were ending a two-year strategic plan which started in 2012 and encouraged government and other development partners to support the new plan for “inclusive development for women”.
She explained that UN Women, a specialised agency of the world body, was set up in July 2010 by the UN General Assembly with the sole purpose of achieving gender equality and the protection of women’s rights in all countries that were part of the United Nations family.
Nansu Fofanah, the gender adviser to President Ernest Bai Koroma, said that the agenda for prosperity and women’s empowerment jointly worked to achieve the same goal that was constitutive of the agenda’s eight pillars.
Deputy Minister of gender and children’s affairs, Mustapha Bai Atilla, said his ministry was a strategic partner to the UN Women but continued to face such issues as sexual exploitation and disability in women.
“As a result of stigma associated with sexual harassment, our women have refused to report such matters” Atilla said, adding “but with the help of UN Women there have been efforts to put a stop to that through the implementation of punishment for sexual offenses as stipulated in the Sexual Offences Act”.
(C) Politico 10/10/13
