SADC calls for more female representation in govt

Regional trade integration and the facilitation of movement of persons, goods and services within the region have topped the agenda of the two day Southern African Development Community
(SADC) heads of state and government meeting.

The SADC council of ministers has recommended that the current target of 30% female representation in the region's political and decision making structures be raised to 50%. This is in line with the African Union (AU) targets. This recommendation was made at the end of today's meeting.

Gender advocacy groups remain sceptical about the latest development, and have instead petitioned heads of state and government to upgrade the 1997 SADC gender and development declaration into a legal binding protocol. At present, only South Africa and Mozambique have achieved a target for affirming women in political and decision making structures. Colleen Lowe Morna of Gender Links says all hopes are now pinned on the SADC heads of state and government to endorse the council of minister's recommendation that the gender and development protocol be transformed into a declaration.

Trade
The SADC council of ministers has agreed that much is still need to be done to improve intra-SADC trade. Diplomats meeting in Gaborone have stressed that acceleration of tariff reduction is key if the goals to achieve the establishment of regional Free Trade Area by 2008 were to be realised.

South Africa which contributes two-thirds of the region's gross domestic product has been lauded for taking a lead in reducing tariff barriers. The meeting also stressed the need for member states to move with full speed to achieve and maintain macro-economic stability. This includes the restriction of inflation to low and stable levels, and the maintenance of prudent fiscal discipline. To achieve that, the council of minister's meeting has called for the establishment of macro-economic surveillance mechanism to monitor compliance.

The council of ministers meeting has also recommended that Madagascar be admitted as a full member of SADC. Botswana is due to assume chairmanship of the regional trading bloc.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

IMF Executive Board Discusses the First Assessment of Eligible Countries under the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative

On December 21, 2005 the Executive Board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) established the list of countries that qualify for debt relief from the Fund under the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative (MDRI). Debt relief delivery, which could start as soon as January 3, 2005, is now conditional on getting the consents of all the contributors to the Subsidy Account of the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (PRGF) Trust, whose contributions help finance the Initiative. The MDRI will deliver debt relief from the Fund to qualifying members countries with an annual per capita income at or below US$380, and to countries above the threshold that have reached the completion point under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative. The implementation of the MDRI will reduce the external debt burden of a number of the world's poorest countries and will provide additional resources to help them reach the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Background The Executive Board appro...
Read more

Oil’s chaotic collapse deepens; stocks drop worldwide

Image
NEW YORK (AP) — Oil prices crumpled even further Tuesday, and U.S. stocks sank to their worst loss in weeks as worries swept markets worldwide about the economic carnage caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The market’s spotlight was again on oil, where prices have plummeted because very few people are flying or driving, and factories have shut amid widespread stay-at-home orders. Global demand is set to drop to levels last seen in the mid 1990s. At the same time, oil producers can’t slow their production fast enough, and all the extra crude means storage tanks are quickly running out of room. The cost for a barrel of U.S. oil to be delivered in June plunged 43% to $11.57. That’s the part of the market that oil traders are focused on and trading most actively. For oil to be delivered next month, which is when storage tanks could top out, the cost of a barrel stood at $10.01. A day earlier, it fell below zero for the first time, meaning traders paid others to take oil off their hand...
Read more

Mapping Extreme Poverty Around the World A new report from the

Image
A new report from the  World Bank  just landed, finding that a record low of 10% of humanity now live in extreme poverty, down from 11% in 2013. But poverty rates aren’t anywhere close to equal between continents or even countries, as our new series of maps clearly demonstrates. The World Bank provides an in-depth explanation for its methodology, which you can find in Appendix A of the full report  here . We focused on the percentage of people in each country living below what the World Bank defines as extreme poverty, or $1.90/day. We’ll let the researchers defend this definition on their own, but there is one caveat to keep in mind. It can be extraordinarily difficult to collect reliable data from so many countries on a regular basis, and in fact we used the latest year in which numbers were available whenever possible. For example, in some of these maps we compare 2011 figures against 2015. In short, our maps provide the clearest possible apples-to-apples compa...
Read more