Regional: Alliance annual meeting reflects on critical issues in the count-down to 2015

The Southern Africa Gender Protocol Alliance held its annual steering committee meeting from 14 – 15 August to reflect on the year gone by and strategise for the future.

As per tradition, the Alliance used the opportunity to take stock of SADC countries’ progress towards achieving the 28 targets in the SADC Protocol on Gender and Development set for 2015.

The steering committee conducted a swot analysis of the Alliance. A key issue for the Alliance is that the Secretariat tabled a discussion paper on options for institutional mechanisms of the Alliance prepared by Matrine Bbuku Chuulu with inputs from the Secretariat and the Think Tank. The Think Tank reviewed the discussion paper at their first meeting in April 2012.

The steering committee reviewed the institutional mechanisms and agreed that the Alliance would remain a loose coalition and not register. Stakeholders will review the position in 2015.

A key outcome of the meeting is an endorsement to hold a SADC Gender Protocol Summit in April 2013 that aims to come up with strategies to accelerate implementation of the SADC Gender Protocol in the count- down to 2015 as well as begin thinking around a post-2015 agenda in line with key developments in the region.