Seychelles: Conducts costing of the gender action plan

Seychelles national gender machinery led by the Gender Secretariat will conduct a costing of the gender action plan from 11 – 12 April 2012 with technical assistance from Gender Links.

This is a follow up workshop to a process that began in November 2011, which saw Seychelles develop its first ever national gender action plan. What is unique is that it is the first country to develop a gender action plan that is aligned to the SADC Gender Protocol 28 targets.

Seychelles becomes the second country to develop a national gender costed plan that sets out an implementation framework of the SADC Gender Protocol.

Following the success of a model that brought key elements of the SADC Gender Protocol campaign Gender Links will work with the SADC Gender Unit, Alliance Network focal points and development partners to cascade the process possibly to five other countries by the end of 2012. The key elements include:

• Updating national gender policies to align to the SADC Gender Protocol
• Developing gender action plans that are aligned to the SADC Gender Unit regional strategy and action plan developed in October 2011 and the Protocol
• Gender mainstreaming capacity building for line ministries
• Using the SADC Gender Protocol Barometer for baseline data,
• Gender responsive budget capacity building
• Costing of the gender action plans and;
• Using SADC Gender Protocol targets to set benchmarks