As we went to press, 112 WTO member countries were due, at the 11th WTO ministerial conference Tuesday 12 December, to adopt a joint declaration called for by Sierra Leone and Iceland and the International Trade Centre (ITC), and backed by the EU and Canada, on trade and women’s economic empowerment.
Building on the UN 2030 sustainable development goal to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls and on the commitment of signatory countries to implement the obligations of the 1979 UN Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women, recognises the contribution that inclusive trade policies can make in advancing gender equality and women’s economic empowerment.
It sets out a raft of initiatives that the countries pledge to implement in order to better understand that measure exactly how state policies affect women differently from men – shortcomings that the signatory countries will work to overcome between now and the end of 2019, when a progress report on implementation of the declaration will be published.
The signatory countries agree to collaborate on making their trade and development policies more gender-responsive, including by sharing their respective experiences relating to policies and programs to encourage women’s participation in national and international economies through WTO information exchanges, as appropriate, and voluntary reporting during the WTO trade policy review process.
They also agree to share best practices for conducting gender-based analysis of trade policies. They will share methods and procedures for the collection of gender-disaggregated data.
The signatory countries will be working together in the WTO to remove barriers to women’s economic empowerment and increase their participation in trade; furthermore, they will ensure that Aid for Trade supports tools and know-how for analysing, designing and implementing more gender-responsive trade policies.
They will hold a series of seminars over the next months in coordination with relevant international organisations to explore and discuss, inter alia, themes related to trade and the economic empowerment of women, such as: - the promotion of female entrepreneurship and trade; - the identification of barriers that limit women’s participation in trade; - the promotion of financial inclusion as well as the access to trade financing and financial assistance for women traders; - the enhancement of women entrepreneurs’ participation in public procurement markets; - the inclusion of women-led businesses in value chains. (Original version in French by Emmanuel Hagry)