UNGEIActivities Report, June -October 2007

ESARO BE/GE Section

  1. Good practices in Girls’ education (Burundi, Uganda, Lesotho, and Zambia) finalized.
  1. Advocacy Paper on Transition to Post-primary Education and under final production.
  1. National initiatives on post-primary education in Madagascar, Malawiand Zambia; preparations for National Launch of the Advocacy Paper on Post-primary education underway.
  1. Madagsacar UNICEF country office shared their study on GE in the conference on girls' education hosted by Norway in Oslo at the end of August.

At the meeting, UNICEF Madagascar highlighted two principal conclusions from the study, although the conclusions and recommendations of the study team are many.

  • It is especially at the post-primary level that gender disparities appear in Madagascar. Since this level is crucial for girls to protect them from various risks (early pregnancy, domestic labour, etc.) we need to respond by promoting access to post-primary for vulnerable girls. The Ministry's decision to expand primary from 5 to 7 years is a step in the right direction.
  • Although at the national level the statistics don't show significant gender disparity, there are certain parts of the country where either girls or boys are at a considerable disadvantage when it comes to education, due to a combination of cultural factors and poverty. The implication is that we need to put in place capacity for human rights based planning at decentralized levels of the system, to enable regions and school districts to plan for reduction in gender disparity based on specific local challenges.
  1. Gender Audit conducted in four countries, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda and Malawi.

The a gender audit was commissioned by UNICEF in 4 ESAR countries to track the progress being made in achieving the gender equality goals set out in both Jomtien and Dakar meetings. It was implemented in three phases. The first step entailed refining a Gender Audit Tool that was to be completed by a selected first batch of countries in the region: Ethiopia, Kenyan, Malawi and Uganda. The second stage involved a general review of the progress that all countries in ESAR have made in improving participation in education between 2000 and 20007. The review constitutes Part II of this report. Upon completion of the review, visits were made to the selected countries for interviews with Ministry of Education officials, UNICEF staff and stakeholders from other agencies such as international organizations, development partners, local NGOs and CBOs. The report is almost finalized.

  1. FAWE and UNGEI partnership in ESAR. Atotal of 16 FAWE National Chapters will be supported generally. Similarly, mainstreaming of gender responsive education programs will be conducted in 5 FAWE National Chapters. Already gender responsive pedagogy and gender mainstreaming in teacher training was conducted in Tanzania. And consultation for similar task is being carried out in Malawi. In Malawi
  1. The pilot phase of the HQ supportedPuberty Education and Feminine Hygiene Initiative with Procter & Gamble. (Kenya and Malawi -ongoing).
  1. The work of the UNGEI task force is ongoing at country level. However it is difficult and challenging to sustain themomentum. Uganda’s UNGEI task force is the most active. UNGEI is being launched as a partnership forum at national level, with an advisory committee to give it direction. Separate committees have been created on district level to implement and coordinate the gender parity campaign in their respective districts.
  1. Regional office Conducted ECD capacity building by using the updated HQ ECD Resource Pack for all the ESAR regional offices and counter parts. (Conducted also an ECD workshop on EDC policies and good practices in faith based programmes;gender socialization and gender mainstreaming applied in both workshops).