Senegal’s Director of Cabinet in the Ministry of Women, Family and Child Protection, Mr. Mouhamed Ndiaye on 21 February 2023 said, “The fight against gender-based violence, is a critical issue not just for Senegal, but a major and real problem for governments across the continent,” he said. He referenced the One-Stop Center model, to be experimented by Senegal, currently used by countries in the region as “an example on addressing gender-based violence-related issues through providing access to survivor-centered, quality essential services.”

He spoke at the official opening of a four-day regional experience-sharing workshop for the Sahel Women's Empowerment and Demographic Dividend (SWEDD) project's legal platform. The SWEDD project which seeks to accelerate the demographic transition as well as harness the demographic dividend, is a government led project funded by the World Bank, with the technical support from UNFPA, the West African Health Organization-Economic Community of West African States (WAHO-ECOWAS), and the African Union

The Project’s legal sub-component supports creating an enabling environment for promoting and protecting women's rights to health, education, economic empowerment and access to entrepreneurial activities. This sub-component of the Project is implemented at the national and regional levels by a team of legal experts, with technical support from the World Bank, UNFPA and the Center for African Family Studies in Population and Health and Sustainable Development (CEFA-PSD) legal and gender experts.

A first in-person meeting of the SWEDD regional platform of jurists, this 4-day workshop brought together lawyers from fourteen SWEDD countries in West and Central Africa, the West African Health Organization (WAHO), the Economic Community of West African State (ECOWAS), the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) and the African Union (AU). It will (1) take stock of the activities implemented to date (2) stimulate exchanges and sharing of experiences among the members of the platform, and (3) finalize the integration of Pan-African institutions, especially AU and ECCAS, into the regional platform.

Representing the World Bank at the start of the workshop, Ms. Eleonora Cavagnero, Task Team Leader for SWEDD said, the Project is an important flagship project, the first regional Project that was not an infrastructure project but rather supports the social aspects to transform the socio-cultural and legal environment in favour of girls and women’s empowerment.

“Countries have adhered to numerous international and regional instruments establishing gender equality. But the gap is often very wide between the texts ratified, the adoption of national laws and their application. We need you to narrow that gap and ensure that the theory is translated into practical actions, especially in addressing child marriage, early pregnancy, and gender-based violence, among others”, she emphasized.

Presenting the Legal Platform, the Senior Legal Expert at the World Bank, Dr. Emelyne Calimoutou expressed her satisfaction to see the dedication shown by the SWEDD countries to the platform developed with the SWEDD legal community's inputs. “The results are beyond expectations and demonstrate Africa's capacity for innovation”, She stated.

Speaking on behalf of the West African Health Organization, the specialized institution of ECOWAS, Ms. Oluwafunmike SOPEIN-MANN, SWEDD Coordinator, highlighted the progress made by countries in the SWEDD implementation, initially covering six countries but now expanded to 13 countries and growing. “These successive enlargements demonstrate the growing interest of African leaders in the ideals pursued by the SWEDD project on our continent, whose strength of the future is its daughters, women and young people. The resulting demographic dividend ensuring our region's economic development not left out.”

WAHO-ECOWAS, she said, will work towards the achievement of the aim of the Project- to empower young women, adolescent girls and youth who are part of the vulnerable groups in the continent but with a lot of potentials.

The Regional Director for the United Nations Population Fund- UNFPA West and Central Africa, Mrs. Argentina Matavel Piccin in her statement committed the agency’s readiness “to support the sharing of experiences and good practices to strengthen access to safe and quality reproductive health services by working on legal issues such as access to family planning to all men and women of childbearing age free from coercion and violence, the protection of sexual and reproductive rights, the rights to education and to live away from harmful practices such as child marriage and gender-based violence on gender.”

The creation of the SWEDD legal platform is an essential step for the Project in supporting the implementation of the legal component towards strengthening skills in the promotion and protection of women's rights, improve law enforcement and the treatment of cases of violation of women's rights to health, education and economic empowerment of women and facilitate access to entrepreneurial activities.

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Contacts:
Ms. Marie Chantal Uwitonze | SWEDD Communication Lead | Tel. +221 783877442 | Email:
uwitonze@unfpa.org