Communique on the African Women's Decade (2010-2012)

WE the 47 leaders representing women's human rights organisations, national women's machineries and the media from 12 African countries in the West Africa sub-region;

PARTICIPATING in a three- day workshop in Accra, Ghana entitled “Beyond Beijing +15: Implementing and Resourcing the African Women's Decade (2010-2020)” organized by the African Women's Development and Communication Network (FEMNET), the Network for Women's Rights in Ghana (NETRIGHT), the Association of African Women for Research and Development (AAWORD) and Women in Law and Development (WiLDAF- West Africa);

COMMENDING the collaborative efforts of FEMNET, NETRIGHT, AAWORD, and WiLDAF-WA with the support of the government of Ghana and UNIFEM;

UNDERSCORING the objectives of the said workshop listed below as follows:

TO DISSEMINATE and discuss the outcome of the 15 year review of the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action (BPfA) at regional and sub regional level;

TO POPULARISE the African Women's Decade 2010-2020 as an opportunity for states to deliver on their various commitment to women's rights and empowerment;

TO CATALYSE the development of action plans for operationalising the African Women's Decade 2010-2020 at national and regional levels;

TO DELIBERATE on strategies for increasing funding for women's rights agenda in order to deliver on commitments to gender equality and women's empowerment during the African Women's Decade 2010-2020 and;

TO EXPLORE new opportunities for networking and movement building in order to support the work the gender machineries and women's right organisations to deliver on the objectives of the Women's Decade.

TAKING COGNISANCE of the outcome of similar sub regional workshops convened by FEMNET in May 2010 in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo for Central Africa, and in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in June 2010 for East and Horn of Africa;

WELCOMING the decision of African Union (AU) Heads of State that 2010-2020 will be recognized as the ‘African Women's Decade' and launched in Kenya in October, 2010;

MINDFUL of the general goal of the Decade, which is to cascade, in concrete terms, the execution of commitments on gender equality and women's empowerment from the grass-roots, national, regional to continental level;