Activities of the Regional Commissions

ECLAC prepares for the revision process for international instruments for the advancement of women

ECLAC’s region has now entered an intense preparation process for the special session of the General Assembly on "Women 2000: Gender Equality, Development and Peace for the Twenty-first Century", and the Eighth Session of the Regional Conference on Women, to be held in Lima, Peru on 8-10 February 2000.

Throughout October and November 1999, four important meetings have been carried out in Latin America and the Caribbean to support national governments in their own preparations for these conferences. ECLAC will use these meetings to gather substantive contributions for the Regional Conference, which will also function as the regional preparatory meeting for the special session of the General Assembly.

For example, in the Eighth Meeting of Specialised Agencies and Other Bodies of the United Nations System on the Advancement of Women in Latin America and the Caribbean that met on 8-9 November in Santiago, the Presiding Officers before the Regional Conference revised the relevant preparatory activities of regional governments, paying particular attention to identifying obstacles in the fulfillment of international commitments and putting emphasis on achievements. The conclusions, as well as those that emerge from sub-regional meetings, will orient proposals for future action.

ECLAC, in its capacity as the technical Secretariat of the Regional conference, is consistently working to strengthen the capacity of governments to implement regional and world agreements that deal with gender equity and the advancement of women. It also coordinates efforts with other organizations of the United Nations system that are oriented toward the co-operation of civil associations and women’s organisations in their fight for the respect of women’s human rights.

New elements in ECLAC’s technical cooperation programme

Over the last few years, ECLAC has introduced new elements into its Technical Cooperation Programme aimed at establishing a functional partnership with both its member countries (counterparts such as governments, civil society, and academics) and international bi- and multilateral cooperation agencies, including the organisations of the United Nations system (the traditional donors).

The primary objective of this exercise is to enhance the Commission’s work with its member countries, taking into consideration changes in recourses made available for technical cooperation. Today, donors can turn (at least partially) into beneficiaries, and vice-versa, beneficiaries can pay for services rendered, becoming donors of sort. One goal is to achieve greater coherence of ECLAC’s regular Work Programme and the extra-budgetary Technical Cooperation Programme, and the improved efficiency and productivity that this would entail.

ECLAC has always emphasised that staff research is strongly enriched by technical cooperation efforts for member countries. As a consequence, ECLAC has established specific links with bi- and multilateral donors, with other regional organisations, with the Governments of the region that have internally-generated resources for cooperation activities, and with a variety of non-governmental actors of the civil society. The links are a series of two-way streets, which allow for an exchange of resources, substantive technical outputs and services that benefits all concerned.

This expanded framework has created a dynamic and fluid system, forcing ECLAC to upgrade its capability to manage this important process. Increasingly, member countries use ECLAC’s ability to undertake multi-sectoral comparative research, to adapt the results to the specific national circumstances, and to provide technical advise in situ, and they are willing to contribute financially to this effort

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ECLAC Support for the SIDS Programme of Action (POA)

ECLAC convened the first of a series of inter-agency meetings aimed at convening a regional technical and ministerial meeting to discuss the status of the POA in the Caribbean. As a result of this initiative, in November, 1997, ECLAC, with the support of a number of agencies, convened the region’s first and, to date, the only ministerial meeting, hosted in Barbados, to address, inter alia, the status of implementation of the POA, the level of political commitment to the process and the way forward. This also marked the beginnings of the rather loose, informal grouping of Agencies now known as "the Inter-Agency Collaborative Group (IACG)", which has since become one of the most important vehicles for the implementation of activities under the POA.

In the absence of information on the status of implementation of the POA at either the national or regional levels, ECLAC, with the aid of a questionnaire and staff who travelled to member States, produced a publication entitled, "Implementation of the SIDS POA-A Caribbean Perspective". This publication covered 15 countries, as well as the activities of relevant regional and non-regional agencies. It remains the only document that summarizes the experience of implementation of the SIDS POA, in individual countries of the Caribbean and in the region as a whole.

The ministerial meeting was attended by 18 Caribbean countries; three observers, namely, Canada, the Netherlands and the United States of America, 11 United Nations Agencies and 20 other organisations, including NGOs. The meeting confirmed the region’s lack of a strategy to coordinate, implement or report on activities under the POA. Nor were resources available for these purposes. It also became clear that, while there were several sustainable development initiatives underway in the region, these fell within the framework of the POA, not by design, but by default, given its broad formulations.

The Ministerial Meeting also made a number of requests which continue to influence the evolution of the structures that finally emerged for the coordination of implementation of activities under the POA. Firstly, it requested ECLAC and the CARICOM Secretariat to continue to act as the Joint Interim Secretariat for the Barbados POA. This request had been made since 1995, with ECLAC responsible for operational and substantive issues and CARICOM responsible for the political outreach required. Secondly, the Meeting requested its Bureau, now referred to as "the SIDS Bureau", to maintain oversight of all SIDS-related activities, with the secretariat acting as secretariat to the Bureau. Thirdly, agencies and organizations were requested to play key roles in the implementation of activities for which they were functionally responsible.

This concept of grouping activities by priority area of the POA, to be supported by agencies responsible for implementation evolved into the region’s Joint Work Programme (JWP) which comprised 130 concrete activities committed to by 24 Agencies, the majority of which were members of the IACG. The ECLAC-sponsored approach also had the merit of introducing order and structure into the process, in addition to providing a valuable tool with which to monitor and report on progress.

In 1998, the secretariat convened four meetings of the SIDS Bureau and the IACG, either jointly or separately. Documents were prepared and disseminated by ECLAC as the region prepared for the SIDS Donors’ Meeting organized by the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat in collaboration with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in February, 1999; CSD-7, in April, 1999 and the Special Session in September, 1999. In November 1998, ECLAC prepared and circulated across the Caribbean, a "Report on the state of implementation in the Caribbean of the Programme of Action for Small Island Developing States". This document was at the centre of a regional meeting convened by ECLAC to generate consensus on a Caribbean position on the implementation of the POA as input into CSD-7 and the overall process of preparation for the Special Session. The document was ratified by consensus.

In addition to the activities conducted within the region as outlined above, in an effort to ensure even greater cohesion through the effective flow of information, ECLAC has held briefing sessions with Caribbean representatives in Brussels, New York and Washington. More recently, in the context of the need identified by the donor community at the Donors’ Meeting last February, ECLAC, with the permission of member States, has embarked on the process of consolidating into regional projects, a series of overlapping project proposals originally presented in the form of national submissions.