(8 November 2012) The Forty-eighth Meeting of the Presiding Officers of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean ended today at the headquarters of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) in Santiago, Chile, as the government representatives in attendance committed to tackling the new challenges of incorporating the gender approach in the region's policymaking spheres.
The meeting, which opened on Wednesday 7 November, analysed experiences of mainstreaming the gender approach in countries' public policies and examined preparations under way for the twelfth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, which will take place in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, from 14 to 18 October 2013.
Ministers, Deputy Ministers and others responsible for gender equality issues were informed about progress in the position paper to be presented next year in the Dominican Republic, which links economic empowerment, gender equality and the use of information and communications technologies (ICTs) with the three forms of women's autonomy: physical, economic and decision-making.
The key theme of the twelfth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, which is a subsidiary body of ECLAC that periodically gathers together the region's governments to analyse compliance with regional and international agreements on gender equality, is precisely the economic empowerment of women and information and communications technologies (ICTs) within the framework of the information society.
During the meeting of the Presiding Officers, chaired by Brazil, the government representatives welcomed the ECLAC initiative to create two new subsidiary bodies: the Conference on Science, Innovation and Information and Communications Technologies and the Regional Conference on Population and Development of Latin America and the Caribbean, whose thematic agendas were shared by the Presiding Officers.
In this regard, it was agreed to promote the participation of the region's mechanisms for the advancement of women among the government delegations attending these conferences, so as to ensure that the gender approach is included in the formulation of all public policies.
Similarly, it was decided that agencies responsible for science and ICT policy should integrate the gender perspective in sectoral policies and send official delegations to the twelfth session of the Regional Conference.
The senior officials also agreed on the need to link the regional gender equality agenda with the United Nations post-2015 development agenda, looking ahead also to the review that will be carried out in application of the Platform for Action of the Fourth World Conference on Women (Beijing+20) and the Cairo Programme of Action on Population and Development (Cairo+20).
In terms of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), held in June 2012 in Brazil, Ministers congratulated the country's Government for acting as host and for its valuable contribution in drafting the final document.
In the months leading up to the twelfth session of the Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, countries will discuss the draft of the Santo Domingo Consensus, which is the responsibility of the Government of the Dominican Republic, and which will be signed at the session.
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