10th Pre-Summit Consultative Meeting

10^th Pre-Summit Consultative Meeting

Accra, Ghana

23^rd - 24^th June 2007

In preparation for the 9^th ordinary session of the African Union (AU) in Accra, Ghana, Femmes Africa Solidarité (FAS) and its partner networks organized the 10^th AU Pre-Summit Consultative Meeting on 23^rd and 24^th June 2007. Because the African Union (AU) session was focused on the proposed integration of states under an ‘African Union Government', the key objective of the 10^th AU Pre-Summit Meeting was to ensure that women are included in the discussions and consultations for the proposed integration.

The AU Pre-Summit Consultative Meeting devised strategies to make women's rights and gender issues a priority in the constitution of the continental government. The result was the Accra Inputs to the Grand Debate on Union Government. This document includes twelve recommendations to ensure that gender parity and women's rights are seriously addressed in the AU consultations. In it, women's civil society networks urge the Assembly of Heads of State to include the gender parity principle in the Constitutive Act of the Union Government, and to make women and gender issues its first strategic area of focus.

Accra 2007

Mme Diop and Other Panel Discussion Participants

In addition, the Gender is My Agenda campaign included a resolution on the Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa (SDGEA), urging member states of the African Union to implement the SDGEA. The resolution also calls on member states to ratify the Protocol to the Charter on Human and People's Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa. This resolution built on the work of the 9^th AU Pre-Summit Consultative Meeting where civil society groups presented the Civil Society Shadow Report on the progress made in the implementation of SDGEA.