African Regional Young Leaders Summit On Gender 2020

Overview

In 2010, Man up Campaign convened the previous summit in South Africa; the 2020 Regional Gender Summit will be hosted by the Government of Uganda and organized by Education Forum Africa (EFA) and Youth Alive Uganda. The summit is a 4-days long program of dialogue, workshops, institutional visits and capacity building sessions bringing youth between the age of 18-35 years, from social-political movements, business start-ups, social enterprises, civil society, international organizations and public institutions.  It is aimed at engaging youth in tackling all 17 Sustainable Development Goals according to their communities’ needs through the gender lens SDG 5, discuss challenges they face and devise ways forward to address them.

The decade of action and delivery was launched by Heads of State and Government at the SDG Summit in September 2019 in order to step up progress towards the SDGs and put the world on track to realize their targets by 2030. The summit is a step that states and their partners can take toward achieving the SDGs especially when follow-up national an community engagment.

INTRODUCTION:

Gender equality is a fundamental development objective, and is essential to enabling women and men to participate equally in society and in the economy. The African continent has demonstrated commitment to promoting gender equality and the empowerment of women. Almost all countries have ratified the Convention on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against Women; more than half have ratified the African Union’s Protocol on the rights of Women in Africa. Other milestones include the African Union’s declaration of 2010–2020 as the African Women’s Decade.

Gender equality is more than a goal in itself. It is a precondition for meeting the challenge of reducing poverty, promoting sustainable development and building good governance” Kofi Annan – former United Nations Secretary General.

 SUMMIT OBJECTIVES

  • To explore the intersections of education, health, economic empowerment and gender-based violence among girls, boys, and youth with diverse gender identities.

  • Develop national, regional and global communities as agents of change

  • Develop evidence-based consensus on the actions needed and the ways of implementing them in specific national or regional contexts

  • Reducing excess female mortality: Africa is the only region in the world where the absolute number of “missing” women has actually increased over the last two decades, largely due to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, high rates of maternal deaths, and poor water, sanitation and health services.

  • Closing gaps in productivity and earnings: Women are more likely to work in less productive sectors, less profitable areas, in low-wage or unpaid family employment, or in the informal wage sector.

  • Shrinking differences in voice in the household and society: Many women in Sub-Saharan Africa have little degree of control over household decisions or about how their earnings are spent.

  • Demonstrate positive effects of gender balance and gender diversity in research and innovation process.

  • Demonstrate how integrating gender dimension in research and innovation content improves quality of results and outcomes

  • Promote gender aware solutions to societal problems, e.g. urban quality; human adaptation and climate change; food security; transport and mobility.

  • To fulfil the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals number 5 and 8 that is to say, Decent work and Economic Growth and Gender Equality respectively. 

DESCRIPTION:

The past 20 years have witnessed some progress for women in the world of work and in terms of gender equality in society. Today, more women than ever before are both educated and participating in the labor market, and there is greater awareness that gender equality is of paramount importance in efforts to reduce poverty and boost economic development. 

The adoption of the 2030 UN Agenda for Sustainable Development and the resolve of world leaders “to achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all women and men, and equal pay for work of equal value” (Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 8, target 8.5.) and “to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls” (SDG 5) by 2030 are proof of that awareness. Yet, despite the progress made thus far and the global commitments to secure further improvement, women’s prospects in the world of work are far from being equal to men.

The inter-linkages and integrated nature of the Sustainable Development Goals are of crucial importance in ensuring that the purpose of the new Agenda is realized. If we realize our ambitions across the full extent of the Agenda, the lives of all will be profoundly improved and our world will be transformed for the better.

METHODOLOGY:

Uganda, which will be hosting the 2020 Regional Gender Summit, had the honor to be home to the President of the UNGA who transmitted the outcome document of the United Nations Summit for the adoption of the post-2015 development agenda giving birth to the Sustainable Development Goals. The summit will bring youth in touch with their peers, researchers, entrepreneurs, influential speakers and development partners, scientists, policymakers, gender scholars and stakeholders.

The future of humanity and our planet lies in the hands of today's younger generation who will pass the torch to future generations to ensure that the journey is successful and its gains irreversible.

 

PARTICIPANTS:

The Summit aims at 400 young and innovative leaders between 18-35 years. Participants will be drawn from both urban and rural areas, civil societies, development partners, Governments and those from within and out of learning institutions.

National Delagation Structure Requested:

  • 4 mixed gender team of youth leaders
  • 1 national or local government official
  • 1 media personality or jounalist

We encourage each nation to sponsor a team to accelerate their SDG efforts. Gender the keystone SDG. The core mixed gender team of 4 youth leaders would create grass roots project that would facilitate equality, inclusion and opportunity as the foundation of ending gender-based violence in their communities.

Project can be organized as part of a government program or non profit programming, a social entrepenurship or entrepenurial project. They can be advocacy or develpment projects. The teams efforts will be elbible for seed grants, contributions in kind and prized depending on need, and stage of development, or to scale the impact of the project. The the young leaders will not only be develop capacity to have a good job but become potential job creators in the NGO, Social Entrepenurial and Entrepenurial Sectors.

There track wil not only include information on gender and capacity but they will also be provided with experitial learning with Man Up Campaigns GSMART  Gender: Sports, Music, Art Reflection and Technology engagment framework with sessions facilitated by G-SMART partners that facilitate development of personal narrative as a champion of gender equality, inclusion and opportunity creation. These experiential lessons will also help the participates develop their skills and capacity, voice and ablity to create value for themselves and their community. 

As voiced by youth of the region and studies it is important to have national or local government support. We request that nations not only send a team but also send a national or local government official to the summit. The track will be about facilitating gender policy that accelerate the SDGs and also to serve as a resource and advocate for the nations team but to help scale the efforts in the nation pre and post-summit by enhance or creating existing programs or even hosting a young leaders national summit. 

We request a media personality to attend the media and journalism track on solutions based journalism, and gender. To not only develop skill and capacity but to bring attention and skill to reporting on the issues, surviovors and resources for and champions of gender equality, inclusion and opportunity to create communities and cultures of peace.

 

THE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS RUN:

The power of sport to help make sustainable development a reality and in particular, the 2030 Agenda was explicitly recognized by a General resolution adopted at UN Headquarters on Monday, 4th December 2018. The resolution encourages UN Member States to emphasize and advance the use of sport as a vehicle to foster sustainable development and facilitate social inclusion, conflict prevention and peace building. It reiterates the UN’s call for States to leverage sport to achieve the sustainable development Goals, in collaboration with all the interested stakeholders, including the sports community, civil society, international organisations and businesses. As a pledge by the United Nations that “No one will be left behind” the summit will be concluded with this marathon with a main purpose of creating awareness towards the promotion and implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals.

 

OUTCOMES OF THE SUMMIT:

  • Our partnership will build a network of young champions and defenders of gender equality, gender inclusiveness, and opportunity, which provide a foundation for ending gender-based violence.

  • Policy recommendations to governments and promotion and the acceleration of the SDGs using youth and gender lens.

  • The people who attend will go back to their respective communities. Will gain insights into higher engagement of the whole youth population both young men and women to innovate and scale all sectors of an their country's social, economic and cultural capacity.

  • The Man Up Campaign tool engagement framework and narratives can help intimate, engage and organize action in a holistic but models for each individual, community and country.