July 28, 2021 (NAIROBI, Kenya): The Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) today convened the Ministerial meeting for the Ministers responsible for Land and Ministers responsible for Gender/Women Affairs in the IGAD Member States in Nairobi. The meeting adopted the IGAD Regional Women’s Land Rights Agenda which is aimed at supporting the implementation of the AU Declaration on Land Issues and Challenges in Africa toward The Africa We Want and Leaving No One Behind.

The Regional Women’s Land Rights Agenda is a framework document that will enable IGAD Secretariat provide the necessary support to its Member States in implementing gender and land projects for the next 10 years.

IGAD Executive Secretary, Dr Workneh Gebeyehu, in his opening remarks noted that IGAD was desirous for all Member States to institute policies that seek to transform the existing distribution of resources and responsibilities in order to establish a more equitable relationship between women and men. “For our region to attain the peace, prosperity and integration that we keenly aspire to, we must therefore systematically address the deficiencies in our policies and practices in land governance”, he remarked.

Dr Workneh called on the Ministers to support the implementation of the Regional Women’s Land Rights Agenda “through national budget and resource allocation”.

The Ministerial meeting was preceded by a Directors’ level meeting on July 26 and 27. To move the gender equality on land forward from a regional perspective, the Directors’ meeting drew common threads from the National Women’s Land Rights Agenda for the Member States and the recommendations from the IGAD Regional Women’s Land Rights Conference held on June 28-30 this year into the IGAD Region Women’s Land Rights Agenda.

The first ever Regional Women’s Land Rights Conference brought to bear the transnational and intergenerational connectedness of women’s rights to land. Statements of commitment were received from the highest representatives of Government in the Ministries responsible for Lands and the Ministries responsible for Gender/Women Affairs of each of the IGAD Member States. The Outcome Document of the Regional Women’s Land Rights Conference was also endorsed at the Ministerial meeting of today.

The IGAD Land Governance Programme is an initiative of IGAD and is supported by among others the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and the Embassy of Sweden in Addis Ababa.

Communiqué from the ministerial meeting and the IGAD Regional Women’s Land Rights Agenda are here attached.

Attachments:

COMMUNIQUE of the IGAD Regional Women\'s Land Rights Agenda	[ ]	265 kB	2021-07-29 14:46
IGAD Women\'s Land Rights Agenda (2021-2031)	[ ]	919 kB	2021-07-29 14:47

July 27, 2021 (NAIROBI, Kenya): The Director of Agriculture and Environment of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), Mr. Mohamed Moussa, yesterday opened the meeting of the Directors responsible for Lands and Directors responsible for Gender/Women Affairs in the IGAD Member States in preparation for the Ministerial level meeting to be held tomorrow July 28.

The Main objective of the meeting was to review the IGAD Regional Women’s Land rights Agenda and the IGAD Regional Conference Outcome document in preparation of the Ministerial Meeting on 28th July 2021.

“We have experienced and learned the power of collaboration as the Ministries of Gender/Women Affairs supported the Ministry of Lands in mainstreaming gender. There is power and value in inter-ministerial collaboration”, the Director said in his opening remarks.

“We pledge our continued commitment to supporting our Member States through research, capacity development, policy development and implementation as well as knowledge management. We are further committed to mobilizing resources for and with our Member States to ensure that the commitments on gender equality are made are implemented and delivered at scale” he continued.

The Meeting of Directors responsible for Lands and Directors responsible for Gender brought reviewed and approved the Regional Women’s Land Rights Agenda as well as the IGAD Regional Women’s Land Rights Conference Outcome Document, with the aim of preparing for the meeting of the Ministers to endorse the IGAD Region Women’s Land Rights Agenda. Furthermore, this was the initial meeting in which the Directors responsible for Land and the Directors responsible for Gender form the IGAD Member States interface and discussed matters of mutual interest in as far as implementing a common agenda on gender and land is concerned. These discussions informed further programing of the regional women’s land rights agenda.

The IGAD Region on 28 – 30th June 2021 held its first ever Regional Women’s Land Rights Conference that brought to bear the transnational and intergenerational connectedness of women’s rights to land. Statements of commitment were received from the Highest representatives of Government in the Ministries responsible for Lands and the Ministries responsible for Gender/Women Affairs of each of the IGAD Member States. The Planning and organizing of this regional conference was done with the IGAD Directors of Lands Platform being at the core supported by the Gender Focal Point Persons in the Ministries.

The IGAD Land Governance Programme launched in 2015 is aimed at helping IGAD and its Member States to address the various land policy and governance issues faced by countries in the region. The Land Governance programme is currently implementing its 10-year business plan for period 2020-2030 with 4 strategic objectives:

• Land administration in IGAD region is more efficient, harmonized and gender inclusive;
• Enable sustainable development through strategic gender-sensitive and conflict-sensitive approach to land use and management;
• Increased Member States capacity to leverage land (rural, peri-urban, and urban) for economic transformation;
• Reduced barriers and enhance protection of women’s rights to land in the public and private sphere.

July 16, 2021 (MOMBASA, Kenya): The Executive Secretary of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD). Dr Workneh Gebeyehu, yesterday signed the grant document for a 5 million USD project aimed at promoting Blue Economy with funding from Sweden.

The project will be implemented within three years in four IGAD coastal member countries:
Djibouti, Kenya, Somalia and Sudan.
The main objectives of the project are to:

• improve the governance of the Blue Economy in the IGAD region;
• conduct marine biodiversity situation analyses;
• conduct marine biodiversity situation analyses;
• make inventory of chemical and plastic pollutants from source to sea;
• develop and apply tools to monitor; and
• mitigate chemical and plastic pollutions in the concerned coastal member countries.

The Executive Secretary highlighted the major threats to IGAD region marine biodiversity. “Global warming at larger scale is threatening many species of marine animals that cannot cope with higher temperatures”, he said. “Overfishing is another serious problem, especially the Illegal, Unregulated and Unreported (IUU) fishing. Many pesticides and nutrients used in agriculture end up in the coastal waters and have negative effects on marine life,” Dr Workneh continued. He stressed that these threats are more of a regional nature, thus the need for collective efforts through regional cooperation. He however noted that “reversing the under usage of the potential of Blue Economy in the IGAD region will greatly contribute to food security and environment protection”. The Executive Secretary also thanked the government of Sweden and its agency for development cooperation (Sida) for the support provided.

“IGAD member states are rich in biodiversity, both on land and sea, but unfortunately it is being threatened. Sweden is therefore very pleased to support this important IGAD initiative for a sustainable blue economy and sustainable biodiversity in the region,” says Ms. Ulla Andrén, Head of Swedish Regional Development Cooperation for Africa.

It is also to be noted that the project will empower women groups to protect the environment and diversify their livelihoods by implementing best practices in selected coastal sites affected by plastic pollution.

Overall, the major expected outcomes of the project are:

• to contribute to the strengthening of the capacity of IGAD member countries by structuring and mainstreaming the Blue Economy at both national and regional levels while increasing cooperation and regional integration; and
• to strengthen support to the concerned member countries to develop their own national Blue Economy strategies.

Background

A key element in the blue economy approach is to recognise the value of oceans, lakes and other water bodies in the national economic and social development context, which is only achieved if the role of each contributing sector is properly valued and recognised.

IGAD countries have a great blue economy potential that is overall under used. Traditional sectors such as fisheries, tourism, mineral extraction, and marine and river transport are showing evidence of significant development capacities while emerging sectors such as aquaculture, marine biotechnology and bioprospecting, desalinisation and renewable energy are currently lacking attention and request substantial investments.

July 6, 2021 (Lobonok, South Sudan): Following the implementation of the Ecosfish project financed by the 11th EDF Cross-Regional Initiative, IGAD held a new workshop in South Sudan on 6 and 7 July 2021 at Lobonok Resort, South Sudan.

The workshop was attended by several high level officials from the country, IGAD representatives, led by the Head of Mission in South Sudan and the Ecosfish Programm Manager as well as stakeholders from the fisheries sector.

In his opening remark, Dr Aleu Garang, IGAD Head of Mission in South Sudan, said “The fisheries sector in IGAD member countries has been recognized as one of the important growth sectors in the region. The fishery sector can contribute to accelerated economic growth and development, income generation, nutrition, employment and export earnings and overall food security. The focus should be on increased production and value addition since fish has high domestic market demand, can contribute to improved domestic nutrition, offer good trade opportunities at the global, regional and intra-regional levels; and have potential to foster backward and forward linkages to support efficient value addition”. The second opening remark was made by Honorable Dr, Makwei Malual Kaang (Undersecretary Ministry of Livestock and Fisheries, South Sudan). He clearly mentioned the importance of fish for the local communities food and nutrition security. He appreciated IGAD for developing a project to support the BAS Basin fishing communities.

This workshop lasted two days, the first day of which was devoted to presentations of the project to stakeholders, the baseline study report of the Baro Akobo Sobat (BAS) Basin and presentation of the draft Integrated Fisheries Management Plan (IFMP). Following each presentation there were interesting discussions. On the second day there was a presentation on the establishment of Bilateral Technical Advisory Forum formation for the basin and there were group discussions on mapping stakeholders and identifying priority interventions. During the discussion on the IGAD/ECOFISH Project results and activities explanations for the comments and questions were given by Dr. Wassie Anteneh (Regional Fisheries Management Expert at IGAD) and Dr. Eshete Dejen (the Project Coordinator at IGAD). There was also an interesting field visit to a very big fish shopping center and the river, White Nile. There were very constructive discussions on the IFMP for the transboundary BAS Basin, shared between Ethiopia and South Sudan.

In addition to the Adoption of the draft Baro-Akobo-Sobat Basin (Ethiopia-South Sudan) Fisheries Integrated Management Plan (IFMP) and Consultative Meeting on Establishment of Bilateral Technical Fisheries Advisory Forum was presented and the different views of the participants regarding the formation of this Bilateral (Ethiopia and South Sudan) Technical Fisheries Advisory Committee were forwarded and discussed. The forum formation was strongly recommended by all participants.

Background

The overall objective of the project is to develop gender-responsive and climate-smart sustainable utilization of fisheries resources, and foster use of fisheries for building of resilience and bolstering of food and nutrition security and local economies especially for the fishing and “Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASALs)” communities in the two basins (BAS and Omo-Turkana Basins). This will include provision of support to the fishing communities and fisheries managers in each of two basins to facilitate their active participation and engagement in fisheries management.

The specific objective is to support sustainable management and development of fisheries in order to contribute to poverty alleviation, food and nutrition security while addressing climate change resilience and enhancing fish biodiversity conservation. This project will last for 3 years and activities that will allow the implementation of this project are planned.

July 7, 2021 (DJIBOUTI, Djibouti): IGAD with the financial and technical support of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is developing a Regional Post-harvest Loss Reduction Strategy.

The objective of the Regional Strategy is to support IGAD member states improve food security through implementing IGAD level harmonized PHL reduction interventions in line with the Malabo Declaration on post-harvest loss reduction and SDG 12.3 goal on food loss and waste reduction targets.

The meeting was attended by experts from member states, FAO and IGAD Secretariat as well as other relevant experts in the region. It was agreed that the validation of the Strategy will be done in July once the comments from the virtual meeting are incorporated and shared with member states. It will be tabled to the Ministers of Agriculture Meeting scheduled for 5 August 2021 for their consideration and approval.