Programme Director
Representatives of various sectors
Representatives of the house of traditional leaders
Representatives of SALGA
Members of Chapter 9 Institutions
Development partners
Government Officials
Ladies and Gentlemen from the Gender Sector
I would like to take this opportunity to thank you most heartily for your presence this morning. I am particularly delighted that we have been able to successfully organise this meeting where the National Gender Machinery, National Children’s Rights Machinery and the National Disability Machinery are meeting for the very first time under one roof to discuss integration mechanisms amongst the three sectors.
We are also here to give and receive feedback amongst ourselves on the work of our sectors, in order to find synergies and give focused attention to cross-cutting work streams.
During Women’s Month in 2012, President Zuma articulated the mandate of the department: “The department was instituted to ensure the mainstreaming of gender, children’s rights and disability considerations into all programmes of government and other sectors. This will help government to respond to issues of these targeted groups in an integrated and coherent manner”.
We were thus charged with the responsibility of translating into reality the realisation of the rights of women, children and people with disabilities was placed firmly in this department. However, the point that must be made and understood clearly is that ours is not an implementing department. In discharging our mandate, we work with other government departments, provinces, municipalities, civil society and the private sector to ensure that mainstreaming actually happens. The role of the National Disability Machinery in this regard cannot be over-emphasised.
Over the past year, integration of the three sectors has been an area of focused attention in our department, because there are many cross-cutting challenges and other common factors that are experienced by the Women, Children and Disability sectors. This joint sector machinery is very critical for the achievement of our department’s strategic objectives. It was approved as part of our Annual Performance Plan as an institutional support and capacity development deliverable that must be implemented within the second and fourth quarters of the current fiscal year.
The purpose of this joint machinery therefore is to enable us to work collectively towards an integrated approach and systematic implementation of the National Gender Machinery (NGM), National Disability Rights Machinery (NDRM) and National Children’s Rights (NCRM) strategic agenda. As a department, we cannot afford to be complacent and forget the huge responsibility we are carrying on our shoulders - the responsibility to promote, facilitate and monitor the realization of the rights and dignity of all women, children and people with disabilities, in order to enable them to reach their full potential in an inclusive and equitable society.
This responsibility - if carried out with distinction and excellence - will also enable public and private sector institutions to progressively deliver on the realization of these rights by establishing institutional mechanisms, and facilitating institutional support and training.
We must always remain mindful that whatever we are doing should trickle down to private and public institutions where the citizens of this country are expected to be employed and earn a livelihood. In fact, that lies at the core of our work of ensuring the realisation of the rights of vulnerable groups. By realisation of the rights, we actually mean that in the end, women and people with disabilities should be able to access equal economic opportunities in the private and public sectors, as well as be able to own and run their own businesses.
In addition, we also need this integrated approach for institutional support and capacity building for the realisation of rights of women, children and people with disabilities into government policy and programmes, civil society and the private sector including providing equal access and opportunities for people with disabilities. The National Policy Framework of the year 2000 provided for the establishment of the National Gender Machinery as a network of coordinated structures within government and broader civil society.
This coordination is aimed at cooperative facilitation of political, social and economic transformation towards systemic implementation and promotion of equality between women and men. There have been a number of advancements towards gender equality attributable to the current National Gender Machinery model. One of the significant cornerstones that we have achieved is the development and finalisation of the Women Empowerment and Gender Equality Bill. The imminent adoption of this Bill will bring about the realisation of women’s empowerment in all spheres of our society.
The ultimate goal is to achieve gender equality and ensure that the institutional mechanisms at all levels and in all spheres of governance and society at large are strengthened. Great strides, in varying degrees, have been achieved by women in politics, in business, in entertainment even in the judiciary. However we now need to ensure that the same progress is realised in all aspects of society. The WEGE Bill will also assist to enforce compliance in both Government and the private sector.
Ladies and gentlemen, there are configurations that the disability sector requires to ensure representation and a collective voice of all people with disabilities and that their interests are represented in all structures mandated with ensuring progressive realisation of the rights of people with disabilities. We need effective coordination between disability organisations and other civil society organisations; coordination between disability structures and spheres of government and intra-institutional cooperation within disability organisations themselves.
The machinery should also interface with other sectors to support priorities regarding HR matters, service delivery challenges for people with disabilities, and most importantly, universal access issues. In the past twelve months alone, we have had many interactions and consultations with the disability sector, and common recommendations that came out of those consultations were that:
- We must outline disability and gender priorities for each department with timeframes and signing of memorandum of understanding (MOUs) to hold departments accountable.
- We must develop disability indicators that will be integrated into the government-wide Monitoring and Evaluation for performance monitoring.
- We must finalise the review of National Disability legislation.
- We must facilitate strategic planning at national, provincial and district levels integrate disability, and also
- Performance Agreements of Senior Managers should reflect performance indicators on disability inclusion & reporting.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Department has developed a draft Child Rights Monitoring & Evaluation Strategic Framework. This year is an important year for children and the children’s rights sector. We are preparing our Fourth Periodic Report and two other Optional Protocols to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child. Consultations have been completed on the Discussion Document and we’ll share with the sector information in this regard.
Our original strategic objective is to facilitate the domestication of the Convention on the Rights of Children, the Millennium Development Goals and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child and the National Plan of Action on Children as well as to provide a platform for multi-stakeholder engagement across disciplines and sectors on the national Children’s agenda.
Furthermore, the United Nations Children’s Rights Convention in its section on General Measures, requires all countries who signed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) to develop and set in place mechanisms to periodically review a National Plan of Action for Children. The National Action Plan on Children is an integration of all the policies and plans developed by government departments and non-governmental organisations to promote the well-being of children.
Currently, there are also consultations happening on the draft NPAC document in all provinces together with the UNCRC discussion document. These will be shared and consulted further with the sector in order to finalise it before presenting the final draft to the DG Clusters and to Cabinet for approval. We have come a long way since the establishment of the National Children Machinery and since the establishment of offices on the rights of children in the Presidency and Premier’s offices in Provinces.
Five years later, having accumulated so much experience, we must pose this fundamental question to ourselves: What are the things that we must do to strengthen the National Children Machinery so that it can respond better and more effectively to our collective mandate? The whole government machinery is established to deliver services to children. All of us in one way or the other are delivering a service to children. Collectively, we must continue to ensure effective mainstreaming of children’s issues as part of promoting children’s rights and responsibilities across government programmes.
I am confident that we will emerge from this interaction having developed synergies in our three sectors, so that we can be able to move towards a phase of complete integration. I look forward to fruitful deliberations over these three days.
I thank you.
