DAC GUIDING PRINCIPLES FOR AID EFFECTIVENESS, GENDER EQUALITY AND WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT

Recent reforms of aid delivery, most notably the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness (2005), have provided new opportunities and mechanisms to translate donor and government commitments into improved practice, results and impacts. Achieving internationally agreed development goals will however not be possible without progress on gender equality and women’s empowerment. At the same time, implementing the Paris Declaration’s overarching partnership commitments is a powerful way of accelerating progress on Millennium Development Goal 3: gender equality and women’s empowerment. The Paris Declaration and the Accra Agenda for Action (2008) provide the frameworks and good practice principles for fostering gender equality as a priority development issue. These DAC Guiding Principles for Aid Effectiveness, Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (endorsed in December 2008) suggest approaches and entry points for policy advisors and programme managers in both donor and partner countries to increase the prospects for achieving development results and impacts through work on gender equality and women’s empowerment.