SADC GOVERNMENTS URGED TO BE ON TRACK TOWARDS FULFIILING MDGS

By Fazilla Tembo, Ulemu Teputepu & Susan Mwape

Southern Africa Social Forum (SASF) participants have agreed that citizens and Civil Society Organizations should stand up and join hands to ensure their respective governments in SADC are on track towards the fulfilling of Millennium Development Goals.
During the social march that marked the end of 2006 SASF, carrying colorful banners and t-shirts of all colors and different messages. Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, South Africa, Zambia and Malawi all walked from Civil Stadium to the City Hall about five kilometers.
According to a communiqué presented at the SASF on Sunday at Civil Stadium in Lilongwe, SADC countries should commit themselves to honor their commitments from then Abuja Declaration on Health and the Mug’s.
After the participants marched on the lasts day of the forum in solidarity speeches after the March country representatives called for an end to neo-liberalism and imperialism, participants observed a moment of silence of for all the late brothers and sisters that had died in the struggle against negative forces that had not been of their own making.
Participants of SASF expressed the need for government with free media and access to information, thy said that they were tired with dictatorship cover ups, they called for quick implementation of land within the forum saying, they should talk less and act more.
SADC governments must design policies and set aside adequate resources to achieve the goals, it said.
It said governments in the region should ensure that citizens particularly those in rural areas are consulted widely to ensure that national development policies on health reflect the needs and concerns.
“Governments should take the responsibility to educate, sensitize citizens on their health rights and that information should be disseminated in vernacular language,” reads the communiqué.
It further said they should prioritize access to treatment like having health facilities near the communities and essential drugs like Anti retroviral (ARV’s), malaria drugs, tuberculosis.
The communiqué added that governments should recognize that women are critical to fighting poverty and that no poverty eradication programme or initiative can succeed without centralizing women’s human rights and gender equality issues.
Current international policies rob women of livelihoods, health care and other economic rights.
On a broader level it said international and national policies are urged to consider poverty, privilege and discrimination as inter-related and therefore feminization of poverty is a reality that needs to be addressed by collective effort.
“We call upon governments to be more transparent, participatory and accountable in producing national policies and strategies,” it added.
SADC governments should ensure that whatever international obligations they commit are in line with promoting pro-poor development policies and in particular ensure that women’s livelihoods are not adversely affected, it observed.
On social level, they appealed to religious leaders to take greater responsibility in sensitizing communities on gender equity issues and protection of women’s human rights.
It further called upon governments to acknowledge the critical role youth play in decision-making processes and as such ensure that their voices are heard in national planning processes.
However participants endorsed the Global Call to Action against Poverty Campaign’s (GCAP) calls for trade justice, more and better aid and debt cancellation as a concrete ways for world leaders to eradicate poverty by 2015.
They noted that eradication of poverty cannot succeed without equality and justice for women and therefore recommended gender equality issues to be at the heart of addressing the inequalities of trade, debt and aid within the global policy framework.