Promoting Gender Equality within the Joint Africa-EU Strategy  

As a new paradigm in EU-Africa relations, the JAES claims to be people-centred. It therefore affords opportunity to ensure that its processes, objects and impacts address and reach both women and men in Africa and Europe, irrespective of age, race and social background. To ensure that the JAES contributes to this end, it is necessary to consider gender equality as a cross-cutting issue in all of the eight partnerships and priority actions of the JAES. However, since governance and the enforcement of human rights are core pillars of a functioning and inclusive society, gender aspects in this partnership require special attention.

Within Africa, the African Union (AU) decade of women (2010–2020) as articulated in the AU Gender Policy represents a welcome opportunity to set standards for a gender-just society. Within this context, it links to commitments to gender equality that member states of the EU and AU have made in frameworks such as the Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, the Beijing Platform for Action, as well as the Maputo Protocol and the Maputo Plan of Action. It is now crucial to ensure alignment, coherence and coordination of the JAES within existing frameworks and future policies, such as the Cotonou Partnership Agreement.