The Hon. Minister of Gender and Children’s Affairs Madam Manty Tarawalli, the UN Women Country Representative to Sierra Leone, Madam Setcheme Mongbo and the Director of Gender Affairs, Mr. Charles Vandi are on a study tour in Senegal on the invitation of the Senegalese Government. Senegal has 43% women representation in Parliament and also in 2009 Senegal successful won $540m MCC Compact.

Like we are trying to do in Sierra Leone, Senegal developed a Gender Bill which was passed into law and which ensures more women political participation through a PR System.

Senegal also has a Gender Mainstreaming Directorate that sits within their Ministry of Gender equivalent. The Directorate ensures that Gender is mainstreamed across every sectoral policy, plans and legislation. Today, 70% of their laws have been reviewed to include the gender dimension. In Sierra Leone we have also developed a Gender Mainstreaming Unit which will later transform into a Directorate. The unit is designed to carry out similar outputs and outcomes as the Directorate in Senegal.

Furthermore, Senegal also has a multi-sectoral Parity Unit to ensure gender parity across various sectors. Rwanda has a Council to do the same. The reason for these multi-sectoral approaches is to ensure the relevant gravitas across sectors for successful outcomes. In Sierra Leone for similar reasons, we have proposed a multi-sectoral Gender Steering Committee (in the GEWE Bill) to do exactly the same thing.

For SGBV, Senegal has referral units where women to go to report violence (domestic violence and SGBV) and at these units, the women are then referred to other specialist institutions for support. This model has proved difficult to manage and so moving forward, the government is now developing One Stop Centres similar to the Sierra Leone model.

Senegal has National Economic Empowerment structures for women. These include National Projects to build sustainable economic opportunities in disadvantaged environments.

Hon. Manty Tarawalli visited a couple of these initiatives.