A three day workshop for Government officials on Gender Transformative Institutional Capacity Development (ICD) Orientation Workshop was opened today in Nadi.
While opening the discussions, Minister for Women, Children and Poverty Alleviation Mereseini Vuniwaqa said the ICD was a whole of Government initiative with an emphasis on strengthening of technical knowledge, skill and competence.
“The overall goal is to create an enabling environment to ensure integration of all women and girls’ needs, interests, concerns, contributions and perspectives into policies, strategies, programs and budgets across government agencies,” she said.
“The ICD is led by the Ministry of Women, Children and Poverty Alleviation in close partnership with the Ministry of Economy.
“It is important to emphasize that the ICD is premised on a gender transformative capacity development approach which examines and tackles the social norms, attitudes and systems that are often the root causes of gender inequality in our society.
“Gender equality is fundamentally a question of power, men over women. Only when we see women and girls’ rights as our common objective, a route to transformative change that benefits everyone, we will begin to shift the balance.”
