ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Ahsan Iqbal has said women play a vital role in the development of any country and the development processes remained slow in the countries where women were not given equal opportunities.
The minister made these remarks while speaking at the 19th Inter-Provincial Ministerial Group (IPMG) meeting organised by the National Commission on the Status of Women (NCSW) in collaboration with UN Women, and the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (INL) of the US Department of State on Thursday.
Speaking on the occasion, the minister said Islam has given equal rights to women but unfortunately, these rights were misinterpreted.
The minister further added that the Planning Commission has established a gender unit in the ministry in which all development projects would be planned according to principles of gender responsiveness so that the projects should not be approved without ensuring the interests of the women.
According to the minister, in Vision 2025 several projects were added in the vision to empower women. Similarly, in recent floods several initiatives were taken during recovery of the floods, the minister added. The minister also assured the NCSW to entertain their recommendations in order to implement.
The objective of the 19th IPMG meeting was to understand the data architecture at the national and provincial levels and finalise the data collection mechanisms for the National Gender Data Portal (NGDP).
While welcoming the participants, Chairperson NCSW Nilofar Bakhtiar said, “The Global Gender Gap Report states Pakistan has closed the gender gap by 56.4 per cent but still ranks us at second lowest from the bottom. It is important to know our ground reality to form law, legislation, and quotas to bring change.”
The NGDP was developed in 2021 to collect high-quality data and evidence on gender statistics from across Pakistan. The Country Representative, UN Women Pakistan Country Office, Sharmeela Rassool emphasized the importance of credible data for the development of the country and for gender equality and said, “IPMG is an innovative platform for identifying solutions that are tailor made for Pakistan. The National Gender Data Portal is one such example of such solutions. Data is important as it helps in identifying gap in policy along with helping officials to make informed decisions.”
The IPMG was established in 2009 to enhance inter-provincial coordination on gender equality and women’s empowerment in Pakistan. Eighteen meetings have been conducted so far, to facilitate the exchange of experiences and insights between national and provincial women’s machinery.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022
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