Govt to ensure women participation in progress
By Hina Kiyani

ISLAMABAD—The Government with the help of civil society organizations, is keen to empower women community by ensuring their active participation in country’s progress.
These views were expressed by Secretary Ministry of Women Development, Mahmood Salim Mahmood at the opening session of the workshop held for an interactive consultation on the implementation of ‘Convention on Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women’ (CEDAW).
Mahmood Saleem lauded CEDAW’s efforts in ensuring proper implementation of the honour killing laws and Women Protection Law.
Alice Shackelford, Country Programme Director, UNIFEM highlighting its role said that UNIFEM has played active role for implementation and monitoring of the CEDAW in terms of technical assistance and its implementation with civil society organizations.
She said UNIFEM’s work was to strengthen capacities and skills of gender advocates to promote implementation of gender sensitive laws and policies.
The two-day inter-ministerial training was aimed to evolve a detailed work plan for effective implementation of strategies to eliminate discrimination against women.
Senior officials of different ministries, includinglaw and justice, health, education, finance, planning,interior and labour and manpower in addition to representatives of the provincial government from related department also attended the workshop.
Maheen Gul, a legal expert briefed the participants for better understanding of the legal status of the Convention.
The initial, second and third reports, carrying the initiatives taken by CEDAW along with the help of other ministries to stop discrimination against women, were submitted to the UN Committee experts in 2005.
The two-day workshop was jointly organised by MoWD in collaboration with United Nations International Fund for Women Empowerment (UNIFEM).