Morocco has made gender equality a major focus of the national human rights strategy, said Wednesday in Marrakech, the Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador of the European Union to Morocco, Patricia Pilar Llombart Cussac .
Speaker at the regional conference dedicated to Gender-Responsive Budgeting, organized by the Ministry of Economy and Finance in partnership with UN-Women, the French Development Agency (AFD) and the European Union (EU), under the theme “Gender-Responsive Budgeting: Public Finance as a Driver of Change for Equality”, Mrs. Pilar Llombart Cussac quoted the speech of HM King Mohammed VI on the occasion of the 23rd anniversary of the Throne Day, which has made gender equality an important lever for the achievement of human, sustainable and inclusive development in the Kingdom, affirming that gender equality constitutes a “shared value and occupies a first place among the priorities listed in the Morocco/European Union Joint Declaration of June 2019″.
The European diplomat noted, in a speech by videoconference, that gender-responsive budgeting plays a central role in ensuring the effectiveness of women’s rights and freedoms, in particular those relating to economic empowerment, and the implementation of various programs and projects.
Affirming that the European Union considers gender equality as “a principle, a value and a mission for an inclusive and prosperous society”, Ms Pilar Llombart Cussac indicated that this equality is also “an objective of our foreign politic. »
The European diplomat also stressed that the gender approach and the effectiveness of rights “would change the reality of women’s lives”, adding that efforts must focus on valuing achievements and identifying the best models of sensitive budgeting. to gender.
In this sense, she hailed the achievements of the Center of Excellence for Gender-Responsive Budgeting (CE-BSG) under the Ministry of Economy and Finance, “whose experience is now recognized at national and international “.
Organized over two days, this meeting is part of the preparation for the General Assemblies of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) next October.
This meeting, which is attended by ministers, senior public administration officials, organizations and international experts, aims to highlight the different aspects of gender-responsive budgeting, which represents an essential mechanism for guaranteeing the equity, efficiency and harmony of public policies, and to integrate this approach into the budget preparation and execution process as an integral part of the achievements and reforms undertaken by the Kingdom in recent years.