Official Development Assistance (ODA)
JAPAN's Initiative on WID
JAPAN's Initiative on WID
Basic Concepts and Ideas
Half of the world's population are women.
To achieve balanced, sustainable economic and social development, it is essential that women participate in economic and social development on equal terms with men and thus fully benefit from this process.
The primary responsibility for achieving the gender equality necessary to participate in and benefit from development rests with the developing country itself. However, the developed country can assist the self-efforts of the developing countries in this respect through development cooperation that integrates gender considerations. Such development assistance can contribute to the achievement of balanced sustainable development and will also facilitate the empowerment of women and the closing of gender disparity in the developing countries.
Japan's Official Development Assistance Charter stipulates that "full consideration will be given to the active participation of women in development and to the securing of benefits for women from development" as necessary measures for the effective implementation of Official Development Assistance.
Based on this policy, and bearing in mind the outcome of the International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo and the World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen, Japan intends to implement those projects that are beneficial to local women, and to make further efforts to incorporate such gender concerns in all ODA projects at every stage of the project cycle, including its formulation, implementation, and evaluation. Throughout the process, it will actively seek cooperation from other donors, international organizations, and NGOs, and will make efforts to enhance the capacity of those involved with aid in this area, including NGO's.
Three Priority Areas of Cooperation : Education, Health, and Economic and Social Participation
When Japan extends ODA, it gives consideration to achieving women's empowerment and gender equality. Such considerations encompass all stages of women's lives, including schooling, work, giving birth, as well as economic and social participation.
Special attention will be paid to the THREE PRIORITY AREAS: EDUCATION, HEALTH, and ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL PARTICIPATION. These three areas are closely interconnected. Bearing in mind such interconnections, Japan promotes this WID initiative through a comprehensive approach.
- EDUCATION
Education is a major tool for human resource development and an indispensable means for the country's economic and social development. For an individual, it is the key to economic and social participation.
Gender disparity in education, and primary education in particular, adversely affects the economic and social life of a country. It is important to fully guarantee educational opportunities for girls and to rectify the gender disparity in education. Efforts are needed to reduce drop-outs as well as to increase school enrollment.
- HEALTH
One must be healthy both in mind and body to fully participate in economic and social activities. Moreover, sound human development requires a minimum level of medical and health services, sanitation, and nutrition for both men and women.
When extending aid in this field, special attention must be paid to women's prenatal and maternal health care, since women are especially vulnerable in this field.
In a social context whereby women's primary role is seen as bearing children, the recurring cycle of pregnancy, birth and child rearing makes it nearly impossible for women to participate in development and thus derive benefit from this process. It is necessary to provide reproductive health care and ensure reproductive rights for women in order to prevent unwanted cases of pregnancy and birth through family planning, and thus to enable parents to plan for pregnancy, childbirth and child rearing.
- ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL PARTICIPATION
To make the empowerment of women a reality, it is imperative to enable women to realize their full potential and thus to become active participants in the economy and society, and thereby to indirectly assist in their efforts toward independence.
To achieve this, women need to develop necessary skills in areas where the economy demands thorough job skills training. And ensuring their access to financial facilities, through proper schemes for the assistance of micro-enterprises in which women are often involved, is both useful and necessary. Where women are expected to perform specific work such as fetching water for the family, such labor burden must to be lessened to give women the time and extra energy for economic and social participation.
We also must assist in the efforts of the developing countries to create an environment conducive to women's participation through the reform of laws and institutions as well as by means of national enlightenment.
How Japan will Cooperate in those Areas
Without raising the overall level of consciousness of the government and the people of the recipient country concerned, all the efforts to incorporate gender concerns in development assistance will not bear expected results. Japan will work toward greater public consciousness of gender and development issues though various contacts with the developing countries. With their understanding and cooperation, Japan will vigorously seek to implement the following measures.
- EDUCATION
With the cooperation of the recipient countries and other donors, Japan intends to support the efforts in the area of education to achieve the target of:
- a) closing the gender gap in school education for 6-11- year-old children by 2005, and,
- b) providing universal education for all 6-11-year-old girls as well as boys by 2010.
For this purpose, Japan intends to support:
- production and provision of educational materials and text books appropriate for the needs of girls' education in a given social context,
- training of teachers,
- establishment of facilities for training and education which girls can utilize,
- literacy training for adult women, and,
- other measures that promote girls' primary education
- HEALTH
With the cooperation of the recipient countries and other donors, Japan intends to support the efforts in the area of health to achieve the target of:
- a) reducing maternal mortality below 200 per 100,000 childbirths by 2010 in all countries and regions, and,
- b) reducing infant mortality below 35 per 1000 by 2015 in all countries and regions.
For this purpose, Japan intends to support:
- enhanced provision of primary health care,
- promotion of basic education on sanitation and nutrition,
- provision of maternal health services (eg. regular medical examinations for babies, advice on feeding, etc.),
- promotion of family planning,
- capacity to collect and analyze basic statistical data concerning medicine, health, sanitation, nutrition and population, and
- other measures which promote women's health.
- ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL PARTICIPATION
Japan intends to support enhancement of job skills training and learning opportunities for women to acquire relevant skills, improvement of their working environment, and establishment of a legal and institutional framework for women's full participation. In view of the importance of assisting micro-enterprises which are often run by women, Japan has extended loan assistance to the Small-scale Industries Development Program in India, and recently extended similar assistance to Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. Japan intends to support the efforts of other developing countries to introduce similar schemes and give financial and other support for the successful running of such schemes when introduced.
To assist micro-enterprises, Japan will:
- advise and help in the establishment of financial schemes which support micro-enterprises,
- advise and give guidance on how to organize women into groups or enterprises (eg. help create workers guilds or cooperatives),
- supply equipment that assists micro-enterprises and fosters women's participation (eg. supplying sewing machines, etc.), and,
- provide financial support for the schemes that assist women entrepreneurs.
Japan's Scale of Assistance
Japan's WID-related ODA commitments in FY1993 amounted to approximately 600 million US dollars and the figure for the FY1994 is expected to exceed this substantially. To achieve the above objectives in cooperation with recipients and other donors, Japan will continue to make efforts to further build up the overall scale of WID-related development assistance, including cooperation in the priority areas described above.