"UNIFEM's activities in Pakistan follow closely the Funds global mandate of providing financial and technical assistance to innovative approaches aimed at fostering womens empowerment and gender equality. More specifically in enhancing the capacity of the Government in the development of a qualiatative data base that would facilitate gender responsive public policy formulation to effectively address the challenges relating to gender discrimination ,womens rights and womens participation in the overall national development agenda .

In this context an important and strategic intervention is around gendering the Census planned for October 2008 through the UN joint programme on assisting the Government conduct an accurate census that provides as far as possible comprehensive data on women allowing for in-depth gender analysis .
To this effect, in close collaboration with the Population Census Organization UNIFEM has already conducted a series of Orientation sessions aimed at sensitizing 1200 Census Managers and Census Administrators consisting mostly of staff at the District levels at more than 21 locations on the importance of gendering the Census operation scheduled for October 2008 and the need to involve a larger numbers of females as both supervisors and enumerators .

Closely linked to the above, UNIFEM will work closely with the Population Census Organization in supporting the implementation of the SAARC Gender Data Base in Pakistan to which the Government of Pakistan has committed . This is an ongoing activity that is expected to continue and will feed into the detailed analysis Phase of the 2008 Census.

The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) was established when its Charter was formally adopted on December 8, 1985 by the Heads of State or Government of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

SAARC provides a platform for the peoples of South Asia to work together in a spirit of friendship, trust and understanding. It aims to accelerate the process of economic and social development in Member States.

The Association has a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), to help Member States to strive towards the goals of gender equality based upon the empowerment approach incorporating issues such as women’s citizenship, women’s political representation, trafficking and sexual exploitation, gender and HIV/AIDS, female education and literacy, legal rights and economic empowerment and impact of globalization on women.

The meeting of SAARC Gender Data Base held in Islamabad 12 13 June 2008 stressed…..

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