2007 (PDF, 2.81 MB) - Belgium

Primary education for all
© VVOB
Governmental cooperation focuses mainly on supporting
the national development goals for education,
training of teachers and teaching instructors,
the creation, dissemination and use of teaching materials,
and so on.
For the indicator “ratios of girls to boys in primary,
secondary and tertiary education” there has been an
improvement in the figures or maintenance of already
good results. That said, progress in Burundi and
Palestine is slowing down.
The evaluation of Belgian education cooperation in
2007 shows that more efforts are needed in the area
of primary education. A look at the data shows that
a number of partner countries have already fulfilled
the indicator of “primary enrolment” that was chosen
for education. There has been quite a substantial improvement
in West Africa, but progress has slackened
in the Great Lakes Region.
MDG 3 – Promote gender equality and
empower women
Gender, and in particular equal rights and opportunities
for men and women, is an overarching theme of
Belgian development cooperation. Belgian development
cooperation promotes gender equality with a
strategy that intends to support the efforts made by
the countries concerned.
Two approaches are taken in pursuing the objectives
in this area: 1) integrating the gender issue into
policy instruments and actions; and 2) launching or
supporting positive actions to improve women’s lot.
In terms of indirect cooperation, DGDC supports such
organisations as the NGO ‘Le Monde selon les Femmes’
[‘The world according to women’], which fights for
equal rights between men and women. At multilateral
level, Belgium Development Cooperation supports
the joint programme of the United Nations Population
Fund (UNFPA), UNICEF and the Office of the United
Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)
on preventing and combating sexual violence against
women, young people and children in the Democratic
Republic of Congo and the action of the United Nations
Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM).
MDG 4/MDG 5 – Reduce child mortality/
improve maternal health
Belgian cooperation’s actions to combat child mortality
and health problems suffered by new mothers
focus on strengthening health systems in general
and improving access to healthcare.
For instance, Belgium is supporting the health districts
of the department of Dosso in Niger and improvements
to access to healthcare in the city of El Alto in Bolivia.
A noteworthy development was that in March 2007
Belgium approved a policy paper on sexual and reproductive
health and rights which proposes a multidimensional
approach to sexual and reproductive health that
goes beyond public health in the strict sense.
A general improvement can be seen in terms of child
mortality. Indeed the countries of South America
are achieving very good results and the situation in
Vietnam, Morocco and Algeria is improving.
In sub-Saharan Africa there is a noticeable improvement
but it is less significant than in other regions,
whilst in Central Africa the situation has not improved
and in South Africa things have actually got worse.
MDG 6 – Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and
other diseases
The thread running through the Belgian government’s
strategy document is that concerns about
AIDS/HIV need to be integrated into all aspects of
development cooperation.
A number of actions have been taken with this in
mind. They have included: representing Belgium in
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