Report of mission to Lesotho 1-31 August 2000

Abstract

The Lesotho Government has established a Ministry of Environment, Gender and Youth Affairs and a Director of the Department of Gender has just been recruited. The ministry is now embarking on a process of developing a comprehensive program for implementation of the Global, Regional and Sub-regional agendas for eliminating discrimination against women. The Government requested for technical advisory services from ECA to assist in designing a comprehensive gender capacity building program. In an initial mission to the Ministry, it was established that although the Ministry was in the process of developing a National Gender Policy, there was no clear program that the Ministry has put in place. It was also established that the major constraint of the Ministry is lack of adequate capacity for gender planning and programming, and gender mainstreaming in general.