Keynote speech delivered by Minister For Foreign Trade Ann Linde.
Welcome to you all – ladies and gentlemen in the audience and our panelists to this Swedish side event on Gender integration in Aid for Trade Facilitation: Existing tools and lessons learnt.
As I mentioned earlier today, we have met and discussed trade and gender in many different locations and events in the past years. From Geneva to Buenos Aires, and also in my capital, at the Stockholm Forum on Gender Equality last year.
And it is fair to say that a lot of progress has been achieved in the past years.
This side event will focus on aid for trade and trade facilitation, sometimes called “Aid for trade facilitation”. These are two examples of areas in which progress has been made.
Aid for Trade projects has been identified, in a report by our trade expert agency, as one area for the most creative development in terms of including gender in trade. The focus of many of these measures have been to eliminate barriers for women and simplifying market access for female entrepreneurs.
At the same time the OECD – in its report Aid for Trade at a glance - stated that that only a small part of gender marked aid for trade is going to the category “Trade policy”.
This is unfortunate, especially as trade has proven to be an engine for development and poverty reduction by boosting growth, particularly in developing countries. I therefore call upon all donors, that haven’t already done so, to allocate gender marked aid for trade to trade policy projects.
The other area for progress is trade facilitation. Existing WTO agreements and current topics for negotiations clearly have gendered effects. Some are easier than others to identify as positive for making the effects of trade equal, such as the Trade Facilitation Agreement (TFA). The purpose of the Trade Facilitation Agreement is to simplify trade flows. Provisions include expediting the movement, clearance, and release of goods, and measures for effective cooperation between customs and other authorities.
Since administrative burdens disproportionally affect SMEs - and their exports often are more sensitive to delays - the implementation of the Trade Facilitation Agreement may be beneficial for SMEs in general and women-owned SMEs in particular. The reason for this is simply that the implementation of the trade facilitation agreement contributes to the removal of barriers that are especially burdensome for female entrepreneurs.
It is therefore very positive that the trade facilitation community is taking more initiatives to integrate gender. The World Bank, for example, has done research on the linkages between gender and trade facilitation and the World Customs Organisation has developed practical tools for gender integration. In addition, Uganda has practical experience of integrating gender in trade facilitation.
I am thus looking forward to a “hands on” discussion on existing tools and lessons learnt regarding gender integration in “Aid for Trade Facilitation”.
I will now give the floor to the moderator Cecilia Scharp from Sida.
Thank you!