Malawi National Gender Policy 2008

This policy draws from the 2000-2005 National Gender Policy whose overall goal was to mainstream gender in the national development process to enhance participation of women and men, girls and boys for sustainable and equitable development for poverty eradication. The Policy was launched on 8th March 2000 and was implemented for a period of five years up to December 2005. The need to review the 2000-2005 National Gender Policy was necessitated in 2005 after realizing that, in addition to several achievements made, there were a number of challenges, emerging issues and lessons learnt during the implementation of the first Policy. Some of the lessons learnt include, inter alia, gender equality can be achieved if it is well institutionalized, provision of guidance on how to mainstream gender issues needs development and disseminations of sector specific gender mainstreaming guidelines, capacity building of stakeholders, strengthening networking and coordination between and among stakeholders and implementation of comprehensive and well coordinated programmes with M and E systems. The current major challenges and emerging issues highlighted in most reviews include HIV and AIDS, gender based violence (GBV), human trafficking, increased environmental degradation and high levels of poverty in the country and all these have gender dimensions.