#HeForShe Champions have shared their experiences, exchanged ideas and best practices as well as affirmed and reaffirmed their commitment to gender equality and women’s empowerment.
This year’s Summit was hosted under the theme ‘Strengthening Partnerships for Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment’.
The summit explored strategies for cultivating and harnessing multi-stakeholder synergies for gender equality.
The European Union and UN Women are Co-Chairs of the #HeForShe at the 5th Edition of the #HeForShe Impact Summit, taking place on May 31st, 2023 in Harare.
“The #HeForShe Impact Summit provides a crucial platform for us to come together and drive collective action towards gender equality and women’s empowerment,” says H.E Jobst von Kirchmann, the EU Ambassador and Co-Chair of the Movement. “Through strengthened partnerships, we can create meaningful change and ensure a more inclusive society for all.”
“The focus for this year’s #HeForShe Impact Summit allows us to consolidate our thoughts, strategies and efforts toward gender equality and women’s empowerment while leveraging unique capacities and capabilities. It is important for us to reflect: How are we working together? How can we do more and achieve greater impact?” Ms. Fatou Lo, UN Women’s Country Representative for Zimbabwe said
The summit witnessed the onboarding of additional #HeForShe Champions including Private Sector Leaders, Youths Leaders and Civil Society Leaders. Additionally, UN Women and the European Union acknowledged 60 youth Innovators Against Gender-Based Violence (IAGs), who have been actively promoting the #HeForShe movement in rural areas of Zimbabwe and contributing significantly to research on Gender at the Masters Level through the EU-funded Spotlight Initiative.
The summit hosted 100 participants, including government officials, diplomats, UN Agency representatives, business leaders, civil society organisations and youth activists. It will involve engaging dialogues, awareness building and a press conference to share the outcomes of the event.
The Zimbabwean Constitution has gender equality among the founding values. It recognises the equality of the sexes and prohibits sex discrimination. The Government has a national gender policy in place, which aims to promote gender equality and outlines how this will be achieved. Gender equality is also a priority of the National Development Strategy 1.
About the #HeForShe Movement
#HeForShe is the UN Women’s global solidarity movement that engages men and boys as advocates and agents of change for the achievement of Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (GEWE). The movement encourages men and women in local communities, the diplomatic corps, the private sector, academia and government institutions to collaborate in promoting women’s rights and gender equality. The movement creates networks of #HeForShe Champions who work side by side to cross-share experiences and ideas on gender equality and male engagement promote peer-to-peer accountability and jointly advocate for gender equality and women’s empowerment. #HeForShe also enables champions to make personal and/or professional commitments towards gender equality and track progress on those commitments.
About UN Women
UN Women, grounded in the vision of equality, enshrined in the charter of the United Nations, works for the elimination of discrimination against women and girls; the empowerment of women; and the achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security. Placing women’s rights at the centre of all its efforts, UN Women leads and coordinates United Nations system-wide efforts to ensure that commitments on gender equality and gender mainstreaming translate into action and impact throughout the world. UN Women offers strong and coherent coordination and thought leadership and facilitates the convening of stakeholders including rights holders, duty bearers, government, civil society, private sector, donors, financial institutions, academia, youth and other actors for the achievement of Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women and girls
About the European Union
Gender equality is one of the core principles among the EU’s founding values and treaty objectives; therefore, the EU is committed globally to promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment and ending violence against women and girls. The EU strongly believes that empowering women and girls is not only the right thing to do but also the smart and humane thing to do. The EU has placed gender equality at the centre of development cooperation and this is aptly reflected in the Multi-annual Indicative Programme for Zimbabwe (2021-2027). The EU has set itself an ambitious target of ensuring that at least 85% of all new programmes will have gender equality and women’s and girls’ empowerment as a principal or significant objective. Working collectively as “Team Europe” the EU and its Member States, together with Switzerland, have committed over €300M, for the period 2021-2027, towards gender-specific and gender mainstreaming actions under the Team Europe Initiative on Gender in Zimbabwe.
The EU fully financed the Spotlight Initiative in Zimbabwe, a joint EU-UN partnership, to eliminate violence against women and girls to the tune of USD 30M from 2019-2023. The EU will continue to build on the gains of the Spotlight initiative by supporting the Government and other stakeholders to