Concluding observations on the sixth periodic report of Angola

Addendum

Note : The present document is being circulated in English, French and Spanish only.

* The present document is being issued without formal editing.

Information provided by Angola in follow-up to the concluding observations *

[Date received: 13 April 2015]

Introduction

1.The present report is presented in compliance of the decision taken by the Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), during its 54th session which asked Angola to submit a progress report aimed at evaluating the performance of the public institutions and civil society in implementing CEDAW convention since Angola submitted its sixth report in February, 2013.

2.The purpose of this report is to highlight the implementation of the CEDAW convention under points 14, subparagraphs (b), (c) and (e); and paragraph 34, subparagraph b), of the Committee Concluding Observations on Angola.

3.The issues discussed in this progress report are related to:

(a)Implementation of Beijing Directives and increase of financial resources for Women’s Empowerment at the national and local level;

(b)Increase cooperation and provision of technical assistance to civil society organization advocating for women rights;

(c)Undertake a national gender policy and an agrarian reform program with an approach that takes into account the monitoring indicators, the specific objectives and the monitoring system to evaluate the impact and effectiveness of these policies;

(d)Incorporate a National Strategy to Fight Poverty, with a gender-based perspective, to ensure the effective implementation of the strategy, taking into account the special needs of women living in rural areas.

4.For preparing this report, the Commission for the Preparation of National Reports on Human Rights has collected information from different Government departments dealing with the CEDAW implementation including the collaboration of civil society organizations.

I.Compliance with the Beijing Directives (rec. 14, b and c)

5.The government is making a considerable effort to comply with the Beijing Directives by setting up national Women’s Empowerment systems at the national and local level; this includes allocating significant financial resources to ensure that the policies, strategies and sectoral programs are sustainable in the general government budget.

6.One of the key features of the policies adopted for women is that they are cross-cutting. In these policies the sensitivity of responses to women’s fears and concerns is extremely important in the context of coordinated cross-cutting activities that are linked to all the institutions involved and all the social partners; doing so should bring about the efficiency and effectiveness necessary to give answers and provide sustainable solutions for the problems that arise, in particular:

1.Ministry of Public Administration, Labour and Social Security

•Upgrade public service, promote the improvement of quality of services in terms of reciprocity;

•Ensure quality and promote registration in and the management of social security, taxpayers and the insured;

•Ensure the sustainability of the social security system by ensuring the necessary social development.

2.Ministry of Land Administration

•Improve public service, promote improvements in the quality of services and receptiveness, provide awareness-raising and train civil servants in the types of reception and public relations.

3.Ministry of Agriculture

•Develop the program to advance productive activity, carry out support activities in the agricultural campaigns and increase seed production;

•Develop family agriculture, renovate and build agricultural development facilities, correct soil acidity, provide incentives to market-oriented family farming, support local development projects, establish agricultural development hubs and increase the capacity for providing technical assistance to producers;

•Guarantee food and nutrition security, perform vulnerability analyses in selected municipalities and promote the construction of school gardens;

•Research and develop technology, renovate the agricultural research stations, renovate and upgrade the animal husbandry facilities and develop activities for training in agriculture;

•Develop commercial agriculture to ensure that agroindustrial hubs are set up, support the agriculture development program, renovate the experimental coffee-growing facilities, promote the campaign to market coffee from Angola and implement large-scale agriculture projects;

•Develop the meat and milk sector and implement the family aviculture project;

•Set up programs to support and develop animal production, distribute wild hens to selected rural communities and support the development of raising small ruminants and cattle;

•Build and renovate irrigated fields, small traditional irrigated lands and hydroagricultural dams;

•Develop and revitalize the lumber and non-wood sectors and modernize traditional beekeeping;

•Plan and manage natural resources, support projects to fight desertification and in particular research projects on arable land.

4.Ministry of the Environment

•Develop environmental management programs, strengthen the involvement of agencies that implement environmental policy through local intervention as well as ecological, economic, industrial and urban mapping and promote the strengthening and expansion of ecological villages;

•Develop environmental management education and training programs, promote awareness, education and training for people in the different areas of the environment and environmental multipliers;

•Develop environmental certification programs and strengthen clean environmental technologies to ensure a better quality of life in society;

•Develop biodiversity conservation programs and conservation areas and promote the management of urban, agricultural and rural forests;

•Develop sustainable production programs, promote environmental management and sustainability in the productive sector and assess, inspect and prevent impacts of productive activities, fight drought and desertification and increase the contribution of new and renewable sources of energy in the energy matrix;

5.Ministry of Former Combatants and Veterans of Angola

•Reintegrate (socially and economically) the former combatants and veterans of Angola and improve local marketing circles by using labour from this segment of the population.

6.Ministry of Assistance and Social Reinsertion

•Provide social support and prepare social assistance and early childhood policies;

•Create jobs and opportunities for socioeconomic occupations jointly as part of the social integration strategy for vulnerable populations and provide professional kits and equipment;

•Expand social equipment and the infrastructure network in the municipalities by building and providing supplies to the community centres, children’s centres, community education centres and community workshops.

7.Ministry of Health

•Draw up the National Health Policy enacted by Presidential Decree No. 262/10 on the National Health System and Law No. 21-B/92 on universal access to primary health care, to be established in Article 77 of the Constitution.

•Foster the implementation of the sector reform program, the purpose of which is to build and renovate health infrastructure and provide modern technical and technological means and strengthen prevention programs that improve women’s reproductive health.

•Authorize the expansion of the municipal health network and put in place new specialized referral services.

•Improve the performance of HIV/AIDS laws, in particular with regard to the implementation of social rights that are legally protected, as is the case for labour law and vocational training.

•Improve women’s access throughout their lives to low-cost and high-quality health services, information and appropriate related services.

8.Ministry of Science and Technology

•Provide incentives for innovation, stimulate the creation of incubators for innovative and knowledge-intensive businesses and develop industrial property and the Angolan register of marks and patents;

9.Ministry of Commerce

•Develop the New Commercial Network Program (NRC) – PRESILD (MP6) and build integrated municipal markets;

•Develop the business activity and basic commercial infrastructure program (MP1), develop cooperativism and business activity to support small and medium-sized businesses, stimulate trade, distribution and the consumption of domestic production and develop substitutes for imports, emphasize advocacy for consumer interests and support vulnerable families, implement the “O Nosso Balaio” Program, build 163 integrated shops, 163 municipal and provincial Logistics and Distribution Centers (CLODs), acquire kits for small rural businesses, build 123 shops and renovate 40 our green grocery stores [nossas quitandas];

•Develop the Ministry’s program for Institutional and Administrative Strengthening (MP3), build, equip and modernize the national business school, implement an inventory program for the wholesale and retail network, build five provincial business schools, develop manager training programs for the sector and build five conservation and marketing centres for traditional medicine phytopharmacteuticals.

10.Ministry of Social Communication

•Improve public service in social communication, modernize and equip the sector technically speaking, in terms of equipment and technology, to include an expansion of radio and television signals throughout the country to ensure access for all citizens to information, convert the analogue television system to the digital transmission system, create regional hubs for distributing newspapers in order to enhance newspaper circulation throughout the country, provide quality and benchmarked public service, acquire and set up community radio stations and build transmitters and repeater towers.

11.Ministry of Construction

•Develop a program of investments in integrated infrastructure, complete the construction of university campuses now in progress and foster the development of studies and projects for new ones;

•Develop the program to build social infrastructure and public buildings and build new schools and hospitals;

•Develop the program to build new main road corridors, and in particular build roads in the East and develop and plan the construction of fast main lanes, circular roads, ring and radial roads in the key cities of the country;

12.Ministry of Culture

•Foster access to teaching the national languages in every field and the key international languages and conduct the study of the national languages of Angola in phases based on the number of people that speak them;

•Implement the system of cultural centres and ensure that the different cultural events are profitable;

•Develop the national system of municipal cultural programs and promote the periodic holding of local cultural events by implementing the national system of cultural activities;

•Promote crafts as a source of income for the communities, create the National Center for Marketing Crafts and Provincial Crafts Associations and hold the National and Provincial Craft Fair;

13.Ministry of Education

•Expand preschool education and build and outfit centres or institutions that are appropriate for providing education for children under five years old;

•Further primary and secondary education and increase the enrolment rate by building and equipping new units and expanding existing ones, develop programs to fight dropping out of school, provide school lunches to everyone in the public primary schools, provide student transportation for children that attend schools located far from their residence with special emphasis on rural areas, and promote the construction and equipment of polytechnic mid-level institutes;

•Intensify literacy training for adults and make the program sustainable in the rural area and strengthen it;

•Improve the vocational technical training system, revise and update the Reform of Vocational and Technical Training (RETEP), prepare the general bases for technical education in conjunction with mid-level education, higher education and vocational training, prepare a plan to establish new courses in accordance with the National Manager Training Plan and the Vocational Education Plan (regional distribution of new courses to be implemented according to local needs and based on the type of productive facilities and the labour market in each region), foster the diversification of public and private developers, Technical and Vocational Education (ETP) and in particular launch new strategic courses;

•Develop and organize the training of professors, specialists and researchers in education, equip faculty with all the new systems for training persons with an appropriate scientific, technical and educational profile and create the educational career development program;

•Develop education reform and promote activities to combat HIV/AIDS in schools.

14.Ministry of Energy and Water

•Expand generating capacity and the transmission system for electricity and upgrade and expand the public lighting networks;

•Develop rural electrification and build small hydro power plants, complete the renovation and construction of small hydro power plants and expand the public lighting networks in the rural areas;

•Supply water to the most populated seats of the provinces and municipalities, upgrade the quality of service in urban and suburban areas with high population density, promote the creation of municipal water supply and sanitation companies in order to implement the National Water Plan and renovate and expand the distribution centres and water treatment stations, including serving the urban areas that are part of the National Housing Plan;

•Implement the Water for All Program, continue to build small systems and community water and sanitation supply points in suburban and rural areas and implement a national program to monitor the quality of water for human consumption.

15.Ministry of Higher Education

•Build institutional capacity and establish national networks of higher education by specialties;

•Award grants for domestic and foreign study, improve the dissemination of information on domestic study grants with the Institutions of Higher Education (IES) and high school institutions for secondary education, monitor and coordinate the selection of candidates for foreign study grants for each province and educational institution.

16.Ministry of Geology and Mines

•Prepare the National Geology Plan (MP3), develop prospecting, research and underground water catchment;

•Develop human resources (MP2), promote technical-vocational training and career development for personnel in the sector and build the mining specialization school;

•Create sectoral companies (MP1), foster the establishment of public enterprises for the basic metals sectors, radioactive ores, agro-mineral ores and create screening businesses;

•Economically and financially stabilize diamond businesses (MP1) and reactivate the Fucaúma, Lucapa, Luarica and Camuazanza Projects.

17.Ministry of Hospitality and Tourism

•Train professionals for the sector, create a national vocational training system for tourism and build, renovate and equip technical-vocational schools for the tourism sector.

18.Ministry of Industry

•Support the development of and prepare the technical classification system for agroindustrial products;

•Strengthen the organizational structure and prepare a memorandum with the Ministry of Finance to make the Business Development Fund operational to finance industrial projects;

•Coordinate business strategies, prepare a comprehensive industrialization program for Angola with well-defined strategies to achieve the goals assigned to the Ministry of Industry, support the creation of innovation centres and competencies for the following industries: food and agroindustrial, textiles and apparel, construction materials and lumber and furniture; and create the food and agroindustrial cluster;

•Foster productive activities, build cotton ginning and spinning factories, develop flour milling industries as well as the storage infrastructure for them, as well as for cement, pharmaceuticals and manufacturing durable goods, machinery, working tools for agriculture and semi-capital goods and implement key projects such as the sugar-making/ethanol industry, steel, heavy engineering, cellulose and paper, aluminium, fertilizers and soil conditioners.

II.National Gender Policy and Agrarian Reform Policy (rec.14,e)

7.The National Policy for Gender Equality and Equity and the Advocacy and Mobilization Strategy for Resources for Implementing and Monitoring the Policy have been in effect in Angola since December 24, 2013, when they were published in the Official Gazette, First Series No. 247, Presidential Decree No. 222/13. The law reflects five priority areas of social intervention.

8.For implementing the National Policy for Gender Equality and Equity – there are activities such as:

•Four technical capacity-building meetings on Technical and Methodological Capacity Building at the provincial level;

•Session of the Multisectoral Gender Council with the theme “Gender Equality and Post-2015 Agenda;”

•Two regional workshops on Planning Techniques, Scheduling, Management and Budgeting for Gender in Implementing Policy;

•Two “Gender Activist” training seminars;

•Two seminars on the Promotion of Cooperativism, Associativism and Leadership for Young Women from Rural Communities in Gender Equality;

•Two seminars on Entrepreneurship for Young Women Leaders in Gender Equality;

•One seminar on Social Construction for Gender Equality and Equity;

•One Provincial Forum on Gender Equality and Equity (“Forum of Women Journalists for Gender Equality” partner);

2.1.System for policy monitoring and assessment and periodic assessment of the effective impact of gender policies:

•Prepare and validate the Action Plan for Implementing the Advocacy and Resource Mobilization Strategy for Gender Equality and Equity;

•Hold the Multisectoral Gender Council at the provincial and national level.

2.2.Incorporate the gender perspective into the National Strategy to Fight Poverty with special attention to the needs of rural women

9.Since 2010, the Integrated Municipal Program for Rural Development and Fighting Poverty (PMIDRCP) has been implemented throughout the country. The program is decentralized and deconcentrated administratively and financially speaking in a process in which basic public services are being implemented in all localities, benefiting roughly 15 million people.

10.The goal of the program is to reduce poverty levels with special emphasis on rural areas, develop and broaden the access base for the entire population to basic services and jump-start growth and local development. The purpose is essentially to lower poverty indices, improve the quality of the people’s lives, implement infrastructure and provide access to public services that focus on the following areas:

•Primary health care – 834,104 vaccine kits, 12,200 mosquito nets, 1,405 hospital facilities, 95 ambulances and 26 hospital beds were acquired at the national level;

•Water for All –317 fountains, 408 water points, 76 washing facilities, 215 small water systems (PSAs), nine trucks, three electrical pumps, two tow trucks, eight water cisterns, four generators and ten water pumps were built and acquired at the national level;

•School lunches – Lunches were acquired for primary school students at 2.4956 sic] schools and 1.096192 [sic] students received them at the national level;

•Community Production Organization – allocate and condition arable lands and support 59 specialized farming cooperatives;

•Basic infrastructure and communication media – the following were built, acquired or carried out: 101 houses for physicians and nurses, nine health centres, two municipal hospitals, 155 health posts, two health offices, 13 residences for employees, four delivery rooms, three laboratories, six storage facilities for medication, 50 cold chains (morgues), 190,252 kits of various medications, 66 immunization campaigns (BCG, Poliomyelitis and measles), 9,072 consultations and 562 training and capacity-building programs, 16 community conversation and food centres [Jangos], 84 community warehouses, 67 small processing units (mills) and 59 fairs and rural markets.

III.National Poverty Reduction Strategy (ECP)

11.The National Strategy to Fight Poverty is being implemented in the context of strengthening peace and as part of the objectives and priorities established in the government programs that advocate for the necessity of furthering comprehensive and sustainable economic development for social reinsertion, rehabilitation, reconstruction and economic stabilization with a gender-based focus, keeping in mind the special needs of rural women.

3.1Objectives of the National Strategy to Fight Poverty - ECP

12.The making of the peace agreement in Angola in April 2002 created the essential conditions for the government to prepare its Strategy to Fight Poverty and to provide guarantees to all citizens for them to equitably benefit from the national reconstruction and development process. The following objectives were set:

(a)Support the return and settlement of domestic displaced persons, former refugees and immobilized soldiers to their places of origin or resettle them and integrate them sustainably into economic and social activities;

(b)Ensure the minimum conditions for physical security for citizens through demining, disarmament and enforcing the law and the public order throughout the country;

(c)Minimize the risk of hunger, meet internal food needs and jump-start the rural economy as a sector vital for sustainable development;

(d)Control the spread of HIV/AIDS and mitigate the impact on persons living with HIV/AIDS and their families;

(e)Provide universal access to primary education, eliminate illiteracy and create the conditions for protecting and integrating adolescents, youths and persons with special educational needs and ensure gender equity in all cases;

(f)Improve the people’s state of health, especially by increasing access to quality primary health care and controlling the spread of HIV/AIDS;

(g)Rebuild, renovate and expand basic infrastructure for economic, social and human development;

(h)Enhance national human capital, promote access to employment and self-employment, revitalize the labour market and protect workers’ rights;

(i)Strengthen the rule of law, make the services of government agencies more efficient, move government agencies closer to the citizens and meet their needs with transparent and accountable policy-making and public resources management;

(j)Create an environment of macroeconomic stability that avoids imbalances in the markets (as they are harmful for the more disadvantaged populations), stimulate economic growth and sustainably reduce poverty.

3.2Employment Assistance Program - PROAJUDA

13.In order to include fundamental activities to fight hunger and raise family incomes in the Integrated Municipal Rural Development and Poverty Reduction Programs, a new SECTION was implemented known as “PRODUCTIVE SOCIAL TRANSFER.” It has an operationalization tool known as the “Employment Assistance Program,” abbreviated as (PROAJUDA), to implement productive infrastructures and foster employment and self-employment.

14.As part of organizing intervention policies to make the programs consistent with Angola’s new socioeconomic context, and principally the Employment Assistance Program (PROAJUDA), the issue of social assistance stands out. This requires a transfer of social income, preferably targeted at women as heads of family households and other representatives of more needy social groups to insert them into the production and local farm processing circuits and to reduce food insecurity for families.

15.There are six main activities in the Employment Assistance Program, three of which we mention here:

(a)Aldeamento KIKUIA – which builds villages with housing and basic infrastructure (water and energy supply, basic sanitation and recycling services), productive and commercial infrastructure and socio-cultural and security facilities. The construction of six villages as part of the first phase is now in progress;

(b)Integrated Food Microprocessing Centers (CIMPAs) consist of infrastructure organized in small productive units that use simple technology to process agricultural raw materials into finished food products, and six processing units are now under construction (Cuanza-Sul, Malanje, Moxico and Luanda);

(c)Cartão KIKUIA – Launched on October 10, 2014, this fosters the socioeconomic inclusion of more vulnerable populations who have physical capacities for labour. Priority is placed on women as heads of family households. Monthly income is Akz 10,000, used to purchase products in the Kikuia shops, such as the basic food basket, farm inputs and school supplies;

(d)PAPAROKA – A logistics network formed by Lojas PAPAROKA and other operators licensed by the programs to distribute farm products to the city.

3.3Gender-based perspective considering the special needs of rural women

(a)In a new perspective and as part of the implementation of the 2013-2017 National Development Program, the Program for Integrated Rural Development and to Fight Poverty is being prepared. The program focuses on the promotion of diversified growth in the national economy, but its fundamental purpose is to reduce inequality and exclusion. It proposes to contribute significantly to rebuilding an economically dynamic and socially just country.

(b)With this expectation, new objectives, listed below, can be envisioned:

•Promote special and integrated programs taking their cross-cutting nature into account to respond to problems that need solutions and establish correspondence between quality of life in urban centres and rural areas;

•Foster integrated rural development;

•Stimulate the creation of community organizations used as instruments of social control and express the needs and capacities of poor communities to overcome the barriers to economic, social and technological development;

•Seek greater efficiency in public, private and association intervention in terms of managing rural development;

•Strengthen institutions at the national, provincial and municipal level to prevent overlap and create an institutional capacity to monitor environmental quality;

•Promote community development and the quality of life and link the communities and society as a whole;

•Develop and promote projects that help improve the condition and integration of rural women in the development process.

3.4Monitoring indicators

16.The institutional framework for monitoring and evaluating the ECP is through diversified target groups that represent different entities, namely:

•Family households in the communities;

•Results of program implementation.

3.5System to monitor and evaluate the impact and efficiency of policies

17.The implementation of the ECP requires monitoring and ongoing analysis to evaluate progress, identify obstacles along the way and suggest potential corrections and adjustments in developing programs to make them more efficient. Monitoring and evaluation provide tools necessary to monitor and analyse the progress and impact of programs as they are being implemented and there are also informative processes to support the preparation of the Medium-Term Development Program and the Long-Term Strategy.

18.Making the practice of monitoring and evaluation effective is an ongoing effort that requires painstaking consultations, collection of information and analysis, and involves a large number of stakeholders, such as the target groups defended by societal organizations such as the National Assembly, civil society organizations, private sector organizations and community representatives.

19.The government, at the central, provincial and municipal levels, is responsible for monitoring the implementation of the ECP and for producing the monitoring instruments and indicators. The ECP Technical Commission (the body that provides technical support to the Interministerial Commission) is responsible for coordinating the monitoring and evaluation work.

20.Monitoring is done in cooperation with several entities, and in particular the INE, universities and research institutes and NGOs, which have considerable experience and technical qualifications to perform this task.

21.Monitoring and planning for the implementation of the ECP is the direct responsibility of MINPLAN and MINFIN, which prepare annual progress reports of the Government Program and reports on the execution of the General State Budget. These documents provide a direct link with the areas of priority intervention determined by the ECP. The sectoral ministries, in cooperation with the provincial and municipal representative offices, and with MINPLAN supervision, are responsible for monitoring the result.