8 May 2012: The Central American Integration System’s (SICA) Council of Women’s Affairs Ministers (COMMCA) and the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) have agreed to work together in promoting the economic rights of women in Central America and the Dominican Republic.

The agreement was reached during a meeting held in the context of the 47th Meeting of the Board of Directors of ECLAC’s Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, on 3-4 May 2012, in Panama City, Panama. The eight SICA members are Belize, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama.

This strategic alliance will build on actions COMMCA is undertaking based on its recent commitments with UN Women and the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (BCIE). Among the first actions will be the Conference on Economic Advancement of Women, to be held in June 2012, in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, which will discuss time-use surveys and care networks, and secondly, with ECLAC technical assistance, the design of a “Entrepreneurship and Gender” Observatory and a regional report on the status of women, both to be submitted to the Regular Meeting of the SICA Heads of State and Government in June.

ECLAC also committed to holding a preparatory meeting for SICA countries for the XII Regional Conference on Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, taking place in the Dominican Republic in October 2013. The agreement to hold a subregional preparatory meeting is based in part on COMMCA’s commitment to raise and back proposals on women’s rights within the regional frameworks of ECLAC and of the Inter-American Commission of Women (CIM), a specialized body of the Organization of American States (OAS). In this vein, COMMCA and ECLAC agreed that the conclusions on this topic that emerge from the XXXVI CIM Assembly of Delegates, to be held on 29-30 October 2012, in Costa Rica, should form the basis for consensus at the XII Regional Conference in October 2013.

COMMCA also: embraced the High-Level Meeting for the Promotion of Political Rights of Women in the SICA Region, to be held 29-30 May 2012, in Tegucigalpa, Honduras; agreed to work with SICA’s Democratic Security Directorate on mainstreaming gender in the components and operational tools of the Democratic Security Strategy for Central America; and decided to devise an action plan on “Public Safety for Women” that builds on an analysis of the Second Implementation Report of the 1994 Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence Against Women (“Convention of Belém do Pará”). [COMMCA Press Release (Spanish)]