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Colleagues, friends, ladies and gentlemen. Good morning.
I would like to warmly welcome all of you to ADB for the two-day seminar on Mainstreaming Gender Equality in Infrastructure Projects: Asia Pacific Regional Meeting.
I regret that I am unable to be with you, to greet you personally. But I would like to thank the Multilateral Development Bank's Working Group on Gender for organizing this meeting.
Gender equality is the third of the Millennium Development Goals and there is a great deal of commitment to see it achieved. In September this year, two important, high level international meetings on aid architecture took place. The first one was the Accra High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, and the second was the United Nations High Level Event on the MDGs in New York.
In Accra, representatives from developing and donor countries and multilateral and bilateral institutions agreed there is a need to broaden country-level policy dialogue on development policies and programs consistent with international commitments on gender equality.
In New York, the UN Secretary General became the 100th recipient of the MDG3 Torch, committing himself to strengthen the UN's ability to respond to the needs of the world's women.
In addition, in Doha in late November and early December, the Financing for Development Follow-Up Meeting will stress the importance of gender responsive public financial management, development of financial infrastructure that promote products and services to small and medium businesses, and consideration of gender issues in macro- and micro-economic policies and labor policies.
Turning to the Asian Development Bank. The significance of integrating gender concerns into our financing and knowledge assistance is clearly set out in our long-term strategic framework of Strategy 2020, approved by the Board of Directors in April this year. Our Strategy identifies 'gender equity' as one of the five drivers that will help us act as a change agent for an Asia and Pacific Region free of poverty. Gender concerns matter in all our three strategic agendas of inclusive economic growth, environmentally sustainable growth, and regional integration.
Infrastructure investment is central to our support for the achievement of inclusive growth in Asia and the Pacific. Physical infrastructure and services help the region achieve high sustainable economic progress, connect the poor to markets, and increase their access to basic assets. We are promoting a more prominent role for the private sector in infrastructure investment through direct investment and public-private partnerships. Infrastructure development is also our core business when we promote regional cooperation and economic integration.
Under Strategy 2020, developing and implementing gender-responsive policies and programs has become part of our core business in the key infrastructure sectors of energy, transport and communication, water supply and sanitation, rural infrastructure, and urban infrastructure.
Over the past decade, we have seen many successes in integrating gender needs and constraints into policies and projects in some of these sectors in our region. In water and rural infrastructure sectors, ADB together with partner governments, has promoted targets for women's participation in water user associations and road maintenance labor groups, complemented by relevant skills training. These projects empower women's particpation in the decision-making process, as well as access skills and job opportunities that would otherwise have been impossible.
Men and women in urban slum communities have been mobilized through community groups to participate in prioritizing their infrastructure needs.
Women's market corners and women's private space for flood shelters provide them with needed economic opportunities and security and services.
However, the challenge for gender mainstreaming remains in the larger infrastructure investments and policy reform programs. We have not fully explored opportunities in the past. It is not enough to say that access to electricity and highways generally benefit women's welfare, saves them time and helps them with access to social services and economic opportunities. We need to have an in-depth understanding of the likely factors and policy parameters that ensure, accelerate and maximize gender inclusive results in infrastructure policy support and large-scale infrastructure investments. Policy research, pilot projects, and expert inputs are urgently needed.
Another challenge is to scale up our achievements. We must make these successful cases into our norm in similar sectors and circumstances. Some governments have taken up standard project gender action plans for rural and urban infrastructure and water supply projects. They have applied them to all the other government-financed projects across the country, in collaboration with NGOs. We hope to see more of this type of initiative from our partners in the region. The role of multilateral development banks is crucial in technically and financially supporting them.
Ladies and gentlemen.
I am sure that, over the next two days, you will share experience, learn from each other, and jointly develop new and more relevant approaches that can be utilized across countries and institutions. This meeting offers an excellent opportunity for infrastructure sector experts and gender experts to advance knowledge, and mobilize resources and ideas. I wish you all a fruitful and constructive meeting.
Last, but not least, I would like to thank donors of the gender trust funds availed for ADB and the World Bank. These donors include Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Without their support, this meeting would not be possible.
Thank you for your attention.