WIDE Annual Conference 2007, Madrid

WIDE's Annual Conference 2007 ‘New aid, old trade: What do women have to say?’ will be hosted by the Gender and Development Working Group of the Spanish Platform of Development NGOs (CONGDE), in Madrid on 14-17 June 2007.

The aim of this year’s conference is to create a forum for constructive analysis of women’s rights today and perspectives for gender equality in the new global development and trade architecture.

The nature of international trade policies, regulation of financial flows and investment, as well as the nature of international development policies, have all changed profoundly in recent years. New international development architecture has developed from the international donor community’s shared commitments in the areas of trade, debt, investment and financing for development. However, while development and trade institutions are changing, structures of gender inequality are persisting. Despite multiple commitments, gender mainstreaming has not been put into practice throughout the world.

Gender experts and women’s organisations have expressed concern that these new aid modalities may even further sideline gender interests, shrink the spaces and resources available to gender equality advocates and undercut efforts towards women’s empowerment.
The WIDE conference is intended to be a space for women from the East, North and South to analyse critically European and international aid and trade policies, in order to name the challenges, to identify the opportunities and to agree on a common agenda to ensure that this new aid, trade and foreign policy architecture reinforces and supports commitments on women’s human rights and gender equality. 

The conference will be highly participatory in nature. It will be made up of four panels, where speakers from the East, South and West will share regional and personal experiences and perspectives, each panel followed by time for questions and debate. The conference will also include different workshops to encourage more in-depth debate and to provide spaces for joint strategising and advocacy planning. Open space sessions will allow participants to propose spontaneous workshops according to their interests. As in previous years, there will also be a space for learning, a day-long capacity building session, prior to the conference.