Interventions that attempt to support gender equity and pastoral women’s empowerment need to start with pastoral women themselves. Empowerment is more sustainable and facilitating when it comes from within. Women’s place and role in the pastoral unit and community needs to be understood and acknowledged. What empowerment means for pastoral women should influence how this is supported and achieved. The right institutional framework and supporting mechanisms are vital to support women’s empowerment.
About CELEP
CELEP is the Coalition of European Lobbies for Eastern African Pastoralism. The Members of the Coalition will work together to lobby their national governments, EU bodies (Council, Parliament and Commission) as well as other policy formulating bodies/agencies in Europe (e.g. the European Headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva and the FAO in Rome) to explicitly recognise and support pastoralism (and the people that practise pastoralism: pastoralists) in the drylands of Eastern Africa.
Vétérinaires Sans Frontières Belgium is focal point of CELEP since October 2012.