On 9 November 2023, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean, represented by Hon. Joana Lima, President of the PAM Women's Parliamentary Forum, participated in consultations on the draft World Bank’s Gender Strategy 2024-30, alongside MPs from across the world.

The online event was hosted jointly by the Parliamentary Network on the World Bank and IMF (PN) and the WB. The consultation was introduced and moderated by the Rt Hon. Liam Byrne MP (Chair of the Business and Trade Committee of the UK House of Commons; Chair of the Parliamentary Network on the World Bank and IMF), while Laura B. Rawlings (Lead Economist, Gender, World Bank) presented the Strategy document.

The event provided an opportunity for MPs to be updated on the WB Gender Strategy 2024-30, on how to accelerate gender equality for a sustainable, resilient, and inclusive future, in line with the WB’s Evolution Roadmap, while focusing on innovation, financing, and collective action to end gender-based violence, elevating human capital, expanding and enabling economic and leadership opportunities. MPs were also briefed about the current global gender context and how the World Bank is using data and operational experience to create a strategy to fight gender inequality.

PAM remains concerned with many key gender issues, which are still present in the Euro-Mediterranean and Gulf region. To list a few: domestic violence, unequal access to education, health, the full participation in the job market, the structural lack of women involvement in politics and conflict resolution, the traffic of women and girls, and the lack of access to new information technologies.

There are only 23% women parliamentarians in the PAM region, far from the 30% estimated by the UN as necessary to advance an egalitarian agenda. It remains therefore necessary for parliamentarians around the world to continue to promote a feminist and  egalitarian agenda.

The draft WB Gender Strategy 2024-30 puts forward the bold ambition to accelerate gender equality for a sustainable, resilient, and inclusive future in alignment with the WB  Evolution Roadmap.

PAM’s active participation and contribution to these meetings is yet another testimony of the Assembly’s concrete commitment towards the promotion of parliamentary engagement and cooperation for sustainable economic development in the Euro-Mediterranean and Gulf regions. //