India-Brazil-South Africa fund drives women’s empowerment through development
United Nations: The India-Brazil-South Africa (IBSA) Fund has emerged as a strong vehicle of South-South cooperation promoting women’s empowerment through development, according to leaders from the three nations.
The Fund is “a far-sighted joint initiative of the government of India, Brazil and South Africa, that has proven its utility by supporting over 50 development assistance projects across close to 40 countries since its establishment in 2004”, Savitri Thakur, India’s Minister of State for Women and Child Development, said on Thursday.
“To walk the talk, we have supported many projects relating to the development of women”, she said at an event commemorating the success stories of Women-Led Development and South-South Cooperation.
“South-South cooperation holds profound value for gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls”, said Sindisiwe Chikunga, South Africa’s Minister for Women, Youth and Persons with Disabilities.
She said that “at a time when multilateralism is under pressure and development finance is increasingly conditional and contested”, the role of the IBSA Fund becomes important.
“In fact”, she said, “IBSA Fund represents an opportunity for voices of emerging and developing economies to carry equal weight and be accountable to the people they serve”.
She said that IBSA’s significance for the Global South is that it “is proof and a proof of concept for a development paradigm that centres Southern agency, rejects dependency and demonstrates that countries that have themselves navigated post-colonial reconstruction must drive sustainable development”.
India’s Permanent Representative P Harish said, “Empowerment of women in enabling their effective contribution to our productive economies is the force multiplier”.
“In a world where traditional aid architectures are under strain, where development assistance is increasingly fragmented, and where trust between the Global North and South is increasingly frayed, the IBSA Fund offers a trustworthy model that demonstrates the effectiveness of South-South solidarity”, he said.
What sets it apart is that “the Fund operates on a demand-driven basis, meaning partner countries themselves identify their needs, reflecting the core principle of South-South cooperation”, he said.
Brazil’s Vice Minister for Women, Thalia Barbosa Rodrigues Neves, said, “There will be no truly sustainable or democratic development without the full participation of women”.
“When women have access to income, to education, to land, to credit, technology, social protection and participate in the decision-making spaces, all of society moves forward”, she said.
She cited the examples of IBSA Fund support for Ugandan women in agriculture to expand their food production, Fijian women to learn technologies that improve the health of their families, and female Liberian legislators to strengthen their role in governance.
“These experiences supported by the fund IBSA demonstrate that development led by women, in addition to being a social agenda that’s very powerful, it’s always also a concrete strategy for sustainable development”, she said.