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To promote gender equitable, socio-economic development and improve national capacities for enhanced gender mainstreaming in the national development processes, the Government of Liberia adopted in 2009 the National Gender Policy as an instrument to break with the past and moving on with sustainable development for both women and men and to eliminate all forms of gender based discrimination. The NGP also provides a mechanism for accountability within the Government itself and for other stakeholders, in eliminating all forms of gender based discrimination. Promoting gender equality is a development strategy for reducing poverty levels among women and men, improving health and living standards and enhancing efficiency of public investments. The attainment of gender equality is considered as a prerequisite for the achievement of sustainable development, as stated by the Vision inspiring the Strategy: A just society where girls and boys, women and men enjoy their human rights equally on the basis of non-discrimination; where the full potentials of all, irrespective of sex, are harnessed towards achieving equitable rapid economic growth and equal access to social, financial and technological resources.The Overall Objective of the NGP is to serve as a framework and guideline in mainstreaming gender and empowering women and vulnerable groups in the national development processes. Other objectives are: (i) to enhance women‘s and girls‘ empowerment for sustainable and equitable development; and (ii) create and strengthen gender responsive structures, processes and mechanisms for development in which both women and men participate equally, have access to, and benefit from all the country‘s resources.The priority interventions and action areas are summarized under four thematic areas: (i) peace and national security; (ii) livelihoods; (iii) human rights; and (iv) governance. The implementation process, since it is multi-sectoral as well as complex for the involvement of different and all stakeholders‘ interests, intricate communication function, mobilizing of resources, setting up administrative structures, may need to be phased and therefore effective coordination will be paramount.Internal and external monitoring mechanisms shall be developed to ensure high level accountability for meeting the national gender equality, women‘s empowerment and children development objectives. A mid-term evaluation of the Policy shall be carried out after five years of implementation. Terminal and ex-post evaluations will also be conducted at the end of ten years of implementation of the Policy as appropriate.As for the Governance, given that it is one of the main areas of intervention, the NGP envisages a series of actions to intervene strongly in the institutional sector. On a general level, State parties who have made commitments to human rights become duty-bearers who have an obligation to meet their commitments. All sectors need to apply a gender lens to the diagnosis of their sector, thus they need: (i) to consider how the achievement of gender equality supports their own sectoral objectives; (ii) to put in place mechanisms that ensure their interventions promote gender equality and achieve tangible results; (iii) Ministries and Agencies need to refer to the gender-responsive elements of the conventions, treaties, conferences, MDG goals that are relevant to their sector when developing their strategies, programs, budgets, and monitoring and evaluation frameworks. Proposed gender programs are: (i) programs to increase the number of women at all levels, including key decision-making positions, particularly in security sector reform, demobilization, disarmament, and reintegration, as well as democratization and governance processes, including constitutional reviews and electoral reforms; (ii) a full- fledged gender capacity building program for the different actors at national and local levels including women leaders; (iii) strategies to empower the girl child to take up leadership positions in schools and tertiary institutions.
