Equatorial Guinea signed the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa (The Maputo Protocol) on the 30th of January 2005 and ratified it on the 27th of October, 2009. Despite the government effort to ensure equal opportunity for women, customs and traditions remains an obstacle to women’s enjoyment of their human rights. According to UN Women, 29.5% of women aged 20–24 years old who were married or in a union before age 18. As of February 2021, only 23% of seats in parliament were held by women. While equal representation has not been achieved in any aspect of life, considerable progress is being made. However, as of December 2020, only 23.8% of indicators needed to monitor the SDGs from a gender perspective were available, with gaps in key areas, in particular: unpaid care and domestic work, key labour market indicators, such as the unemployment rate and gender pay gaps and information and communications technology skills. In addition, many areas – such as gender and poverty, physical and sexual harassment, women’s access to assets (including land), and gender and the environment – lack comparable methodologies for regular monitoring. Closing these gender data gaps is essential for achieving gender-related SDG commitments in Equatorial Guinea.
2016
The Government adopted the National Multi-sectoral Action Plan for Promotion of Women and Gender Equity in 2016-2020.
2018
Equatorial Guinea promulgated a New Technologies Law, whose content and corresponding articles are aligned in the extension of access to new information and communication technologies for the development without any discrimination between men and women in rural or urban areas.
2018
A capacity-building event was held in collaboration with the Ministry of Justice and CNDN to provide training to 102 justice professionals (judges, prosecutors for minors, justice officials) on the child rights principles and implementation of relevant legislation.
2020
The Ministry of Social Affairs and Gender Equality adopted the new National Policy on Gender and a new National Strategic Multi-sectoral Action Plan in the field of Gender for the period for the period 2020 – 2024.
References
Information regarding the country’s 2018 capacity-building event can be found on page 10 of UNICEF’s 2018 Country Report, available here: https://sites.unicef.org/about/annualreport/files/Equatorial_Guinea_2018_COAR.pdf
Information regarding the various national gender policies and action plans can be found in the Beijing +25 Country Report (2019), available at: https://www.unwomen.org/-/media/headquarters/attachments/sections/csw/64/national-reviews/equatorial%20guinea.pdf?la=en&vs=111