THE Southern African Development Community Parliamentary Forum (Sadc PF) has convened a two-day monitoring and evaluation (M&E) capacity development workshop in Johannesburg, South Africa, aimed at strengthening evidence-based reporting on climate justice, health and sexual and reproductive health rights (SRHR). Supported by Sweden, the workshop brings together directors of research and senior parliamentary researchers from 11 Sadc member parliaments under the Sadc PF’s SRHR, HIV and Aids and Governance Programme. Sadc PF secretary-general Boemo Sekgoma officially opened the workshop yesterday.
She thanked Sweden and other partners, including United Nations Population Fund and the academia, for their support. She stressed the importance of equipping parliaments with robust evidence to guide SRHR, HIV and Aids governance responses in the region. “Effective legislatures are the key to representative democracy.
Climate action must be participatory, bottom-up and context specific,” Sekgoma said. “To achieve climate justice, we must also achieve SRHR justice, documenting how comprehensive SRHR empowers communities to become active leaders and decision-makers in climate action.” She urged participants to generate compelling, evidence-based case studies that highlight how climate change affects SRHR outcomes, from school dropouts and early marriages to restricted access to safe abortion, contraception and information. “Without a robust SRHR framework, there can be no sustainable socio-economic development,” she stressed adding, “Parliamentary champions, backed by data and a rights-based approach, could be game-changers in countering climate injustice.” Jacob Segale, the monitoring and evaluation manager under the SRHR, HIV and Aids Governance Project at the Sadc PF, said the workshop’s primary goal was to strengthen the capacity of participants to design, document and present outcome-based evidence that demonstrated tangible programme impact. He said specific objectives included training participants in advanced M&E methodologies for results and impact reporting; equipping them with tools to develop case studies and stories of significant change; harmonising reporting templates and data collection frameworks across the 11 participating countries; and aligning country-level evidence with Sweden’s SRHR priorities, including gender equality, accountability and access to rights-based services.
