Chapo launchs Fundo for Womens empowerment – aimnews.org

Maputo, 7 April (AIM) – Mozambican President, Daniel Chapo, launched on Tuesday a Fund for the Empowerment of Women, known as Empodera.

Marking Mozambican Women’s Day, celebrated every year on April 7th, Chapo stated “Empodera is an initiative that responds to one of the commitments made by our country: to promote women’s economic autonomy, expand their access to opportunities, support women’s productive initiatives, and create conditions for more women to move from a situation of vulnerability to prosperity, with dignity and hope”.

He added that the Empodera program also enshrines the commitment to combat domestic violence, gender-based violence and the murder of women.

“Our goal is clear,” Chapo said. “We want women to be economically empowered and socially protected. We want girls with guaranteed rights and we want a society that does not accept violence as a destiny or silence as an answer.”

“We are committed to better conditions so that every woman and every girl can live with safety, dignity and hope”, declared the President.

Promoting the rights of women and girls “must be understood as a condition for peace, national unity, reconciliation, poverty reduction and the construction of a fairer and more developed Mozambique,” ​​Chapo added.

He recalled that the country’s first President, Samora Machel, once declared that “the emancipation of women is not an act of charity: it is a necessity of the revolution, a guarantee of its continuity and the condition of its triumph”.

Chapo said he was certain that “there will be no sustainable development, no lasting peace, no shared prosperity as long as barriers that prevent women from fully exercising their rights persist.”

“We want a society in which men and women realize their potential and participate in equal dignity and opportunities”, he declared. “For us, the promotion of Mozambican women is a matter of justice, democracy, development and the future of the nation”.

Chapo noted that great advances have already been made in empowering women: thus, there is almost parity between the sexes in Mozambican secondary education (49.9 percent of secondary school students are girls) and, in 2025, 97 percent of all registered births will occur in health facilities.

“No society will be truly free until its women are fully respected,” said Chapo. “No economy will be genuinely inclusive as long as its women do not have equal access to opportunities. And no democracy will be truly solid as long as silences imposed by fear, dependence or discrimination persist.”
(AIM)
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