Palestine Monetary Authority, UN Women sign agreement to enhance women’s economic role

Tuesday, 2 March 2021

Ramallah - The Palestinian Monetary Authority (PMA) and UN Women signed an agreement in Ramallah on Tuesday, 2 March 2021, to enhance cooperation to achieve women’s financial inclusion and economic empowerment as well as facilitate their access to various sources of funding and strengthen their role in the Palestinian economy.

According to the agreement, the two parties will work to enhance women's access to sustainable income, decent work and economic independence through the adoption of national policies that contribute to improving working conditions and access to better economic opportunities for women in Palestine.

In addition, the agreement provides for PMA and UN Women to also work to promote gender equality at the national level as well as empowering women and enabling the monetary authority to develop and adopt gender-responsive policies, tools, services and procedures that enhance women’s inclusion and leadership.

In a statement at the ceremony to launch the implementation of the agreement, the Governor of the PMA, Dr. Feras Milhem, said that the monetary authority has a high level of interest in advocating for women and gender issues, noting that the PMA held the 2017 Palestinian International Banking Conference under the title “Empowering Women Bankers”, in order to mobilize, activate and develop the concerted efforts of the parties involved so as to create an enabling environment as a requirement for women’s banking and financial empowerment.

Dr. Milhem added that the PMA cooperated closely with UN Women in the participatory auditing process, and is committed to its conclusions, especially that they are closely related to the principles of governance that is at the core of the PMA’s work, and these results were taken into account in the strategy of the PMA that was adopted and the work is underway on, moreover, the PMA is one of the institutions in which there are women in different levels of the upper and middle management, and there has been development in recent years in terms of increasing the employment of women, and that the field of capacity building and providing training opportunities is available to all without exception.

For her part, UN Women Special Representative in Palestine, Ms. Maryse Guimond, said, “This agreement comes to strengthen the strategic cooperation between UN Women and the Palestinian Monetary Authority, and to increase women's access to economic opportunities and to the Monetary Authority programmes at the national level.”

She added that the agreement aims also to support “women’s participation and leadership role in the Palestinian economy, especially those related to the implementation of the national financial inclusion policies led by the PMA to benefit all women, especially the most marginalized in Palestinian society.”

It is worth noting that the results of the participatory audit from the gender perspective of the PMA, which were announced at the end of the year 2019, showed that the PMA has a strategy to enhance the role of women in the Palestinian economy through the National Financial Inclusion Strategy, and the qualitative attention and high-level awareness of the issue of gender integration and achieving Gender equality in the PMA, the banking sector and the Palestinian financial sector in general, given that this approach plays a fundamental role in the sustainability and comprehensiveness of development processes.

In addition, the PMA and UN Women have cooperated in organizing a series of awareness-raising workshops for Palestinian women entrepreneurs on financial inclusion, within the framework of the joint regional programme, " Promoting productive employment and decent work for women in Egypt, Jordan and Palestine," implemented by UN Women and the International Labor Organization, through generous funding by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA).

The awareness workshops also included the "Estidama" Sustainability program for financing small, medium and micro enterprises that have been economically affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, including projects headed by women. It is a program established and managed by the PMA, and is implemented through banks and specialized lending institutions, further PMA is working on advancing the program to achieve economic development in accordance with the Government's vision.