The Africa-EU Partnership - A Joint EU Strategy, Lisbon, Portugal, 9 December 2007

“63. Africa and the EU will also strengthen the inter-institutional fabric of their administrations to mainstream gender equality in all strategies, policies, programmes and actions. They will address the entire range of women’s rights and strengthen their efforts to eliminate illiteracy and to ensure equal access of girls to education, to fight the feminisation of poverty, to promote women in decision-making positions and peace processes, and fight sexual and gender based violence against women and early forced marriage, and work towards the abandonment of female genital mutilation and cutting (FGM/C) and other harmful traditional practices, as set out in the Beijing Platform for Action and the AU Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality.”