December 10, 2020
United States Provides Assistance to Bolster Women’s Economic Opportunities
U.S. Ambassador Lisa Peterson is pleased to announce that the United States is providing Eswatini $1 million in financial assistance to bolster women’s economic opportunities in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The assistance will pay for a three-year W-GDP Women’s Employment for Economic Recovery project, which aims to address legal and cultural barriers to women’s economic participation, give them better access to credit and financial services, and develop male allies to champion and help sustain these reforms. The goal of the project is to provide tools and resources that will empower more women to participate meaningfully in the economy.
Funding for the project comes from USAID’s Women’s Global Development and Prosperity (W-GDP) Fund, and it will be implemented by the American Bar Association Rule of Law Initiative (ABA-ROLI) and its core partner the Grameen Foundation. ABA-ROLI will bring to the project its decades of global experience in implementing rule of law programs, and Grameen will bring its depth of expertise implementing women-centered economic empowerment programs all over the world.
The United States is proud to invest in Eswatini with such a sizable and impactful contribution of financial assistance, particularly at this moment in time as the country begins to rebuild after COVID. This investment will go a long way in countering the adverse effects of the pandemic, which have severely damaged the economic situation of marginalized groups, particularly women, worsening the power imbalance that feeds gender-based violence.
We applaud the efforts and interventions already underway in Eswatini in support of women and gender equality, and we look forward to building new collaborations and strengthening existing partnerships to give women more tools to strengthen their economic situation, which will in turn benefit the entire country.