Windhoek — NAMIBIA has been chosen to chair the Seventh Regional African Conference on Women, and for the next five years as well.

The appointment comes at a crucial time when the world is looking with keen interest to developments leading to the Beijing+10, to be held in New York, United States of America next year.

Namibia happened to be the chief negotiator during the Beijing conference a decade ago.

Minister of Women and Child Welfare, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, told New Era yesterday, it was an honour for Namibia to be entrusted with the chairmanship, which was in actual fact supposed to go to North Africa.

Other members of the bureau, which will assist to head the conference along with Namibia in the next five years, are Mauritania as first vice-chair, Nigeria as second vice-chair, Gabon as first rapporteur and Rwanda as second rapporteur.

All 53 African countries were represented at the meeting, which took place in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia under the auspices of the African Development Forum (ADF).

The conference passed a resolution for African women to seek dialogue between them and their European counterparts to find a lasting solution to peace on the African continent. This is aimed at getting European women putting pressure on their governments to stop companies from manufacturing weapons, which are ravaging African nations.

This is in view that developed nations are the manufacturers of weapons of war, while the wars take place mostly in Africa.

"If there are no weapons, there will be no wars," said Nandi-Ndaitwah.

Namibia will thus have to provide leadership and has since asked the Economic Commission for Africa and the African Union to sit and organise a meeting of the bureau before the end of the year, to go into the details of the dialogue.

"This is a major activity Namibia has to steer. We want it to make an impact to have progress made afterwards," she added.

The conference also looked at the progress the continent has made on women's issues and found out that it still lagged behind as women were not well represented in decision-making positions, and they were more affected by war, poverty and HIV/AIDS.

However, it also noted that some progress had been made especially on sensitising people on gender is- sues.

This is also in recognition that the African Union has a 50:50 representation of men and women on the commissions.

The conference called on other organisations also to implement the zebra style of representation.

Nandi-Ndaitwah also said the conference came up with a 'Statement of Renewed Commitment' to implement the Dakar and Beijing platforms, but which is still in draft form.

To economically empower women, the conference felt that developed nations should seriously consider debt relief as a way to empower women because it would allow governments to spend more on the social sector, which benefit women the most.

Other issues that were discussed included health, HIV/AIDS, the girl child and education.