C. Commitment to further action and initiatives

1. The WID initiative

In his delegate's address to the Forth World Conference on Women, Japan's representative announced promotion of " The WID Initiative (WID: Women in Development; support for women in developing countries)" which stipulates consideration of both the empowerment of women and gender equality when extending development aid.
He declared Japan would endeavor to expand development aid to WID centered on three fields: Education; Health; and Economic and Social Participation.
In concrete terms, this means that in addition to actively implementing projects in which women are major beneficiaries such as building job training centers, implementing job and literacy training mainly targeting women, cooperating to improving maternal and child health, etc., Japan endeavors to have specialized staff participate in survey teams to carry out planning and surveys from a gender-WID perspective and to gather citizens' opinions (particularly women) in communities to be assisted, etc.; and thereby to promote women's participation and benefits at both project formulation and implementation stages.
The goals of above-mentioned three fields are as follows.

(1) Education

Japan intends by cooperating with developing countries and other donors to support efforts to close the gender gap in developing countries for 6-11-year-old children by 2005, and to provide universal education for all 6-11-year-old girls as well as boys by 2010.

(2) Health

Japan intends by cooperating with developing countries and other donors to support efforts to reduce the infant mortality rate (the number of children under 1 year old dying per 1000 child births) to below 35 per 1000 by 2015 in all countries and regions.

(3) Economic and social participation

Japan intends to support enhancement of job skills training and learning opportunities for women to acquire relevant skills, improvement of women's working environments, and establishment of a legal and institutional framework regarding women's issues.
In view of the importance of assisting micro-enterprises which are often run by women, Japan has extended loan assistance to the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh and the Indian Small Enterprise Promotion Project which have priority measures for women entrepreneurs.
Japan intends to continue supporting the introduction of similar aid programs for women in other developing countries, and to extend active support and financial aid when such programs have been introduced.
Based on the WID Initiative described above, in implementing each aid project Japan endeavors to pay close attention to women's participation of all stages of the project including formulation, implementation, and evaluation.
This depends on the type of aid in question, e.g. technical aid (dispatch of members of the Japan Oversees Cooperation Volunteers and specialists, programs accepting trainees etc.,) grants, loans, subsidies for NGO programs and so on, and to their acquisition of benefits from aid.
In particular, Japan supports women at a grass roots level, and provides grass root grants to respond to diverse needs of the developing countries.
In addition, Japan carries out programs to support women in rural villages exhibit their ability to participate in development, and an international volunteer savings scheme facilitates the implementation of programs supporting women's independence.
In addition to the above, Japan endeavors to implement projects (multi - bilateral projects) in cooperation with other donor countries and international institutions.
For example, from 1995, as part of the US-Japan Common Agenda for WID fields, Japan and the United States have been cooperating to encourage mainly girls education and micro-enterprises, and are achieving solid results in Guatemala, Cambodia and Egypt.
Japan has been cooperating with the United Nations Development Plan (UNDP) in Guatemala in the field of girls education, and the UNDP and the United Nations' Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam to promote women's participation in economic development, by holding regional seminars and workshops, dispatching survey teams, and so on.