Commonwealth SG lauds Mutharika for youth, women empowerment

The Commonwealth Secretary General (SG), Patricia Scotland has said she was very impressed with the passion President Prof. Peter Mutharika and Malawians had towards child protection, youth and women empowerment.

President Mutharika hosting Commonwealth Secretary General , Patricia Scotland at K

Scotland said this on Thursday at Kamuzu Palace in Lilongwe when she paid the President a courtesy call to brief him on Commonwealth activities in the country and throughout the Commonwealth family.

She said Commonwealth Secretariat would always work together with Malawi government in a number of areas including protecting women and children from all kinds of abuses.

“I’ve been impressed by the passion put into this by the President and all Malawians including traditional leaders.

“Malawi has been exemplary and it is one of the best countries I can think of. The rights of women and girls have to be seriously protected if we are to succeed,” said the Commonwealth SG.

She added that her secretariat looked forward to working with Malawi in ‘Peace in the Home Campaign,’ about to be launched in May to ensure a peaceful Commonwealth family.

In his speech earlier, President Mutharika said his leadership believed that the concern of Malawi and Africa was the youth and that it was for that reason he was the Champion for he had proposed the ‘Youth Empowerment’ theme for the African Union in 2017.

The President said his government had also achieved a lot in empowering women by giving them various opportunities in the society citing the 5 commissioners out of the 9 in Malawi Electoral Commission as an example.

“We have achieved a lot in empowering women – in fact, people may not know but Malawi is number 3 in Africa on women empowerment,” said Mutharika.

He added that his government would continue to fight gender and domestic violence, and cultural issues involving women.

The two also discussed climate change and trade among other issues concerning the Commonwealth family.

On climate change, Mutharika said the country was still healing from the dry spell and floods that prevailed the past two years, adding that the pulling out of donor-budget support coupled with the climate change effects was a big challenge.

“The pulling out of budget support was untimely; not that we need to depend on donors all the time, but we needed more time until we could say ‘we’re ready to go’,” said Mutharika.

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