Aware that women's literacy and improved girls' education spin off a wide range of benefits including improving the welfare of the family and th~ quality of the labour force, increasing the tax base, and boosting levels of agricultural output; Noting that, while women's participation in the labour force has increased significantly over the past two decades, wide disparities still persist between men and women in terms of access to employment and remuneration; Conscious of the fact that low levels of women's representation in decision-making increase poverty and impact negatively on women's ability to derive full benefit from their participation in the economies of their countries; Also conscious that under-representation of women in decision-making structures reflects the level of maturity of the democratic process in that state, and is an indication that a society is less democratic and less egalitarian; Concerned that religion and culture are often erroneously used as a justification and an excuse for perpetrating and perpetuating discrimination against women; HEREBY AGREE TO: 1. Promote gender specific economic, social, and legal measures aimed at combating the HIV/AIDS pandemic, make treatment and social services available to women at the local level more responsive to the needs of families that are providing care, and increase budgetary allocations in these sectors so as to alleviate women's burden of care; 2. Undertake concerted action to provide support for those who care for people infected and affected by HIV/AIDS, especially women, children and the elderly who in most cases are grandmothers; 3. Urge the full participation and representation of women in the prevention, resolution, and management of conflicts in Africa; 4. Extend the gender equality principle that we have adopted regarding the Commission of the African Union to all the other organs of the African Union, to the Regional Economic Communities, and to the national and local levels; 5. Mount, within the next one year, a campaign against the recruitment of child soldiers and abuse of girl children as wives and sex slaves, and thus bring an end to this inhuman treatment of our children; 6. Lead from the front sustained public campaigns against gender based violence for the protection of women at the national level; 7 Galvanize national legislative processes to promulgate and enforce specific laws relating to violence against women in all its forms; 8. Deploy all efforts to expand the gains already made in bridging the gender disparity in education and to meet that Millennium Development Goal which seeks to close the gender gap in primary education by the year 2005; 9. Actively promote the implementation of legislation to strengthen women's land, property and inheritance rights including their rights to housing; 10. ' Strengthen measures to reduce women's expand employment opportunities for women, and ensure equal pay for work of equal value; workload,