The 5th review meeting of the SAARC Gender Info Base, a joint initiative between the SAARC and UN WOMEN, was held at SAARC Secretariat on the 7th and 8th of June, 2011. The meeting was inaugurated by the Director of Social Affairs Mr. Ibrahim Zuhuree and chaired by the Maldivian Deputy Minister of Health, Ms. Fathmath Afiya.

During the meeting, the SAARC Gender Equality and Empowerment Programme was proposed with SGIB as the central component. The main objective of the proposal is to reprogram the approach in order to address the realization of the other objectives which are in line with the overall MoU of SAARC & UN Women. While SGIB has 5 major objectives, the current project approach is limited by the predisposition to just one objective that deals with the development of a regional resource database by collecting, processing and analyzing gender related information in the region. After comprehensive deliberations on the proposal, the meeting recommended that SAARC Secretariat may submit a detailed proposal to the Technical Committee on Women, Youth and Children for its consideration. Furthermore, the Meeting also discussed the importance of uploading and updating data on the website as frequently as possible so that it could become a major source of information on women empowerment in the region and a hub for new regional initiatives, research and projects.

The meeting was attended by the country focal points from the Member States and senior officials from UN WOMEN.

The Meeting welcomed the offer of Sri Lanka to host the Sixth Review Meeting of SAARC Gender Info Base in 2012. The Meeting also welcomed the offer of Maldives to host the Fourth Meeting of the Focal Points during December 2011.