New Delhi, Oct 13 : Union Minister for Women and Child Development Renuka Chowdhury has called for South-South cooperation to facilitate efforts and joint collaboration for promoting strategies and programme for women development.

Inaugurating two-day meeting of women''s forum of Indo-Brazil and South Africa (IBSA) here today, Chowdhury said while women applaud achievements and advancement towards gender equality, entry into mainstream economy and other critical institutional linkages have not met expectations.

"Central to this is the people to people contact that builds on sharing and learning from successful practices with IBSA countries," she added.

She stressed the need for consolidation of IBSA initiatives and collaboration at regional level for promoting women development and welfare.

The IBSA women''s forum is being attended by the Ministerial level delegations from Brazil and South Africa, diplomats, parliamentarians and UN representatives.

The deliberations of the women''s forum over the next two days will focus on the theme ''Strengthening the women''s movement for an equitable society''.

The meeting will also share best practices and finalize the recommendations to be presented at the summit meeting on October 15.

To strengthen the joint initiatives and cooperation in identified programmatic areas, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) is also proposed to be signed between the three countries during the summit meeting.

Cooperation under this MoU is proposed to be implemented through exchange of visits, sharing of information, civil society partnerships and human resource development and training.

The IBSA women''s forum was launched in October last year as an addition to the business, academic and parliamentary forums of IBSA, to facilitate joint effort and collaboration of the three countries in the field of women''s development.

Over the last one year, the women''s forum has firmly established the common areas for action in promoting strategies for gender equality and accelerated poverty eradication. The programmatic areas identified are relevant to all the three countries.

These include women and micro-finance, skills development and capacity building, gender budgeting, violence against women, civil society partnerships, macro economic policy and research and cooperation at multilateral forums. (ANI)