was possible to reduce mother to child transmission from an incidence of 30% to less than de 2%. The “DREAM” programme consists of articulated efforts between the Government and the Santo Egídio Community targeting basically the treatment of women and children with HIV. With regards to gender, the Parliament approved a Law on Domestic Violence and the Government took a decision of including the issue of domestic violence in the curriculum for the training of Law and Order agents. Various initiatives are under way both from the Government and civil society organizations as to make such laws widely known. With reference to the participation of women in public life, namely in decision making processes, the country has been recording remarkable achievements. For example, in the Parliament, women represent 40% of the total 250 Members of Parliament. Two parliament benches (out of three) are led by women and at least two Parliamentary Commissions are also headed by women. There are major challenges faced by the country in the thematic area of economic development, a part from those mentioned in this progress report namely: (i) the need to eliminate the distrust that with the entry of large foreign investment, the access to land by the population will be in danger; (ii) to promote social housing for the population, which means low cost housing, in particular for youth because housing continues to be accessible to only a small number of people; (ii) improvement of the quality of education by adopting a constructive and positive perspective; (iv) involvement of community leadership and parents in education in order to revert gradually the trend of school drop outs by girls; (v) to reduce new HIV infections by children through improving access to low cost prophylaxis for HIV pregnant women and the reduction of maternal death due to HIV; and (vi) implement fully the Maputo Declaration in the context of NEPAD which determines that 10% of State budgets must be allocated to agriculture. 12