|
Integral tools for the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action
As we commemorate the 15th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and begin to assess the progress gained and the remaining challenges to its implementation, it is important to acknowledge and evaluate the role that research and training have played in the efforts to achieve gender equality and advance women’s empowerment, as well as their potential to further contribute to the realization of the objectives of the Platform for Action.
One of the aims of international UN conventions such as CEDAW and the resulting resolutions and declarations of the World Conferences on Women, such as the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, is to provide a framework for realizing equality between men and women and to establish a series of measures and guidelines for States, the international community and civil society to undertake in order to end gender discrimination. However, while Governments may ratify conventions and accept commitments to advance gender equality and women’s empowerment, implementation can fall short and progress can be slow, as is evident in the review of the implementation of many of the critical areas of the Beijing Platform.
In response to some of the obstacles to implementation, the recent December 2009 Report of the Expert Group Meeting on “The impact of the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action on the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals” identifies what are considered to be the ten most important public strategies emerging from the Beijing Platform for Action that are required in the current context to enhance efforts to realize the MDGs. One of these ten strategies stresses the need to “emphasize the collection and dissemination of data disaggregated by sex that would allow for better understanding of gaps as well as monitoring of policies and their implementation.”
Action-oriented research
Since its inception in 1976, UN-INSTRAW, the United Nations International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women, has equally emphasized the need for on-going, gender-disaggregated research and training. Through its applied research programmes, the Institute aims to make policies and programmes gender-responsive on the basis of concrete research results, the application of lessons learned, and the replication of best practices. This approach allows for flexibility in responding to both existing challenges and new and emerging issues.
Over the past 15 years, UN-INSTRAW has had to adapt its research focus and respond to the important training needs that have arisen in response to ongoing and emerging global challenges affecting women’s lives such as climate change, the effects of globalization, the food and financial crises, HIV/AIDS, and the feminization of poverty. Most of the 12 critical areas of concern in the Beijing Platform for Action continue to affect women, often disproportionately, including the burden of poverty, the effects of armed or other kinds of conflict, unequal access to education and health care, inequality in access to economic resources and productive activities, inequalities in the sharing of power and decision-making, and a lack of respect for women’s rights and persistent discrimination and violence.
Among its research activities over the years, UN-INSTRAW has worked along with multiple partners to address many of these critical areas of concern by developing conceptual frameworks and research methodologies on diverse issues with the aim of: measuring and valuing women’s household production and including these contributions into the system of national accounts; examining women’s access to credit and water in Africa, Asia and Latin America; and evaluating women’s political participation in governance and political processes at the local, national, regional and international levels. UN-INSTRAW studies have highlighted the gendered effects of globalization; the impact of structural adjustment policies on women’s access to work, health and education; and the effects of violence against women, conceiving them as obstacles to economic and social development, the eradication of poverty, sustainable peace and the achievement of international commitments such as the Beijing Platform for Action, CEDAW and the Millennium Development Goals.
The Institute’s research currently focuses on three thematic areas which strongly correlate with the Beijing Platform’s 12 critical areas of concern: i) Gender, peace and security; ii) Gender, migration and development; and iii) Gender, governance and women’s political participation. Within these three areas, UN-INSTRAW engages in a continuous cycle of analysis, learning and action by articulating research, capacity-building and knowledge management.
Examples of recent research activities in these areas have included: a study on the impact of natural disasters on vulnerable populations with an analysis of the provision of sexual and reproductive health and the prevention of violence against women, and a series of publications evaluating women’s political participation in governance and political processes at the local level in order to increase their representation in decision-making positions and to promote their full participation on the basis of equality in all spheres of society.
The Beijing Platform highlights the need to review, adopt and implement macroeconomic and development policies that are responsive to the needs of women. UN-INSTRAW’s conceptual framework developed in “Crossing Borders: Migration and Development from a Gender Perspective,” provides a methodology for research and analysis of the role of remittances in development, questioning the development paradigms that fail to take into consideration the gender dimensions of the migratory phenomenon. UN-INSTRAW has received positive feedback from researchers and academics in the field of gender and migration studies, as well as policymakers and members of NGOs on the usefulness of this publication in their work and in the advancement of their studies.
The Institute’s participatory and innovative approaches to research have produced results that have served to better inform the design of UN-INSTRAW’s training and capacity-building programmes, as well as to strengthen stakeholder capacity to uphold international commitments, to effectively integrate gender perspectives in all policies and programmes and to better address the ongoing and potential challenges faced by women in vulnerable situations. As stated in the Beijing Declaration: “it is essential to design, implement and monitor, with the full participation of women, effective, efficient and mutually reinforcing gender-sensitive policies and programmes, including development policies and programmes, at all levels that will foster the empowerment and advancement of women.”
Capacity-building and Training
UN-INSTRAW’s capacity-building and training programmes have also addressed many of the areas of concern identified in the Platform for Action, with similar strategic objectives and actions. For example, capacity-building activities such as trainings to increase women’s access and abilities to use new information and communications technologies (ICTs) in select countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have worked to implement the strategic objectives of the Platform’s Section J on “Women and the Media.” Trainings have also been conducted with Algerian, Moroccan and Tunisian journalists, parliamentarians and members of political parties on issues related to women’s political participation and the portrayal of women in the media.
The Institute has also produced capacity-building tools that mirror the objectives of Section E of the Beijing Platform on “Women and Armed Conflict”. The UN-INSTRAW Gender, Peace and Security programme encourages successful implementation of international mandates and commitments in the area of peace and security through the use of its guide to develop National Action Plans for the implementation of UNSCR 1325. The UN-INSTRAW/DCAF toolkit for integrating gender into Security Sector Reform also aims to encourage the integration of gender perspectives within the work of the UN. In line with the authors of the Beijing Declaration, UN-INSTRAW supports the belief that “local, national, regional and global peace is attainable and is inextricably linked with the advancement of women, who are a fundamental force for leadership, conflict resolution and the promotion of lasting peace at all levels.”
The 15-year review of the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action is also an opportune time to reflect on the progress of gender mainstreaming that was defined during the Fourth World Conference on Women as crucial to organizational development, as well as key to changing attitudes and behaviours and building capacity at the operational level. The conclusion of the Report of the Expert Group Meeting on the impact of the Beijing Platform on the MDG goals, however, was that: “Many of the levers of change identified in the Platform for Action – gender mainstreaming, gender-sensitive budgeting, systematic collection of data disaggregated by sex – have not received the necessary investments to make them effective, including capacity-building, training and monitoring and accountability for real results.”
Gender training as a concrete mechanism for building capacity for gender mainstreaming, and a way to make development cooperation more inclusive and responsive, has been implemented - from multiple perspectives, using different methodologies, and with varying levels of commitment - since the Fourth World Conference on Women. Overall, the results of gender training, whether part of larger gender mainstreaming processes or not, have been mixed. What has passed for “gender training” has covered such a wide variety of experiences, topics and audiences that there is no longer an agreed definition on what gender training is, how it should be done, and with whom. UN-INSTRAW has found that while both institutions and governments have attempted to instill gender-sensitivity and responsiveness into their staff, what has passed for “gender training” has overall, not worked to the wider purpose of supporting, contributing to, initiating or affecting transformative change in gender relations or to an increase in capacity to deliver development programming services for women equally with men.
In response to this obstacle, UN–INSTRAW developed a Gender Training Community of Practice (CoP) in 2008, which brings together practitioners from all over the world with a diversity of knowledge and experiences on Gender Training, in order to promote dialogue and analysis of the current approaches and theories on gender training, to identify the achievements and challenges in the field and to reflect on how gender training can be strengthened as a component of gender mainstreaming and sustainable development. The Gender Training CoP currently has more than 200 members from 60 different countries who exchange knowledge, recommendations, resources and good practices.
In addition to Communities of Practice, UN-INSTRAW has also found that virtual dialogues have been useful for exchanging experiences and enriching ongoing debates through new perspectives and analyses. The Gender Training CoP has hosted three virtual dialogues on: “Current Situation in Gender Training”; “Gender Training Methodologies”; and “Gender Training for Women's Political Participation and Leadership.” Virtual dialogues have also been conducted by UN-INSTRAW’s three thematic programme on topics such as: “Creating Gender Sensitive Migration Policy: Best Practices and Lessons Learned”; “Planning for Action: Implementing Resolution 1325 at the National Level”; and an “Expert Round Table on Gender-Sensitive Public Policies in Latin America.” These dialogues have helped to inform the development of the Institute’s research methodologies and policy recommendations, as well as provided the opportunity for practitioners, trainers, policy makers, members of civil society and members of academia around the world to share best practices, experiences and knowledge.
The Beijing Platform for Action specifically stated that in order to be successful, it will “require adequate mobilization of resources at the national and international levels as well as new and additional resources to the developing countries from all available funding mechanisms, including multilateral, bilateral and private sources for the advancement of women; financial resources to strengthen the capacity of national, subregional, regional and international institutions; […] and the establishment or strengthening of mechanisms at all levels for accountability to the world’s women.” Yet, the Report of the Expert Group Meeting concluded that “limited financial, technical or social resources at national level, and insufficient international aid also contributed to lack of progress in implementation of many of the proposed measures of the Platform for Action.”
In response, UN-INSTRAW will launch a new project this year that will focus on supporting the monitoring of aid effectiveness from a gender perspective. This project will include: a participatory evaluation of aid flows in selected countries with emphasis on their expected results and actual impacts from a gender perspective; capacity-building workshops for key actors and members of civil society to strengthen capacities to monitor aid flows and demand accountability from governments; political dialogues at the national level in both donor and aid receiving countries on aid effectiveness from a gender perspective; and the production of a series of recommendations directed to both donors and members of civil society on aid effectiveness with a gender perspective and the promotion of civil society engagement.
As the 15-year review of the implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action is conducted, UN-INSTRAW strongly recommends that these types of research and capacity-building activities that promote the use of gender-disaggregated data and a gender analysis to inform policy decisions as well as promote dialogue and cooperation among women, civil society and governments, be promoted and utilized as effective tools to further advance the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action.
|
