CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) Gender Expert Meeting, Istanbul, Turkey, 2008--UNIFEM
Recognizing the significant necessity of well-functioning and systematic monitoring of implementation national commitments for gender equality, UNIFEM-CIS called a regular meeting of CIS gender experts in Istanbul, Turkey. GDI's Dr. Janet Mancini Billson was invited to present her design for developing baseline data for the 12 CIS countries on key gender indicators harmonized from the Beijing Platform for Action, the Convention to Eliminate All Discrimination against Women, and the Millennium Goals. Her report to UNIFEM-CIS was submitted at the end of 2009.
The meeting in Istanbul was devoted to the issues of gender monitoring, specifically looking at how best the existing practices and tested tools on gender monitoring can be capitalized and used by national partners in CIS countries. The CIS Expert Meeting gathered CIS expertise and practices on gender responsive monitoring of national strategies and sectoral programmes, and focused on identifying common entry points/strategies for operationalizing gender monitoring mechanisms as an integral part of overall national monitoring system in the CIS countries.
The CIS Expert Meeting emphasized the importance of gender monitoring for:
enhancing government accountability for gender equality by providing evidence based information on the status of gender equality in the CIS countries;
fostering greater local ownership in the process of gender-responsive policy making and budgeting;
enhancing women’s activism to advocate for practical implementation of gender equality commitments;
timely, systematic and evidence based tracking progress on commitments to gender equality in the CIS countries.
The participants in the Gender Expert Meeting, UNIFEM-CIS, Istanbul, Turkey