CCDH Committee on Gender Set up

As a national institution ensuring the promotion and protection of human rights and defending freedoms of citizens, the Advisory Council on Human Rights (CCDH) has made combating discrimination against women one of its key concerns in its advisory opinions, annual reports and its programs aiming to prevent abuses against women and to uphold the human rights culture. These concerns should be translated into an approach and a strategy to ensure women’s empowerment and gender mainstreaming in public policies.

Through its working groups, general and issue-specific reports, activities, partnerships, and particularly through the experience of the Equity and Reconciliation Commission (IER), the CCDH came to the conclusion that there was a lack that should be addressed as regards gender issues. Therefore, the CCDH saw it of paramount importance to set up a gender mechanism to achieve gender equality and incorporate the gender approach in its various actions.

In accordance with Article 32 of the CCDH House Rules, a gender committee was established. It is composed of:

- The CCDH President;

- The CCDH Secretary General;

- Chairmen of the CCDH working groups;

- Rapporteurs of the CCDH working groups;

- National activists specialized in the field;

- Different experts the help of whom the committee can seek in its work.

Gender mainstreaming in policies and programs is a methodological use of the gender approach in all stages of planning policies, programs and projects, and their implementation, monitoring and evaluation, and in the preparation of budgets.

The Committee operates at two levels:

- At the internal level (in conjunction with the CCDH)

This is to support the development of visions and action plans for mainstreaming the gender approach in the CCDH work programs by means of a participatory diagnosis to identify gender inequalities in the CCDH; to make an analysis of the documents and to check whether they take into account the gender approach; to evaluate the CCDH programs and projects in accordance with the gender approach; to monitor and follow up the effectiveness of the implementation of an action plan for gender mainstreaming in the CCDH programs; to raise the awareness and conduct training through organizing training sessions in the field of gender equality; to develop a training action plan based on the results of the diagnosis to enhance the capacity of the CCDH members and staff as regards gender mainstreaming in procedures of appointment, recruitment, programs, budgets, reports, studies and research.

- At the external level

The Committee shall play a key role in proposing advisory opinions on making amendments to laws, procedures and policies that prevent women from enjoying their full rights by means of the annual reports; in raising the awareness of stakeholders (organizing conferences, training programs, cooperating with similar institutions to respect and promote women’s rights); in monitoring and following up through developing qualitative and quantitative indicators to help monitor the evolution of women’s rights; in making a comparative analysis of national legislations and administrative procedures governing women’s rights; in identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the provisions of these legislations; and in drawing up annual reports.