UN Women - Technical Assistance on Strengthening Leadership and Coordination Capacity for Gender Mainstreaming across the Government of Uganda - Kampala

UN Women (UNW), grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, works for the elimination of discrimination against women and girls; the empowerment of women; and the achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security. Placing women’s rights at the center of all its efforts, the UN Women leads and coordinates United Nations system efforts to ensure that commitments on gender equality are translated into action throughout the world. It provides strong and coherent leadership in support of Member States’ priorities and efforts while building effective partnerships with civil society and other relevant actors.

With support from the Department for International Development, UK (DFID), UN Women in collaboration with the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development (MGLSD), has been coordinating the implementation of a four-year Joint Programme on Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment (UNJPGE) since 2011. The planned outcomes of the UNJPGE are five (5) and these include:strengthened government capacity in gender responsive policy-making, planning, budgeting and programme management; Improved access to essential services by survivors of sexual gender based violence; Increased girl’s retention and completion rates at primary school level; Enhanced civil society capacity to advocate and demand government accountability for gender responsive laws and policies;  Enhanced effectiveness in the delivery of gender responsive governance amongst UN agencies.

These outcomes have been pursued in line with the priorities set in the Uganda Gender Policy (2007), the National Vision 2040, the Social Sector Investment Plan for Uganda (2011-2015) and the United Nations System-wide Action Plan on Gender Equality. Therefore a series of efforts have been geared towards strengthening the capacity MGLSD to provide synergetic leadership across sectors in government on designing and implementing gender responsive policies, plans budgets and programmes. Nonetheless, capacity building efforts implemented so far at MGLSD are yet to be explicitly aligned to the goal of the UNJPGE, which is: gender equality in access to services and opportunities. This is why MGLSD has partnered with UN Women, to seek technical support towards strengthening the leadership and coordination capacity of MGLSD in regards to gender mainstreaming across its departments and selected government sectors.

View the original article here