Gender Balance and Human Rights in EU Delegations

Last week I joined an event organised by WIIS Brussels (http://www.wiis-brussels.org/) at the headquarters of Open Society Foundations about Gender and Human Rights in CSDP missions. The discussion was lead by EU Gender Advisors working in EU Delegations which deal everyday with challenges not only when passing the message about gender to the local population but also internally within colleagues and hierarchy. This represents, in my view, a crucial function in EU Delegations to increase gender mainstreaming and the treatment of gender related issues.

The European External Action Service (EEAS) created a new function for the EU Delegations: the Gender Advisors (1). In some, the positions include both Gender and Human Rights. If this aspect does not disrupts the work in itself, it is recognised that it would be more beneficial if the Delegation could have a separated position for these topics because as extensive as human rights' problems are, it is difficult, in these case, for the advisor to follow both policies, leaving gender to a secondary position. The deficiency of this system is thus related to a lack of resources' allocation to some delegations which is regrettable and deserves more attention from the EEAS headquarters because it is recognized that a Gender and/or Human Rights Advisor has a high importance to contribute to the work of its colleagues and to undergo the analysis of its own cases. 

Gender in EU diplomatic missions: main points

The gender policy includes several topics such as salary inequality, access to education and to secure employment, women in military (and other traditionally men oriented jobs), poverty, physical and psychological violence, genital mutilation, forced marriages, maternity, mothers and child's health, access to justice, and much more. 

see the full presentation here

A main point which was agreed by all speakers is that education and rule of law are the basis to evolve mentalities and practices within the society. In reality, the practices adopted by the population come from traditions which families are used to do since generations. Regarding women behavior in society and advised actions, the obligation to take some conducts and not others come inclusively from other women as these were learned from their mothers and grandmothers. Linked to this, chiefs and religious leaders have a big influence in individuals' daily life in some countries, and particularly, in rural areas. This aspect has a huge importance on maintaining a close "tradition dialogue" meaning with priests and village chiefs.

A helpful tool for EU Delegations' staff is of course to have a fluid cooperation with local civil society organisations because of its close contact and interaction with the population. Most of the organisations have staff born in the respective countries and speaking the same language. However, it was reported by the speakers that, in some countries for security reasons, the contact with local civil society was affected and reduced.

EU Delegations' coordination for gender

Officials feel that it misses to the EU Delegations' a clear and concrete strategy of long-term solutions to how coordinate certain issues with stipulated goals and objectives for the following years. Moreover, EU Gender Advisor would like to have both positive and negative accountability tools that would be helpful in the assessment of their proposals for specific cases. A positive accountability would allow to understand the measures that have worked and which ones have been put into practice with successful results. As for the negative accountability, the purpose is to flag practices that affect gender balance and constitute violation of human rights. For example, a database with adopted measures within the EU Delegations would allow knowledge sharing and more effective distribution of tasks. 

All these aspects on the organisation of the EU Gender Advisor's work is also linked to resources' allocation, as explained above. In fact, even if gender is one of the priority actions of the EU, due to the urgency of some other polices, such as security and migration, gender does not always remain in top of the list when it concerns the provision of more resources and staff to better reache solutions in the resolution of situations. This is a practice that could be re-evaluated by the headquarters.

Therefore, the support of headquarters is relevant to establish a high-level of standards to be adopted by each EU Delegation. On this point, for example, as in other organisations and companies, EU Gender Advisors are working too on the training of their colleagues and hierarchies to create more awareness to gender issues during their daily work. The training are unfortunately not that regular and it is culturally regarded as a complementary training, lacking a qualitative and quantitative assessment of its impact on the daily work of the EU Delegations.

Gender and foreign policy

The foreign and diplomatic policy can be regarded as one of those "traditional men jobs". Thus, the EU has shown to be an example to other countries through the work of EU Delegations and diplomatic missions. Indeed, the EU has taken into consideration the importance of adding gender issues and policies (when relevant) to its strategic documents. For example, the Council has adopted a 2016-2020 Action Plan for Gender (see here). The adoption of strategies should nevertheless include gender as a goal with concrete measures for the reduction of its imbalance both at the European context and to be shared by the EU Delegations in other countries as best practices.

Before concluding, a quick reference to the fact that the EU has lacked to support social and employment policies to be adopted by Member States that promote more gender balance meaning access to jobs and education as well as higher level positions. Social policies mean not only in terms of maternity or families but to any women and men willing to have a productive career without affecting their personal life.

The fact that, as it was reported recently, equal payment between genders would, in principle, only be attained in 2085, have increased the debate regarding the adoption of quotas. The positive discrimination's measure was ten years ago seen, by some, as no longer necessary as the new generations of women were in strong percentages going to universities and having access to better job positions. However, we have seen that the number of women having access to management and hierarchically superior positions is taking a bit longer than expected some years ago. But, such a complex topic has to be left for a next article.

We need to keep working together for gender mainstreaming so that it becomes an expression that everyone can say and that can be implemented to the point where we no longer take regards to it. 

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