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News and plans of GEAR European Working Group

01.05.2008

The members of GEAR European Working Group are: ACTSA (Action for Southern Africa), BGRF/WIDE Bulgarian platform, IGPN (International Gender Policy Network), European Women’s Lobby, OXFAM/Novib, WIDE, WOMANKIND Worldwide and GADnetwork UK.

European GEAR campaign activities
GEAR European Working Group has been and will keep working together for the coming time, collaborating on joint lobby efforts and campaigning. Some of the key activities for the coming half year, are: continue lobbying, deepening the arguments for the need of GEAR (also in relation to other developments), information sharing and dissemination, including reaching out to partners and the public, and contributing to the global level of the GEAR campaign.

Lobbying
The European Working Group reviewed its message at the previous strategy meeting and concluded that our message needed some specification and elaboration. A document with key messages will be drafted. The strategy for lobbying is based on consolidating what we have done with lobbying and further extending it.
Concerning the European Union, the European Working Group has gotten positive replies from the European Commission giving full political support to the GEAR recommendations, though no additional financial resources as yet. It has to be noted that the EU has in recent years increased its financial support to UNIFEM. The European Working Group has not heard from the European council, so one target at this moment is to follow up and get a reply from the Slovene presidency.
And another target is to ensure more support from the European Parliament, though in what form is still being researched. Already members of the European Working Group have contacted members of the European parliament who have shown interest to bring it to the table.
In European Parliament there has lately been some discussion about GEAR. In a report on Gender equality and Women’s Empowerment in Development Coordination (adopted 13 of March)the EP expressed its disappointment that the Commission did not present a EU stance on the GEA reform in its communication on the gender equality and development1. And Sajjad Karim (PPE-DE)presented a parliamentary question to the Commission on increasing financial support to UN
gender equality bodies as a way to strengthen the gender equality architecture.
As to get more political support from the Council the European Working Group will try to get GEAR messages into June 2008 Council resolution, working with the Slovenians for June council
meeting. We will send another letter to the presidency and carry out personal follow up if needed.
The European Working Group has conveyed its concerns to the Irish co-chair of the current consultations around the UN Reform and asked him in a letter for a:
• Public announcement as soon as possible of the date for the meeting on the GEA
recommendations as part of the open consultations.
• Guarantee that information from consulting with civil society organisations on how the UN operates at country level to promote women’s rights and gender equality is considered in the discussion in the open consultations, especially the meeting on the GEA.
• A proposal by countries under your guidance outlining concrete steps and a timeframe on how to move ahead with key recommendations of the Coherence Panel concerning the creation of one gender entity at UN level.
The co-chair replied quickly back with a letter thanking us for our letter and replying to: ‘Please be assured that we are very aware of the concerns which you and so many others share so strongly and we will certainly not loose sight of them as we continue our work’.
For the coming months the working group has planned to target big countries in the European Union and secure their support, encouraging political key figures with a high profile to speak out.
We will also continue to encourage our member organisations to send the letter to their partners, governments, etc. And we want to contact one or more of the three UN women’s entities to find out
where they are at the moment and see if we could ensure more support from them, since we have not been in contact with them before about this.

Deepening our position
The Working Group will develop a toolkit that will provide background and answers key questions we can expect from European governments that can be used to lobby and for dissemination. The toolkit is planned for around 5 pages and will also give precise arguments why the GEAR is needed. There are several information sheets available, but none to address the issues from our perspective.
To deepen our position and for the toolkit we will also do some further research on EU financing to UN gender entities (both from the EU and concerning national budgets) answering questions like
‘How much of UN funding goes to women’s agencies?’.
A draft outline for the toolkit has been developed.

Information sharing
The Working Group will also broaden its campaigning and start with a public campaign to affect the public opinion. To this purpose a website is being developed for the UN GEAR Europe (www.ungear.eu or www.un-gear.eu) where we will collect all information, with our own logo and we will initiate an email action that would allow any individual to write to for instance the president of the UN to raise concerns through sending a prepared letter that is on that website.
All members will announce the website and keep it up to date. And we will also contact our partners in the South with our messages/information and encourage them to keep up the lobbying.
Members of the Working Group will attend key meetings of CSOs and/or political events where deemed strategically important.

Global GEAR
The Working Group will keep feeding back to all global discussions and looks forward to an intensified debate and more sharing of information. It is essential to have continious flows of
information for instance relating to the gender consultation in May (as part of the UN GA consultations).

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