Workshop on "Towards Gender-Sensitive Arab Parliaments"

5-7 July 2021

During the period of 5/7/2021, the Arab Women Organization (AWO) held a workshop entitled “Towards Gender-Sensitive Arab Parliaments ", in cooperation with UN Women and the State of Japan.
This workshop comes within a program adopted by the Arab Women Organization in pursuit of gender-sensitive Arab parliaments. AWO believes that the role of Arab parliaments is essential in drafting and passing comprehensive laws that support gender equality and human rights, and ensuring that gender-sensitive reforms are adequately funded.

Thus, AWO aims to work on supporting Arab parliaments to become gender sensitive, by collecting comparative information and examples of good practices, and helping to raise awareness and build knowledge about gender sensitive parliaments by building and developing the capacities of parliamentarians on gender issues and developing their tools and methods of work.
In this regard, the Arab Women Organization and UN Women are participating in conducting a series of workshops, in addition to producing a guideline, which is currently being prepared for printing, with the aim of developing tools to assist parliamentarians in developing more gender-sensitive legislation.

The latest workshop had been held via the ZOOM application, during the period from 5-7/ 7/2021, in which a number of parliamentarians, officially nominated, from several Arab countries, have participated in the workshop, and a group of Arab experts involved in the field of gender will lecture; Dr. Wafaa Bani Mustafa, Head of the Coalition of Arab Women Parliamentarians to Combat Violence against Women in Jordan, Judge Samia Doula, Head of a Cell at the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Ministry of Justice in Tunisia, Ms. Nihad Abu al-Qumsan, lawyer and head of the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights in Egypt, and Dr. Hind Al-Soufi, Professor of Economics and Gender Expert in Lebanon.
The opening session were headed by Dr. Fadia Kiwan, Director-General of the Arab Women Organization, and Ms. Susan Mikhail, Regional Director of UN Women.

The workshop covered topics; The evolution of the legislative framework in the Arab region - drawing public policies with regard to women's issues - the role of parliaments in integrating gender equality in public policies - analysis of legislation from a gender equality perspective - a review of enlightened judicial rulings in the field of women - gender-responsive budgets.