Advocacy for the improvement of the national legislations and policies supporting gender equality and the human rights of women and Adolescent girls in the Arab Region

Status : Completed Description : Based on the successful evaluation of the joint project “Evidence Based Advocacy for the Improvement of Women’s Status in the Arab Region”, and on the regional assessment of CAWTAR’s potential as UNFPA regional implementing partner, CAWTAR and UNFPA decided to implement a new regional project in the framework of UNFPA regional program.

The project is expected to build on the outputs of the previous cycle of cooperation and mainly benefit of the advocacy tools produced to enhance partnership with the stakeholders in order to optimize the partnerships with regional and national NGOs and intergovernmental organizations.This will help advocate for national legislations and policies supporting gender equality and the human rights of women and adolescent girls.

A transition phase was accorded (September-November 2008), and annual plans will be drafted in collaboration with UNFPA DASE.

Towards innovative policy analysis strategies to empower marginalized groups to access right to decent housing

Status : Ongoing Description : The project ”Towards innovative policy analysis strategies to empower marginalized groups to access right to decent housing” is a project carried out by the Center of Arab Women for Training and Research (CAWTAR) and financed by the Ford Foundation.

His project aims to generate knowledge and increase the capacity of CSOs working in the field of development and economic and social rights to document practices, extract lessons learned to perform the policy analysis and formulate guidelines for gender and human rights sensitive policies in the field achieving universal access to decent housing including by the most marginalized groups.

Advancing Civic Engagement in Tunisia

Status : Ongoing Description : The program for “Advancing Civic Engagement in Tunisia” (ACT) aims to improve the ability of women and youth to lead society organizations (CSOs) and to increase civic education in Tunisia for the Tunisian civil society occupies an effective and sustainable the new space open to public participation as the country undertook reforms.

To accomplish this goal, the ACT will achieve three objectives:

• Strengthening the capacity and leadership of national CSOs, regional and local authorities to promote sustainable civic participation of women and young people and their communities.
• Increased capacity youth organizations to advocate and to form networks.
• Development and increased awareness and commitment of young people through the approach of the "Global Citizen Corps" implemented in close partnership between the Center of Arab Women for Training and Research (CAWTAR) and the international organization Mercy Corps, the ACT will strengthen the capacity of some thirty civil society organizations and two hundred and twenty-five young people through the GCC and will reach at least fifty-thousand people indirectly supported by the direct beneficiaries of our actions.

The entire approach of the program is described in detail in the proposal of the ACT.

Millennium Development Goals in the Arab region

Status : Achieved Description : In 2006, a global Programme on statistical literacy addressing national teams responsible for MDGs was launched in all regions, including the Arab States. The first involvement of UNDP in the Arab States was in early 2006, when SURF-AS was invited to a pilot training on Statistical Literacy in Tunisia.

This training was the start of a list of activities that are still taking place to date. UN-ESCWA namely was coordinating the program in the Arab Region, and UNDP/SURF-AS was involved as a partner in the design, training and follow up in the region. The original program implemented a series of workshops and other activities with local and regional partners including CAWTAR.

Capturing new human rights approaches and voices for local development

Status : Completed Description : The project “Capturing New Human Rights Approaches and Voices for Local Development” is a project carried out by the Center of Arab Women for Training and Research (CAWTAR) and financed by the Ford Foundation.

This project aims to allow emerging local organizations to tackle new approaches and to strengthen new voices to access resources through a participatory and flexible funding mechanism, build their much needed capacity through benefiting from other experiences as a way to contribute to the lesson-learning processes and extend the reach of the rights-based local development programs to their ultimate targets in an effective manner.

Accordingly, CAWTAR’s proposed project aims to capitalize on its experience, contribute efforts to maintain the complementarities of development and rights efforts and enhance capacities of emerging organizations to effectively tackle under-explored priority issues in a comprehensive way.

Regional Gender Equality & Women Empowerment Program for Arab States

Status : Achieved Description : The objective of this project is to contribute to gender equality and women’s empowerment as a rights-based objective in the Arab Region through gender mainstreaming which aims to ensure that development initiatives take into account both women and men’s gender specific needs and priorities. This mainstreaming approach will be applied to three entry points: Gender and Political Empowerment: Exercising Citizenship , Youth, Gender and Economic Empowerment, Gender and water resource management.

The project concentrates on knowledge building. Realizing the importance of sex –disaggregated information in the formulation and monitoring and evaluation of policies and programs aimed at bolstering the role of women, the project seeks to bring to light the gender gaps in the Arab Region and to enhance gender related knowledge in order to better identify interventions required. The project will further serve to strengthen country project design and to inform advocacy strategies and content. The data collected aims to be used to develop gender training material ( capacity building ) to be used nationally with a regional perspective as well as regionally, and to develop appropriate target specific advocacy material.

To do so, special attention will be paid to ensure effective coordination and cooperation with RPD regional projects and UNDP COs, as well as with CAWTAR’s programs, initiatives and partners in the region. The project builds on CAWTAR’s experience, expertise and partnerships in each of the identified entry points.