•  united nations
• Wednesday, May 18, 2011
• Inter Press Service

— UN’s Humanitarian agencies Monday highlighted the importance of a common gender marker to be used by the United Nations to improve its programmes' gender equality, and to track the organisation’s allocation of resources to advance gender equality.

The briefing was hosted by the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Participating in the briefing were officials of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the UN’s Children’s Fund (UNICEF). The two agencies have recently introduced gender marker in their programme development.

The gender marker is a coding system ranging from a 0, when there are no signs that gender issues were considered, to a 2b or 3, when the principal purpose of the project is to advance gender equality.

'It is a capacity development tool in addition to being a tracking tool, because it makes staff stop and reflect when they input a project', said Randi Davis, UNDP’s practice manager of the gender team.

UNDP was the lead United Nations agency to start using the gender marker in 2009, according to Kate Burns, Senior Policy Advisor for Gender Equality with OCHA . The role of the donor community was recognized by the agencies as they can use the so-called financial tracking system to identify and fund projects which are listed to promote gender equality.

'I think we need to make all UN entities use a similar one so that we can compare across the board. We have huge agencies like UNDP and UNICEF that use it , but you also have others who are implementing programmes, maybe they have a sort of gender marking system but since it cannot be compared between one and the other then you're not really sure you're achieving the same results on the ground.' Burns told IPS.

© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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