Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights

Gender Equality

The OSCE recognizes that full and true equality between women and men is essential to achieving security, prosperity, and sustainable democracy. In this respect, the ODIHR promotes equality in political and economic life not just as an instrument to combat discrimination but also as a means for ensuring democracy, the rule of law, and respect for human rights.

Over the past decade, the world has seen much progress in setting standards and passing laws regarding equality between the sexes. While the importance of these advances should not be overlooked, the de facto status of women throughout the OSCE region has not sufficiently improved to the point of achieving parity with men. In fact, the gap between legal equality and actual equality is widening.

This has been felt most acutely in so-called transition countries, where the overall decline in the status of women is compounded by conditions in which political participation by women is decreasing, economic conditions are deteriorating, unemployment is growing, and an increasingly larger proportion of the population is living below the poverty line.

Main issues

The ODIHR's role is to assist participating States in their efforts to diminish the gender gap and ensure that equality between the sexes is achieved in law and in reality. Various issues need to be tackled to achieve this.
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Activities

To address the complex set of challenges in this field, the ODIHR has developed a long-term programme to increase participation of women in democratic processes. This is conducted in the form of targeted programme activities, tailor-made to each country.
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Tiina Ilsen, Head of the ODIHR's Gender Unit, giving an interview on the sidelines of a meeting of the Georgian Women's NGO Coalition, in Tbilisi, 2 November 2005. (OSCE/Curtis Budden)

Documents

ODIHR contribution for the Annual Evaluation Report on Gender Issues in the OSCE

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2004 OSCE Action Plan for the Promotion of Gender Equality

PDF English (62.4 Kb)
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OSCE Commitments Relating to Gender Equality and Non-Discrimination

PDF English (109.5 Kb), Russian (134.5 Kb)
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Consolidated Summary of the OSCE/ODIHR Human Dimension Seminar on Participation of Women in Public and Economic Life

PDF English (403.9 Kb)
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Final Report on the OSCE Supplementary Human Dimension Meeting on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women

PDF English (118.8 Kb)
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Contacts

Democratization Department
Al. Ujazdowskie 19
00-557 Warsaw
Poland
Tel: +48 22 520 0600
Fax: +48 22 520 0605
gender@odihr.pl