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EU Gender Watch

The main objective of the "EU Gender Watch" project consists in enabling women NGOs/networks in New Member States, Accession Countries and EU Neighboring Countries to cooperate in monitoring and lobbying the EU on its development policies in order to make the EU commitment to advance gender equality and its translation into policy, action, and allocation of resources reflected in EU assistance to countries of the region.

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http://www.neww.org/en/conference/2008/raport/0.html

EU-CIS Gender Watch 2007-2008 - Country Reports

Gender experts form six different countries have developed reports describing from gender perspective – on one side – Official Development Assistance (ODA) of their governments (New Member States of the European Union) and on the other side – the EU Developmental Aid that beneficiary countries receive (European Union Neighborhood countries). When we take into consideration that not even 20 years ago all those countries citizens were living under non-democratic rules, in totalitarian regime, it is hard to believe that now some of them already joined EU and some – left on the peripheries of democratic change – remain poor and underdeveloped. There have been so many hopes that assisted our (Polish) accession to the European Union. Regulations that concerned women’s rights and gender equality were adopted by all the NMS governments, now the directives and Treaties must be respected. The same we owe the women from the Eastern Europe – our neighbor countries. Many NMS governments perceive those countries as priority countries for their developmental aid. That was a reason why the ODA reports were prepared by independent experts:

1.  Bulgaria – by Tania Tisheva from Bulgarian Gender Research Foundation  [ pdf 827.27 kB ]
2.  Czech Republic – by Kristina Kosatikova from International Gender Policy Network  [ pdf 368.66 kB ]
3.  Hungary – by Reka Safrany from MONA Foundation  [ pdf 428.47 kB ]

At the same time women from European Neighborhood countries were describing all the EU Developmental Aid their countries receive – from gender perspective. Three women made an analysis of changes in their countries, they have contacted many national and international institutions, they established or joined their national NGDO platforms and provided trainings on gender and development for other NGO activists.
In the result three reports were launched:

1.  Armenia – by Svetlana Aslanyan from Center for the Development of Civil Society  [ pdf 418.65 kB ]
2.  Georgia – by Helen Rusetsky from Women’s Information Centre  [ pdf 412.66 kB ]
3.  Ukraine – by Oksana Kisselyova from Liberal Society Institute  [ pdf 590.47 kB ]

Launch of the report and NGO strategy meeting as well as the bilateral meetings with the European Commission and European Parliament representatives took place in Brussels in June 23-24th 2008. For more information please go to: EU-CIS Gender Watch Reports Launch

The structure of each kind of reports is the same. This is helpful in comparison of the women’s situation and EU or governmental promises of respective countries. All reports will be presented to national governments, countires permanent respresentations in Brussels, EC Delegations and all interested NGOs and media.

I hope that this work will be taken into account in programming coming out from the Lisbon Treaty as well as taken into hearts of future MEP (Elections in 2009) and EC representatives by mid term review of the European Neighborhood Policy Instrument in 2010.

Zofia Łapniewska
EU-CIS Gender Watch Coordinator

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