UN Women in the Arab States convenes regional online workshop to advance coordination strategy and share best practices

Between 16 and 18 June, UN Women in the Arab States convened its first-ever dedicated regional workshop for coordination leads from the Regional Office and Country Offices (Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, Palestine and Yemen). The purpose of the workshop was threefold: (1) to review and agree on the outline of the Regional Coordination Strategy for the Arab States; (2) to share best practices for several Performance Indicators of the UN Country Team System Wide Action Plan Gender Equality Scorecard (UNCT-SWAP) Gender Equality Scorecard; and (3) to foster regional knowledge-sharing and collaboration to optimize the impact of the team’s joint expertise.

The workshop included discussions led by regional and country focal points, starting with a review of the draft Arab States Regional Coordination Strategy which will inform the Arab States Strategic Note 2026–2029. This strategy is guided by the vision that UN Women in the Arab States will advance coordinated UN action by harnessing and sharing regional knowledge and expertise, leveraging normative frameworks, and strengthening system-wide capacity to accelerate results for women and girls in the next Arab States Strategic Note cycle.

The Regional Office Coordination Unit detailed how it will support country offices throughout the next strategic cycle, in line with its defined functional areas and UN Women’s global coordination theory of change. The strategy focuses on fostering the twin-track approach to coordination integration in the Strategic Plan and empowering Country Offices to advance implementation of the UN Gender Equality Acceleration Plan.

Country Office coordination leads presented diverse best practice models developed at country level to strengthen UN Country Team capacities to meet the Scorecard standards. Key discussions covered practical ways to enhance UN Country Team gender theme group participation; improve Gender Theme Group work planning; leverage UN Women’s convening role; and develop impactful UN Country Gender Equality Profiles. The Albania Country Office also joined to share the tool they developed to mainstream gender in new joint programmes. Discussions also explored how to leverage the Issue-Based Coalition on Gender Equality to strengthen UN Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework implementation.