Promoting Gender Equality in Tunisia through Strategic Coordination and UN Collaboration
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UN Women co-chairs the Gender Theme Group (GTG) of the Tunisia UN Country Team (UNCT), together with UNFPA. UNCT Gender Theme Groups are inter-agency bodies mandated to provide strategic support to strengthen gender mainstreaming efforts, ultimately achieving greater results for women and girls. In 2024, UN Women has implemented a comprehensive plan to enhance the GTG’s capacity to fulfill these functions in line with the global standards and procedures.
Informed by good practices piloted in the Arab States, UN Women Tunisia worked with GTG members to develop the 2024 Annual Workplan. The plan is results-focused, aiming to improve the UNCT’s implementation of global gender mainstreaming standards. It fully reflects the priority actions identified in the 2022 UNCT Gender Equality Scorecard assessment, which tracks performance across seven critical dimensions of UNCT’s work. The Annual Work plan places particular emphasis on strengthening UNCT capacities to track investments in gender-targeted and mainstreamed projects, while monitoring and reporting on gender results in the UN Country Team joint workplan.
With guidance from UN Women’s Regional Office for the Arab States, the Tunisia GTG received comprehensive training in April on the latest updates in gender mainstreaming tools and practices, to support the UNCT to implement its commitment to gender equality. The workshop provided essential training and valuable insights on the UNCT Gender Equality Marker (GEM), which tracks resource allocation towards gender equality across the UN’s Joint Work Plan (JWP). Additionally, the Tunisia team explored how correctly using the gender, youth and peace and security markers in joint work planning can enhance UNCT efforts to leave no one behind in UN programming in Tunisia.
This capacity-building initiative was further strengthened on September 23, when the UN Women’s Regional Office for the Arab States delivered a comprehensive training session to the GTG in Tunisia. The training focused on the latest updates to the GTG Standards and Procedures, the UNCT-GEM, and the UNCT System-Wide Action Plan Gender Equality Scorecard (UNCT-SWAP GES). Participants from the United Nations Resident Coordination Office (RCO), UNDP, UNFPA, UNAIDS, and OHCHR engaged in collaborative discussions on how to enhance accountability for gender mainstreaming in all areas of work.
A key outcome of the training was the review of Tunisia’s progress on the Gender Equality Scorecard. Participants reviewed progress in implementation of the Scorecard performance indicators since the 2022 comprehensive report and identified five priority indicators to be reported on in the 2024 report, with agencies assigned to lead their implementation, in line with best practices.
This collaborative approach demonstrated GTG’s commitment to facilitate greater UNCT accountability for gender mainstreaming. Additionally, RCO committed to integrating these indicators into the Terms of Reference for the development of the next UN Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework (UNSDCF), ensuring that gender equality remains a core priority in future development plans.