Gender Mainstreaming in UN-Habitat "Water for Asian Cities" and "Mekong Water and Sanition Initiative" programmes

From 2009 until 2011 GWA together with the Mekong River Commission (MRC) assisted UN-Habitat in Mainstreaming Gender in two of their Asian programmes: The Water for Asian Cities Programme" and the "Mekong Water and Sanitation Initiative".

In December 2008 the Gender and Water Alliance (GWA) signed an agreement of cooperation (CA) with UN Habitat for Enhancing Awareness and Understanding on the Inclusion of Gender Issues in Water and Sanitation at country and regional levels in Asia. The programme was run in four countries; Cambodia , Lao PDR, Nepal and Vietnam, within the "Water for African Cities" and "Mekong Water and Sanitaiton Initiative" programmes.

The programme started in 2009 with a national workshop for every country where the participants have developed action plans for implementation at their workplace. Between September and December 2010 follow-up workshops were held in all countries, where the aim and goal of the workshop was to let participants share experiences on the implementation of their action plans they had formulated a year before, to identify the difficulties in implementing the action plan and look for ways to overcome these difficulties and to improve the original workplan to make implementation easier or more successful.

In between these two workshops participants worked on implementing their action plans at their workplace. In this period they were supported and mentored in the implementation of their action plan by local gender experts.

A regional finalising workshop took place in June 2011 with 20 participants from Cambodia, Lao PDR, Vietnam and Nepal. In the workshop the results of the programme of the last 1,5 year were shared, the methodology used during the programme was discussed and consolidated, and a gender and WATSAN framework for the region was developed.

As a final ouput of the programme a Gender Resource Book was developed specific to the region in which the "gender and WATSAN' framework was included as well as regional resources on Gender and WATSAN.

The resourcebook can be accessed here.

A short news report on the first national workshop held in Nepal (in Nepali language) can be accessed here