Gender Mainstreaming in UN-Habitat "Water for Latin American and Caribbean Cities"

From 2010 until 2012 GWA and UN-Habitat cooperated to mainstream gender in the "Water for Latin American and Caribbean Cities" programme.

The cooperation aimed to enhance awareness and understanding on the inclusion of gender issues in water and sanitation of partners of UN-Habitat in Bolivia, Ecuador, Mexico and Nicaragua.

The activities started in March 2010 with a Training of Trainers workshop in March 2010 in Nicaragua. During this training all facilitators were briefed on the programme and a common understanding was generated. A workplan was made for implementation of the rest of the programme in the different countries.

In the second half of 2010 the first national workshops took place in Bolivia, Ecuador and Mexico, in which the participants were trained in Gender and WATSAN and developed a workplan to implement gender mainstreaming at their workplace. Unfortunately the activities in Nicaragua were stopped due to administrative complications.

During 1 year all participants were supported and mentored by the GWA gender-experts in implementing their workplans. A follow-up workshop was organised for this purpose in which difficulties in implementation were assessed and discussed with all participants.

About one year after the first national workshop, every country again had a national workshop. In this workshop the results of the implementation of the action plans were shared as well as the way forward identified. Every country identified the most successful programme, to be documented as a case-study on gender mainstreaming in the water sector.

In March 2012 a final regional workshop took place in Ecuador. It was attended by a representation of participants in the programme of all three countries, representatives on UN-Habitat regional office, Bolivia and Ecuador, all GWA facilitators involved in the programme, as well as representatives from the government in Ecuador. Experiences form the different countries were shared, and a Gender and WATSAN matrix was developed on the basis of these.

The final output of the programme is a book consolidating the activities, showing good examples and reflecting on the way forward for gender mainstreaming in the water sector in Latin-America and the Caribbean.