UN AND PARTNERS DISCUSS LESSONS LEARNED IN GENDER MAINSTREAMING HERE

Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ This year, first Gender Theme Group meeting was held on 6 May in the United Nations (UN) House in Ulaanbaatar themed "Community of Practice: Towards substantive Gender Equality Results". The meeting brought together bilateral development agencies, international NGOs, Gender Focal Points from the line Ministries, National Gender Expert Group along with National Committee on Gender Equality and UN Gender Theme Group. Last year, the Group’s meeting, held in October, had provided a platform for information sharing and mapping the gender activities among the extended Group. This year, the meeting took one step further with more substantive and practical discussion as a community of practice. Given that so-called gender mainstreaming is both a universal mandate and a challenge to almost all development agencies as well as the Government, the meeting first shared and discussed experiences, lessons learned and recommendations in gender mainstreaming practices of all the Group members. Gender mainstreaming is a globally accepted strategy for promoting gender equality, assessing the implications for women and men of any planned action, including legislation, policies and programs, in all areas and at all levels. Secondly, Asia-Pacific countries’ experiences in operationalizing the Gender Equality Law were presented by Ms Imrana Jalal, Senior Gender Specialist of Asian Development Bank (ADB) with insightful implications to Mongolia’s current implementation of Gender Equality Law. She also gave presentation on the Gender Theme Group meeting. The Group agreed on deeper and consultative assessment of the gender status for the future interventions and collective actions to promote gender equality and inclusive development in Mongolia.