Technical Support in Gender Mainstreaming for the OSCE

In response to a request from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to assess how its Gender Section could better support OSCE staff working on political and security issues to mainstream gender in their work, Inclusive Security traveled in November 2009 to Austria, Macedonia, and Kyrgyzstan.

Inclusive Security focused on identifying specific potential initiatives, such as providing more training, providing different types of training, documenting and sharing examples of good practices, advocating for changed incentive structures, and communicating different messages, that would help the OSCE enhance gender mainstreaming throughout the organization.
 
After spending three weeks with and conducting interviews of nearly 100 OSCE staff and local partners (including officials from ministries, civil society, and police) at headquarters in Vienna and at two field missions—Macedonia and Kyrgyzstan—Inclusive Security proposed specific improvements and is now working with the Gender Section to find funding to implement suggested changes.

Inclusive Security's assessment revealed that many of the people interviewed understood mainstreaming gender to mean making sure that women are among project beneficiaries. Others felt that women’s full inclusion in security-related activities is key to achieving the OSCE’s mission. One person said, for example,  “I organize trainings for police officers. If the Ministry sends me a list of trainees with no women on it, I send it back. I tell them we won’t do the training until that list has 20 percent women.”

During the assessment, Inclusive Security also reconnected with several Network members, including professor and leading researcher Violeta Petrovska-Beshka in Macedonia, Lily Salimjanova in Bishkek, and Nurgul Djanaeva in Kyrgyzstan.

For more information on Inclusive Security's work on security sector reform, please contact Jacqueline O'Neill.