Mid-Term Review of the Norwegian Action Plan for Women's ... - Norad

5 Has Norway increased gender mainstreaming inits development cooperation?The ToR has identified the following indicator:Gender assessment and obligatory gender reporting is part of the project and programme design.Gender Equality/gender dimension is included in embassies’ governing documents.The ToR has identified the following sources to be consulted for this question: “Review of the development portfolio and work with women’s rights and gender equality.Norwegian Representative Office Al- Ram 2008”. Report from the ‘gender review’ of the Embassy in Ethiopia, 2009. Report from the ‘gender and HIV/AIDS wash’ of the Embassy in Zambia. October 2008. Report from the ‘gender review’ of the Embassy in Angola 2006. Analysis of the embassies three-year strategic plans 2009-2011.5.1 What do the ‘gender review’ reports tell about gender mainstreaming?The question of “increased gender mainstreaming” might not be documented, by availabledocumentation. However, the ‘gender review’ may be a new instrument with a potential to improve GMin the embassies’ work. The Evaluation of 2005 found that GM was also done before, but notsystematically (missed opportunities) – and that what was done, was underreported.The review of the development co-operation in Al-Ram (Norad 2008a) and Zambia (Norad 2008b) wascarried out in 2008, and the one in Ethiopia in January 2009 (Norad 2009). A somewhat similar reviewwas conducted in Angola in 2006 (Norad 2006b).AngolaThe review of the implementation of Women and Gender Equality Aspects in the NorwegianDevelopment Co-operation with Angola was carried out in August 2006 (Norwegian Consulting Groupand Norad).This review is a review of activities in two of three sectors of the ongoing cooperation between Norwayand Angola, namely education and good governance, democracy and human rights. The reviewconcludes that the Norwegian Embassy should improve its dialogue on women and gender equalityboth with its present and new partners and pay special attention to these issues in the dialogue with theGovernment of Angola. The UN should take a lead in the dialogue with national authorities.The Norwegian Representative Office, Al-RamThis review was carried out in autumn 2008 by Norad in co-operation with Nordic Consulting Group.The review of the development portfolio and work with women’s rights and gender equality focuses onhow the cooperation between the Norwegian Representative Office (NRO) and the PalestinianTerritories (PT) address women’s issues and gender concerns as defined in the Norwegian policydocuments. Six programmes and projects were selcted, covering major, but different fields ofcooperation. The selected partners are the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, The PalestinianCentral Bureau of Statistics, AMAN (anti-corruption), Independent Commission for Human Rights,EUPOLCOPPS (Civil Police) and Palestinian Women’s Centre for Research and Documentation.According to the review, the partners are considered to give rather low priority to the work on women’srights and gender issues. The Review Team found that the cooperating partners underestimate theimportance of women’s rights and gender equality, also in the police sphere. Better management andprocedures for reporting on gender from the partners to the embassy should be in place.Zambia32