Gender mainstreaming legal and policy frameworks

Bosnia and Herzegovina has become a member of the Council of Europe, which requires national plans on gender equality. The state authorities are also working on commencement of the accession process for joining the EU, which also requires the country to fulfil its obligations on decreasing the existing level of gender inequality.

Requirements for the promotion of gender equality by the Council of Europe are built in the EU Community Framework Strategy on Gender Equality (June 2000) based on the EU policy. The strategy covers all aspects related to equality in economic, social and civil life, equality in decision-making and gender roles and stereotypes. Its aim is to promote good gender-equality practice, enhance understanding of gender discrimination and help key players in the fight against gender inequality.

In this context, gender equality means an equal visibility, empowerment and participation of both sexes in all spheres of public and private life. Gender equality is considered as the opposite of gender inequality, not of gender difference, and aims to promote full participation of women and men in the society. Gender equality is to be constantly protected and promoted. The most important targets in this strategy are:

• Recognition and full implementation of women's rights as human rights;
• Development and improvement of representative democracy through the promotion of the equal participation of women in political and public life and all other ways of life;
• Economic independence of the individual and the aim to reconcile family and working life; - Empowerment of girls and boys through the education system; and
• Women's and men's acknowledgement of the need to remove imbalances in society and their shared responsibility in doing so.

On the course of implementation of these goals, various levels of authorities have established the mechanisms for gender mainstreaming, starting from the Entities’ level. Federation BiH established the Gender Centre as part of the Ministry for Social Affairs, Displaced Persons and Refugees in March 2000. The Gender Centre was promoted to the level of the Government as its Expert Body in January 2001. The Gender Centre RS was founded by the Decision of the Republika Srpska Government in the end of 2001. The goal of the founding is a promotion of gender equality in the Republic, as well as implementation of gender equity principles that are prescribed in international conventions and agreements ratified by our country. Their programmes reflect the Beijing Platform for Action, 1995. Their mandates are to improve women’s legal rights in co-ordination with the FBiH Parliamentary Commission for Equal Opportunities and the RS National Assembly's Commission for gender equity and equality, preparation of laws and policies and ensure that both men and women benefit equally in the development process.

The Gender Centres of FBiH and RS are now regular members of the Council of Europe Steering Committee for Equality between Women and Men (CDEG) and are invited having the status of BiH experts with high-level responsibility for policies in favour of equality between women and men and participate with GEEP support in the regular biannual CDEG meetings Strasbourg. There were problems which were supposed to be faced during the process of GEEP pilot phase implementation:

• Partners in GEEP pilot phase had difficulties in understanding the concept of gender mainstreaming, and they weren’t able to mainstream gender in their everyday work, as they didn’t have the sufficient knowledge and skills related to using of the tools and techniques

Strategy for gender mainstreaming as a tool for promotion of gender equality and equity, its techniques and tools require further development

During the pilot phase GEEP contributed to the gender mainstreaming process by identifying key actors and partners involved in promotion of gender equity and equality, both governmental and non-governmental. These partners were recognised and nominated to assume responsibilities and roles required to mainstream gender. They acquired fundamental skills in gender analysis tools that now call for utilisation.

The GFP Government officials and civil society representatives were encouraged to work together. They were supported in identifying each other’s interlocutors as well as recognising key policy areas that need to be addressed in promoting gender equity and equality. Meetings and workshops brought GFPs together across entity lines, ethnic divisions and political differences.

GEEP pilot phase introduced all the terminology gender mainstreaming begets into Bosnian everyday life and work. The relevance of the project was supported by recognising that gender equity and equality are prerequisites of sustainable development. To this effect the differences between practical women’s needs and strategic gender needs was delineated and emphasised. For most of the odd twenty NGOs implementing the GEEP community projects the gender concept was unknown. Internalising of this concept, implementing and monitoring it in practice within their own organisations are still at an initial phase. Many actors at the micro level shared experiences of how they’re thinking and even behaviour has changed since their involvement with GEEP.

Despite of the efforts during the pilot phase of GEEP the Government and NGOs do not sufficiently understand the concept of gender mainstreaming and are not yet able to mainstream gender in their everyday work. All partners do not understand tools and techniques for gender mainstreaming and many still need to acquire the know-how of applying them. Gender mainstreaming strategy and its tools are still not sustainable institutionally, technically and socially. In gender mainstreaming there is a danger that concept of gender mainstreaming and the way it relates to specific gender equality policies is misunderstood, which would mean that it might be used as a pretext to cease traditional equality policies.

Another difficulty is that the concept might be reduced into two categories of women and men, and not used to take into account the relations between women and men. In addition, there is still lack of adequate tools and techniques for the implementation of gender mainstreaming. Lack of training of actors involved in the procedural changes needed to be implemented (e.g. administrators) might also prohibit gender mainstreaming to take place.

Problem:

• Gender insensitive legal and policy frameworks
• Amount and content of engendered laws and policies limited
• Impact of laws and their implementation (changes in practices) not monitored

Gender mainstreaming as the (re) organisation, development and evaluation of policy processes in order for gender perspective to be incorporated in all policies at all levels and at all stages by the actors normally involved in policy making and planning, implementation and monitoring of development programmes is not yet understood. Gender equality has not yet become a full part of common policies. There is a need to (re) organise, improve and develop and evaluate policy processes and thus make it possible to challenge the biases that characterize society and the structural character of gender equality. Several policy and law formulation processes are constantly on going and there have been positive developments during the pilot phase of the project.

However, e.g. despite of the initiation of the equality legislation preparation process, the process is being rushed and institutions that are capable of enforcing equality legislation are not identified and assigned this responsibility. Each of these processes is affecting the situation of women in relation to men. It is of critical importance to properly analyse the impact of each policy on both women and men in the complex multi-ethnic and socio-cultural context of the BiH. Policies and laws alone are not sufficient to improve the situation. Follow-up mechanisms for their practical implementation need to be developed. The theory and practice of formulation and implementation of laws are still far from each other.

In the absence of well-defined system of legal precedent, the process of building legal protection and legislative implementation is difficult. There is information available on the laws and the rights of women but the documentation alone does not guarantee that those who really need to be involved are aware of the existence of the documents or are in a position to understand them. Many of the challenges faced by women including discrimination and violence are inadequately known at different levels, just as are their rights in the economic, social and political fields. The views of women at different levels do not meet. The impact of policies and laws is not assessed.

At the same time existing rules and regulations that could be used to promote gender equity and equality are not enforced. There is no monitoring system of the implementation of engendered legal and policy frameworks. A gender policy for mainstreaming that would be supported by mainstreaming bodies at different levels has not been developed. The culture in BiH seems to assume that the development of laws is the development of policy – rather than laws being a tool for implementing policy.

Engendering legal and policy frameworks

Good governance and democracy require that conditions for gender equity and equality exist in all segments of private and professional life. They also promote better quality policies and laws addressing the concerns of women and men of BiH. BiH in its endeavour to respond to these prerequisites of good governance and democracy is promoting to improve its candidature status to the Council of Europe that will include the transposition of nine European Commission Directives into national law.

The Phase II of GEEP project contributed to increasing the amount of engendered laws and policies by developing their content. Gender Centres in Federation BiH and Republika Srpska have reached the necessary standards in preparation and writing CEDAW report (Report on Implementing of The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women), which refers to processes of planning, researching and presentation.

BiH Council of Ministers adopted BiH Gender Equality Law (GEL) in June 2003, when this Law came into force in entire BiH. This represented a very significant step in gender mainstreaming in BiH, since BiH GEL is the first comprehensive Law adopted in this region. It explicitly promotes and guarantees gender equality and equity, equal opportunities for all people, not depending on their sex, both in private and public sector, and it also forbids direct and indirect sex based discrimination. Project on implementation of the Gender Equality Law was initialled by the representatives of the state

Ministry for Human Rights and Refugees, both Entities’ Gender Centres and UNDP’s office in BiH. BiH Ministry for Human Rights and Refugees allocated the funds necessary for establishment of the state Gender Equality Agency, the body which should supervise the implementation of the Gender Equality Law in BiH, in cooperation with Gender Centres. As the European Union’s framework strategy for gender equality encourages development of institutionalized capacities for developing and implementation of laws on gender equality, BiH’s GEL is considered as timely legal act for commencement for removing of the gender inequality in BiH.

The Law highlights the roles and responsibilities of various gender equality institutions in monitoring of gender mainstreaming, and it also foresees the establishment of Gender Agency within the state Ministry for Human Rights and Refugees which will periodically draft, monitor, coordinate and assist implementation of the National Action Plan, in order to promote gender equality based on proposals from the ministries on the state level, and Entities’ Gender Centres.

The National Action Plan should be presented annually to the Council of Ministers of BiH for adoption. The state-level Gender Agency was established in fall 2004. Gender Centres of Federation BiH and Republika Srpska are responsible for monitoring of GEL’s implementation and for providing recommendations to FBiH and RS Governments in cooperation with organizations of the civil society. Gender Centres can also investigate transgressions of the Gender Equality Law upon the request of ministries, citizens and civil society organizations.

Other government’s mechanisms include Gender Equality Committees for monitoring of the implementation of Gender Equality Law at all levels of authorities, which also connote drafting of laws and legalities on gender equality. It is important to note that since the enactment of the Gender Equality Law, the Ministry for Human Rights and Refugees has established the Gender Agency, appointed Gender Focal points within each state ministry, and developed a State Action Plan.

To take advantage of this momentum, the UNDP developed a gender project in 2003 titled: “Implementation of Gender Equality Law in BiH”, for which CIDA Local Initiatives Program provided a small contribution. This project has primarily been supporting the establishment of the state-level Gender Agency, as well as providing of a number of training for trainers - on the substance of the Gender Equality Law – intended for governmental gender equality focal points and certain organizations of the civil society.