By promoting gender equality through enabling the inclusion of the concerns and voices of women and girls in policies during policy dialogue, horizont3000 continues to contribute to equitable and sustainable development in Uganda and beyond.
The government of Uganda considers gender equality and empowerment of all women and girls as the basis for sustainable national development. The government for example ratified in 1985 the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW, 1979) and thereby made the commitment to promote women’s and girls’ rights. The provisions of CEDAW were incorporated into the National Constitution in 1995 focusing on prohibiting discrimination, providing the minimum age of marriage as 18 years, implementing affirmative action in favor of marginalized groups and promoting equal rights for women and girls.
Despite this legal foundation, Uganda faces significant challenges in achieving gender equality and in 2023 alone, the Uganda Police Force national crime report indicates that 14,774 women and girls were either raped or defiled and 11,436 suffered from domestic violence countrywide. The recent surge in early, forced, and child marriages, as well as female genital mutilation, is driven partly by harmful socio-cultural norms and practices, compounded by the inadequate enforcement of existing policies. In some communities, women and girls are restricted from ownership, accessing or use of property especially land.
The Diocese of Moroto, a DKA partner organization in the Policy Dialogue East Africa (PDEA) project of horizont3000, has made significant progress in advocating for gender equality in Karamoja sub region, particularly focusing on the Mining and Minerals Act (2022) and the 2013 Land policy of Uganda with its subsequent 1998 Act. However, one frequent and re-occurring challenge has been ensuring that all the concerns or voices of women and persons with disabilities are considered in policy decisions. This is exactly one of the challenges the Diocese seeks to address within their Small Action Fund.
The Small Action Fund is an initiative of the horizont3000 PDEA project for civil society organisations (CSOs) and their constituents to effectively participate in policy making and implementation. The Diocese of Moroto’s Justice and Peace department is anticipating to use this fund to “increase women’s voices and effective participation in decision making on land management through capacity building and policy dialogue in Karamoja region”. Effective participation in decision making implies that at all levels of policy making and implementation, women’s concerns and challenges should be prioritized and considered by the government or development actors across all levels.
In order to support the Diocese of Moroto in their efforts in achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment and to also further institutionalise policy dialogue in their work, horizont3000 conducted a gender mainstreaming in policy dialogue training. The training took place from 29th -31st October 2024 in Moroto district and was led by the horizont3000 Policy Dialogue Project East Africa together with the knowhow3000 team.
"I am very grateful for the opportunity to interact and learn from the best. It felt like I was back in a gender studies class at university. The organized slides and training manual were exceptional. Thank you for this opportunity." - a participant from the three day training
The major objectives of this workshop included; 1) discussing relevant tools and techniques for promoting gender equality in policies focusing on land rights, mining, or other sectors relevant to Karamoja and 2) mainstreaming gender in the policy dialogue activities being conducted under the Small Action Fund.
The training brought together 13 staff members (3 females and 10 males) coordinating and implementing projects under Justice and Peace Department, Land Desk and Women and Equal Opportunities desk. The training covered an introduction to gender equality in policies, gender analysis tools and techniques, policy cycle and how to integrate gender in each of the four-policy cycle. Other topics included; the legal frameworks for gender equality, risk analysis and mitigation as well as monitoring and evaluation of policy dialogue interventions.
To track the progress of projects, policies and programs in promoting gender equality, we emphasized the need to apply gender markers ranging from
Participants appreciated the depth of the training and expressed that the three days were well spent since the knowledge acquired will not only improve the implementation of their policy dialogue initiatives under Small Action Fund but rather strengthen all the projects and programmes within the Diocese through advocating for more gender transformative policies. As a result of the training, the team re-assessed the risks for the Small Action Fund and adjusted the action accordingly.
