Kosovo was selected as one of only four countries internationally to share its experience of the process of preparing the Country-Level Implementation Plan (CLIP) for implementing the European Union’s Gender Action Plan III.
Kosovo’s CLIP preparation was uniquely and particularly consultative because it was led by a women’s rights civil society organization – the Kosovo Women’s Network (KWN).
Today, 25 November, KWN Program Director and Lead Researcher, Nicole Farnsworth, participated in a structured dialogue hosted by the Policy Forum on Development, entitled “GAP III implementation: Focus on country level one year after GAP III adoption.”
During the plenary session, Farnsworth highlighted the link between consultation and implementation, stating that: “a consultative process, led by local actors and inclusive of diverse stakeholders, will help to contribute to CLIP implementation by ensuring diverse actors are aware of it and that they feel a part of the process of creating it.”
While speaking about the strengths of Kosovo’s CLIP creation process, she further added a key strength was the “strong effort to link the CLIP to programmes in all sectors, undertaken together with EU program managers. Ambitiously, the Kosovo CLIP attends to all thematic areas in GAP III and several objectives under each thematic area, including a total of 34 different GAP III objectives.”
She also underlined the importance of engaging and recognising the expertise of civil society and women’s rights activists as experts, including compensation for their time and expertise.
In addition, Farnsworth mentioned ongoing work on an annex that sets out specific programmes that will contribute to each objective, to facilitate reporting later on and include additional information from civil society and other actors that is important for coordination but that would not fit within the CLIP page length restrictions.
“This is an important approach to contribute to inclusivity and ownership,” she added.
Farnsworth also highlighted several conditions necessary for the successful implementation of the CLIP, including: EU leadership in following through on commitments and active cooperation with the Kosovo government to ensure the incorporation of CLIP objectives into programmes. Considering that the Kosovo government designs EU-funded programmes, they must be involved from the outset in incorporating a gender perspective in programmes, in line with the Kosovo Programme for Gender Equality, along with other commitments.
During working groups, she noted the important example of how women’s rights groups like the Mitrovica Women’s Rights Association and Sandglass are contributing to peace at a local level, which is important for peacebuilding from a local level up and such crucial initiatives should be supported by the EU in alignment with the EU’s women, peace and security agenda. The EU can use its presence in peace processes like the Kosovo-Serbia Dialogue to pressure governments to ensure women’s engagement in peace processes.
Towards implementing GAP III, diverse WCSOs also should be supported through diverse funding modalities including long-term, flexible, institutional support, considering that women’s movements are the foundation of social change, she said. The EU should consider which funding modalities work best in different contexts for best reaching diverse groups.
She also noted the importance of the European Commission documenting more clearly its expenditures on gender equality by requiring within templates gender responsive budgeting for all programmes, and not only related to public finance reform actions as in GAP III presently, towards setting an example of gender responsive budgeting, towards equality, transparency and accountability to stakeholders.
The EU GAP III was adopted a year ago and KWN will continue to support its implementation in Kosovo in close cooperation with its divers 181 member organisations the EU Office, EU Special Representative, EULEX, EU Member States, and other stakeholders.
