{"id":1111607,"date":"2017-12-01T16:14:53","date_gmt":"2017-12-01T16:14:53","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","slug":"kwn-calls-for-improved-eu-funding-for-womens-rights-csos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/womensnetwork.org\/sr\/kwn-calls-for-improved-eu-funding-for-womens-rights-csos\/","title":{"rendered":"KWN Calls for Improved EU Funding for Women\u2019s Rights CSOs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">&nbsp;<span style=\"text-align: justify;\">On 22 Nov., the European Parliament (EP) in cooperation with the Kvinna till Kvinna Foundation organized a debate in Brussels, where panellists discussed: &ldquo;Is the EU Accession Process delivering for women in the Western Balkans?&rdquo; Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) Jozo Rado&scaron;, Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE), Julie Ward, Socialists and Democrats (S&amp;D) and Eduard Kukan European People&#8217;s Party (EPP) co-hosted the event. In addition to these MEPs, other panellists included Liselotte Isaksson, Head of Sector Civil Society and Inclusion in Directorate-General for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations (DG NEAR); Morten Jung, Senior Advisor for Western Balkans at DG NEAR; and women&rsquo;s rights activists from the region, including Nicole Farnsworth, KWN Program Manager and Lead Researcher.&nbsp;<\/span><br \/>\n&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;The half-day debate involved three panels focusing on: I) Mainstreaming gender and women&rsquo;s rights in the EU Accession process: examples from Country Progress Reports; II) social reforms including maternity leave: who benefits?; and EU funding for women&rsquo;s organisations: and III) what are the challenges and opportunities?&nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Drawing from recent research findings, in her remarks, Nicole emphasized the important role that women&rsquo;s rights organizations play in bringing about sustainable changes within their communities. Further, she noted that the EU <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=1&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=0ahUKEwij4bb5g-TXAhWFJ1AKHe0rDJIQFggoMAA&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fec.europa.eu%2Feuropeaid%2Fsites%2Fdevco%2Ffiles%2Fstaff-working-document-gender-2016-2020-20150922_en.pdf&amp;usg=AOvVaw2EAHjFAJHhYsOv3LW1fezG\">Gender Action Plan II<\/a> recognizes this role and thus encourages the EU to support women&rsquo;s rights organizations. Despite the Gender Action Plan II&rsquo;s clear indicators related to funding for women and girls, as well as for women human rights defenders, respectively, current EU E-Systems do not enable the EU to track adequately these expenditures. Thus, one recommendation was for the EU&rsquo;s new, forthcoming electronic data management system to include indicators related to funding for women and girls, as well as for women&rsquo;s rights organizations.&nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Moreover, Nicole spoke about women&rsquo;s rights organizations&rsquo; funding needs and different types of funding modalities for reaching diverse organizations. She suggested that the EU use a &ldquo;healthy mix&rdquo; of funding modalities that include longer-term, larger sub-granting programs towards better reaching medium and smaller organizations (such as based on the positive model of the Kosovo Women&rsquo;s Fund); Action Grants that address gender inequalities, as identified in Progress Reports and EU country Gender Analyses; Operating Grants as multi-year Framework Partnership Agreements to better support organizations&rsquo; long-term strategic initiatives; and contracting local gender experts to support the EU in realizing its aims to implement the Gender Action Plan II. More information from Nicole&rsquo;s presentation is available here: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.womensnetwork.org\/documents\/20171201123609298.pdf\">http:\/\/www.womensnetwork.org\/documents\/20171201123609298.pdf<\/a>.&nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;Nicole&rsquo;s trip to Brussels involved several other important advocacy meetings. Together with representatives of the Kvinna till Kvinna Foundation and other women&rsquo;s rights activists from the region, she also met with the Swedish representation in Brussels to discuss opportunities for collaboration in realizing the aims of Sweden&rsquo;s Feminist Foreign Policy. With fellow activists, Nicole also met with Liselotte Isaksson to discuss further needs and opportunities related to funding for women&rsquo;s rights organizations; Mariam Wehbe-Herrera, Policy Assistant on Gender Equality within DG NEAR to collaborate towards implementing the EU <a href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=1&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=0ahUKEwij4bb5g-TXAhWFJ1AKHe0rDJIQFggoMAA&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fec.europa.eu%2Feuropeaid%2Fsites%2Fdevco%2Ffiles%2Fstaff-working-document-gender-2016-2020-20150922_en.pdf&amp;usg=AOvVaw2EAHjFAJHhYsOv3LW1fezG\">Gender Action Plan II<\/a>; MEP Clare Moody to discuss opportunities for the EP to earmark funds for women&rsquo;s organizations; Gaby Hagm&uuml;ller and Sonja Nita from the Centre of Thematic Expertise on Civil Society Support; and Julia Mueller-Hellmann, Judiciary and Human Rights Policy Officer, and Farina Ah&auml;user, Assistant Policy Officer, Political Desk from DG NEAR Kosovo Unit to discuss issues of concern in Kosovo in the context of the forthcoming Progress Report.&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;<br \/>\nThis trip was supported by the EP and the Kvinna till Kvinna Foundation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;On 22 Nov., the European Parliament (EP) in cooperation with the Kvinna till Kvinna Foundation organized a debate in Brussels, where panellists discussed: &ldquo;Is the EU Accession Process delivering for women in the Western Balkans?&rdquo; Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) Jozo Rado&scaron;, Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE), Julie Ward, Socialists and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3334025,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_FSMCFIC_featured_image_caption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_nocaption":"","_FSMCFIC_featured_image_hide":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1111607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/womensnetwork.org\/sr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1111607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/womensnetwork.org\/sr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/womensnetwork.org\/sr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womensnetwork.org\/sr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womensnetwork.org\/sr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1111607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/womensnetwork.org\/sr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1111607\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womensnetwork.org\/sr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3334025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/womensnetwork.org\/sr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1111607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womensnetwork.org\/sr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1111607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womensnetwork.org\/sr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1111607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}