Grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, UN Women will work for the elimination of discrimination against women and girls; the empowerment of women; and the achievement of equality between women and men as partners and beneficiaries of development, human rights, humanitarian action and peace and security. Placing women’s rights at the centre of all its efforts, UN Women leads and coordinates United Nations system efforts to ensure that commitments on gender equality and gender mainstreaming translate into action throughout the world. It provides strong and coherent leadership in support of Member States’ priorities and efforts, building effective partnerships with civil society and other relevant actors. Guided by the UN standards of conduct and obligations of the UN Staff Rules and Regulations, as well as the UN Core Values: Integrity, Professionalism and Respect for Diversity, UN Women promotes a safe working environment where all personnel adhere to the highest standards of behaviour and conduct themselves in a professional and disciplined manner at all times.? The Charter of the United Nations sets high standards for the Organization and promotes the observance of those standards throughout the world. UN Women is implementing those standards in its human resources policy through ongoing contributions to system-wide policy development, as well as implementing internal measures, to ensure awareness and protection from sexual exploitation and abuse, and therefore safeguarding a workplace free of any form of discrimination, harassment, including sexual harassment, and abuse of authority where all staff is treated with dignity and respect and are aware of their role and responsibilities. UN Women applies zero tolerance to any violation to the above and act consistently by taking the appropriate administrative, disciplinary and/or contractual action required. In addition, UN Women recognizes the various key international instruments on equality in the workplace such as The Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW, 1979); The Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (1995) and its follow up recommendations (2000, 2005, 2010); The Commonwealth Plan on Action on Gender Equality; The United Nations Declaration on Violence Against Women (DEVAW, 1993); The International Labour Organisation (ILO) Discrimination (Employment and Occupation) Convention, 1958 (No. 111), which addresses the fundamental right of non-discrimination at work promoting equality of opportunity and treatment in respect of employment and occupation, with a view to eliminating discrimination. Another ILO equality instrument is the Equal Remuneration Convention, 1951 (No. 100). It specifically addresses equal remuneration between men and women for work of equal value. The Government of Egypt has made significant advances in the field of gender equality and women empowerment the last two decades. The revised Constitution of 2014 guarantees equal opportunities for all citizens without discrimination (Article 9). It also espouses equality before the Law for all persons without discrimination based on religion, belief, sex, origin, race, color, language, disability, social class, political or geographic affiliation or any other reason (Article 53). Furthermore, women’s rights are stipulated in the new constitution to include various principles: equality, political rights, protection from all forms of discrimination and violence (Article 11 and 180). Furthermore, Egypt has adopted the definition of violence against women approved by the General Assembly in December 1993 in article 1 the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women, namely, “Violence against women means any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life”. Furthermore, in a step towards fulfilling the state’s obligation to protect women, the Penal Code was amended in 2014 to define ‘sexual harassment’ and punish its perpetrators. In 2008, amendments to the Child Law raised the legal marriage age to 18 for both sexes and outlawed FGM. Within this context, UN Women is dedicated to advancing gender equality and women’s human rights in Egypt, where the strengthening of national capacities and human potential is evidently prioritized. UN WOMEN is fully supporting the Government of Egypt’s Sustainable Development Strategy: Egypt's vision 2030, the National Strategy for the Empowerment of Women, the new civil service law issued to improve the working conditions of civil employees and enhance transparency of government services and strengthen citizens' confidence in the state administration. Such developments are geared towards realizing an efficient and effective government administrative body that strongly contributes in the achievement of Egypt’s development goals. Within this framework, UN Women is supporting the capacity building of the administrative apparatus in Egypt and the current and ongoing initiatives led by the Ministry of Planning, Monitoring and Administrative Reform towards gender mainstreaming in human resources policies, with a view to create and maintain a culture of employment based on respect, equal opportunities and safe from harassment. UN Women intends to hire a national training consultant to research and analyse all the existing material on gender equality in employment and consolidate all into one single inclusive and comprehensive Gender Training Manual to be used in training the human resources staff of the Ministry of Planning, Monitoring and Administrative Reform through familiarizing them of the national and international commitments in relation to gender equality at the workplace, means to assess gender equality in HR policies and operations, and the importance to combat all forms of harassment at the workplace.
|
