UN Women, grounded in the vision of equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, works 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 center 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 will provide strong and coherent leadership in support of Member States' priorities and efforts, building effective partnerships with civil society and other relevant actors. UN Women Ethiopia Country Office, under its Strategic Note (2021 – 2025) identifies Women in Leadership and Governance as a thematic area with the aim to contribute to the overall goal of increasing the effective participation and representation of women in leadership and decision-making position in Ethiopia. One of the One of the strategies adopted by the program is supporting key democratic institutions including the NEBE to enhance women’s equal participation in electoral process and influence in decision-making. The program understands that if the capacities of institutions such as NEBE are strengthened to design and implement gender policies, there will be a more level playing field that will enable women to participate in leadership and decision-making position. The NEBE is an independent entity established in accordance with Article 102 of the Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. Since its establishment, the Board has organized different branch offices at both the federal and regional levels including the two administrative cities and conducted the six general elections, two local elections, and seven referendums. Since 2018, important steps were taken by the government of Ethiopia and the NEBE itself in reforming NEBE as it deemed necessary to strengthen the Ethiopian democracy and to enable citizens to exercise their right to elect by way of free, fair, and peaceful elections; by improving the credibility and implementing capacity of the Board and ensuring the Board’s independence from the influence of any other body. NEBE as an election management body, holds a key position to contribute to the achievement of gender equality, which is intrinsic in all the pillars of sustainable democracy building in any society. Understanding its role and mandate, the Board made an effort to ensure gender responsiveness of Ethiopia’s electoral process including commissioning various studies such as the Gender Mapping of Political Parties (2019); Gender analysis of electoral laws (2019); Rapid Gender Audit of the Board (2021); revision of its gender mainstreaming guideline (2022); organization of capacity building for its staff and management on Gender and Elections and gender sensitive electoral frameworks (2019-2021); developing projects and mobilizing various partners and resources for gender specific projects and programs; organizing various awareness promotion and capacity building forums on participation of women in elections including Violence against Women in Elections/Politics (2020-2021) where it ensures the participation of electoral stakeholders including its own staff and management. To further facilitate the Boards effort to ensure gender equality and advance women’s participation in electoral processes an introduction of gender policy with clearly defined implementation plan is found to be critical. Being the entity with the sole mandate to manage most of the key constituent parts of electoral processes in Ethiopia, having a gender policy that clearly charts the way for achieving gender inclusiveness and responsiveness throughout the electoral cycle: pre during and post-election, is believed to significantly contribute available normative frameworks for the promotion of women’s participation in the electoral process at all level. The gender policy is also expected to further consolidate NEBE’s recognition of gender equality as an integral part of its organizational systems and processes by acknowledging how gender-based inequalities can affect all aspects of women and men’s opportunities to participate electoral process. The gender policy would thus make gender equality visible and an integral aspect in the designing, planning, implementation, monitoring and reporting on electoral operations, systems, and processes of NEBE. The policy will assist NEBE to address and overcome both internal and external gender inequalities including those inequalities that exist within EMBs’ operations, systems, and processes and, in its external management and administration of electoral processes. The introduction of a gender policy will enable NEBE to apply gender lens over the management of its internal operations as well as in its external management and administration of electoral processes. The gender policy is expected to reinforce and complements existing tools and guidelines including the NEBE gender mainstreaming guideline that articulate the importance of promoting gender equality within NEBE.
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