UN Albania runs gender equality marker and human rights marker training

The UN Resident Coordinator’s Office and UN Women Albania co-organized an online training on the Gender Equality Marker (GEM) and the Human Rights Marker (HRM). The overall aim of the training was to ensure that the GEM and HR Marker scoring will be accurate for the upcoming Joint Work Planning cycle, which will cover the 2024-2025 period. The training was also an important step for ensuring the accuracy of markers is instrumental for adequately score UNCT SWAP Indicator 6.1, which verifies whether adequate resources for gender mainstreaming are allocated and tracked. To exceed minimum requirements for this indicator, the UNCT must carry out a capacity-building event on the GEM along with establishing and exceeding a financial target for program allocation for gender equality and the empowerment of women.

While acknowledging that a degree of subjectivity is linked to the scoring of the JWP sub-outputs, the training was designed to enhance understanding and awareness of the markers and ensure engagement with them in the process of developing the JWPs. This is to also ensure good quality assurance for the Quadrennial Comprehensive Policy Review (QCPR). In 2022, Albania scored the highest regionally in terms of quality assurance with a score of 76.4% for the QCPR of GEM 2 and 3.

The training gathered 33 participants, including members of the Gender Thematic and Results Group and JWP output co-chairs. The post-training questionnaire showed that participants expressed that the most useful part was practicing coding the sub-outputs with the GEM and that overall, the participants acquired an increased understanding in the accuracy of the GEM and HR markers. Around 77% of participants expressed they are confident or very confident in their capacity to apply the markers to sub-outputs correctly, 89% of participants said the training fully or mostly met their expectations and 80% rated the delivery as good, very good or excellent. Elise Dietrichson (UN Inter-agency Coordination Analyst) who led the training on the GEM, expressed she was impressed with the level of existing knowledge in the Albania country team about the markers. She emphasized that the UNCT GEM is not only about a technical scoring exercise, but it should also be a “conversation starter” about the UNCT contribution to gender equality.