16-18 September,2007, Riyadh,
Gender mainstreaming is one of UNDP’s primary approaches towards gender equality. UNDP Saudi Arabia Country office is committed to making gender equality a reality because the gender gap remains a serious barrier to attaining human development as statistics show in the Arab Human Development Report 2005 “Towards the Rise of Women in the Arab World”.
The Gender Thematic Trust Fund (GTTF) for 2006-2007 was allocated to 9 UNDP Country Offices, one of which was the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, in order to enhance their accountability to mainstream, implement and monitor gender in all their programs and projects. The Gender Mainstreaming Initiative (GMI) is a UNDP-lead project that started in 2006 with the objective of strengthening and institutionalizing gender mainstreaming within the national UN systems.
The Gender Mobile Resource Unit (GMRU) was created to support the Gender Mainstreaming Initiative (GMI). The GMRU contains knowledge products from UNDP and other agencies, and has all the necessary tools to support all the thematic groups under the UN Resident Coordinator in their mission to integrate gender into programming in an effort to ensure gender equality.
The first gender mainstreaming scoping mission to UNDP Saudi Arabia was recently conducted by Mrs. Jocelyne Talbot - Gender Policy advisor in the Sub-Regional Facility for Arab States (SURF-AS).
The main objective of the mission was to discuss the current gender mainstreaming tendencies in the region with reference to the display of the Gender Mobile Resource Unit which is a major activity of the Gender Mainstreaming Initiative (GMI).

The mission included the following activities:
- Reviewing with all members of the gender cluster: the points of entry, country resources, assets from current and pipeline Country Office projects
- Delivering a presentation on UNDP Gender Mainstreaming trends and developments
- Presenting and sharing relevant experiences and good practice examples that were carried in other Arab States
- Introducing the UNDP gender score card
- Reviewing the GMI activities, budget, and recommendations that resulted from the Gender training, the Gender audit and the Gender strategy .

This mission allowed UNDP staff & the gender thematic group to become more aware of the latest developments regarding gender mainstreaming in the UN and the region, the mission also concluded that UNDP Saudi Arabia is seriously committed to gender mainstreaming.

Click here to view the pictures taken during the event

Contact Person(s):
Ms. Thuraya Ismail, Programme Coordinator, thuraya.ismail@undp.org
Ms. Tuful Alokby, Programme Associate, tuful.alokby@undp.org.sa
Tel: +9661-4885301,
Fax: +9661-4885309

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