Report on the Pre-Governing Council Partners Consultation on the Gender Equality Action Plan

On the 28th and 29th March 2009, UN-HABITAT hosted a two-day, weekend consultation with partner organisations on the agency's Gender Equality Action Plan (GEAP). The GEAP is an institutional strategy to reduce gender discrimination and promote gender equality in human settlements development. The consultation took place just before UN-HABITAT's 22 nd Governing Council from 30 th March to 3 rd April 2009. During the Governing Council, Member States considered the Plan for implementation as part of the proposed institutional work programme and budget for 2010-2011.

The Partners Consultation had two objectives:
1) To provide an opportunity for partners to share their work relevant to the UN-HABITAT Gender Equality Programme; and
2) To provide a forum for partners and UN-HABITAT teams to learn about and contribute to the implementation of the Gender Equality Action Plan.

Participants included representatives from women's NGOs, housing rights organisations, local government development organisations, women's land access trusts and UN-HABITAT programme staff. (Appendix 2 shows a full list of participants, their organisations and respective countries.)

During the two-day consultation, organisations made individual presentations about genderrelated work in their organisations, with relation to housing and urban development. Most also briefly outlined the activities they wanted to contribute towards the action plan. On the second day of the consultation, partners formed groups with overlapping interests and started defining more concrete activities that could be delivered together.

The Governing Council has since approved the Gender Equality Action Plan in early April 2009. Proposed activities by UN-HABITAT partners, as outlined in this report, are thus important contributions towards putting the Plan into motion.