Generation Equality Dialogues

Generation Equality. UN Women — Generation Equality. Photo: UN Women

Scaling up Generation Equality to advance gender equality at national and regional levels

Generation Equality is the world’s leading effort to unlock political will and accelerate investment and implementation on gender equality. It brings together organizations from every part of society – through intergenerational, multi-stakeholder alliances – to catalyze progress, advocate for change, and take bold actions together. At the heart of Generation Equality's objectives lies the necessity to implement these goals at the local/community/grassroots level, guaranteeing significant outcomes and enduring sustainability. Critical for the success of a scaled up approach is the involvement of all stakeholder groups, which strengthens knowledge generation and ownership for effective decision-making. It’s essentially a replication of the global multi-stakeholder partnership approach at the national (and for some countries, like Tanzania, also at the subnational level).

The “Scaling up Generation Equality to advance gender equality at national and regional levels” dialogue series will provide a space to review progress, celebrate successes, identify challenges, and share lessons learned from the scaling up Generation Equality at national and regional levels. They will facilitate strategizing on how to best localize Generation Equality, learning from the diverse experiences of champion countries, including Tanzania, Kenya, Burkina-Faso, Kazakhstan, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Participants will collaborate to formulate concrete actions that address the recommendations from the case study, ensuring our localization efforts are effective and sustainable. The insights of the first dialogue will inform the development of a localization strategy for Generation Equality.

The objectives of the dialogues are:

Enhance the understanding of the different approaches to scaling up action for Generation Equality at regional, national and sub-national level.
Build awareness for the work being advanced by Commitment Makers and Signatories in the same region/countries
Formulate recommendations and actionable plans to scale up action for Generation Equality at national, subnational, and local levels, ensuring that strategies are practical, context-specific, and sustainable.
Create and solidify partnerships and collaborations that support ongoing and future initiatives, fostering a network of committed stakeholders.

The first dialogue will cover a range of thematic areas related to scaling up action for Generation Equality at national and regional levels, including:

1. Government-led scale-up: Political ownership and support at the highest level: Learning from Tanzania, Kenya, and Kazakhstan, which instated a National Steering Committee chaired by the ministry leading on the implementation of the government’s commitments. This ensures political will and support but also budget allocation for and transparent monitoring of the commitment implementation.

2. Regional scale-up: learning from Burkina Faso. Burkina Faso, through the Regional Coordination Committee, which is due to meet every year, has been monitoring the implementation of the SRHR Action Coalition Blueprint and advancing dialogues on new and revised commitments to strengthen sexual and reproductive health among key Western African countries.

3. UN Women-led scale-up: Learning from Bosnia and Herzegovina CO organized local chapters of 6 Action Coalitions. BiH has a total of 23 commitment makers across governmental institutions, private sector, non-governmental organizations, and creative media platforms.

4. Youth-led scale-up: learning from Asia Pacific: The Asia Pacific 30 for 2030 Youth Network was born out of Generation Equality and brings together young decision-makers, eminent civic and business innovators, feminists, entrepreneurs, technology pioneers, educators, activists, artists, journalists, and more. The network acts as a voluntary advisory community and an accelerator of exceptional people with the vision, courage, and influence to drive positive change for a gender equal world. The network is youth-driven and supports post Generation Equality Forum engagement and supports UN Women and key partners including the GEF Action Coalition Leaders and Commitment Makers, design and lead on global advocacy initiatives.