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SEOW3: Mainstreaming Women’s Economic and Social Rights in Transition Processes in Selected Arab Countries

Project: 
WEEP: Women Economic Empowerment Programme

SEOW3 at a glance

SEOW Project Phases, duration and countries involved
SEOW phases Duration (Years) Countries involved
SEOW1 2006-2009 Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco & Syria
SEOW2 2010 - 2013 Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Lebanon & Palestine,
SEOW3 2014-2016* Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Lebanon & Palestine
*2016 is a CRTD.A supported extension.

 

Partner Organizations in SEOW3 project by Country
Country Partner Organization
Egypt

  • Forum for Woman in Development, civil society organization working for women development

  • New Woman Foundation, feminist non-governmental organization

  • Egyptian Association for Comprehensive Development, local organization working for women, youth and children rights in all fields of development.

  • The Association of Upper Egypt for Education and Development (AUEED), Al Saeed, civil society organization working in the field of human development, with a special focus on education.

  • Future Eve Association, Civil institution working for community development.

  • Evangelical Association for Sustainable Development, civil society organization working in development and targeting youth.

Morocco

  • Democratic Association of Moroccan Women (Association Démocratique des Femmes du Maroc), independent feminist organization

  • Espace Associatif, network of organization working on democratic development

  • National University of the Agriculture Sector (Université Nationale du Secteur Agricole), part of the Moroccan Labor Union (Union Marocaine du Travail) and working within the agriculture sector wage earners

  • Women Organization in the Agricultural and Forest Sectors (Organisation de la Femme du Secteur Agricole et Forestier), part of the National University of the Agriculture Sector, targeting agriculture and forest sector female labors

Jordan

  • Sisterhood is Global Institute, legal organization working for women rights

  • Jordanian Women Union, feminist organization tackling women issues

Tunisia

  • Tunisian Association for Democratic Women (Association Tunisienne des Femmes Démocrates), Tunisian association working in the field of women rights

Palestine

  • Palestinian Association for Business Women “Asala”, an organization working with women entrepreneurs with small budgets, in both the informal and formal private sector.

Yemen*

  • Women National Committee, is a government-affiliated body working to empower women

Libya*

  • Libyan Forum for Civil Society, helping women and youth to participate in civil action

Lebanon

  • Civil group of organization for civil work, civil group working for human rights

  • Fadak cooperative, feminist manufacturing cooperative

  • Ain El Warde cooperative, feminist manufacturing cooperative

* Yemen and Libya activities were put on hold because of the security situation

Source: SEOW3 Narrative Report 2014

 

SEOW 3 project objectives :

 

  1. Mainstreaming women’s economic rights in local policy dialogue processes as well as in constitutional and other reforms processes;

  2. Contributing to protecting CEDAW as a framework for women’s social and economic rights: including the protection of past gains made by women during the past decade and strengthening the position of CEDAW as a main reference for women’s rights and equality rather that the use of religion and cultural specificities.

  3. Monitoring trends, changes, and challenges affecting the Convention as well as the rights of women especially in countries of what is known as Arab Spring.

Building knowledge and capacities to uphold CEDAW as well as women’s social and economic rights and mainstream these in current reform processes.

 

SEOW3 achievements

 

contributions to placing the gender gap in public discourse: The project has succeeded in presenting knowledge on areas of economic disempowerment of women framed by CEDAW from various countries in areas including economic indicators, constitutional reform, social protection/security, and informal work.

 

Mobilization: SEOW3 has succeeded by virtue of its regional design expressed in periodic regional partners' meetings and field coordination and follow-up by CRTDA as the coordinating organization, to harness partners' organizational capacities albeit at varying levels to place issues of economic discrimination against women that are framed by CEDAW in public discourse in several Arab countries. SEOW3 succeeded through policy dialogue on visibilising and valuing rural and care women’s work, -examples are the Jordan and Egypt workshops on women and informal work.

 

The added advantage of being in a network allows partner organizations to benefit from a continuous process of reflecting on and exchange of experiences from various countries in the MENA region - an integrated experience of capacity building and social change processes that feed in to enrich individual countries' experiences.

 

The project is also helping out in partner organizations' engagement in research activities as some publications of their own tackle the same issues the project is tackling.

 

Local committees within partners organizations are being created in result of project’s policy dialogue meetings and they are in charge of putting the needed strategies and planning to advance on project’s main issues and our partners own projects and agendas.

In addition, SEOW 3’s knowledge accumulation and generation is helping in partner organizations' own advocacy initiatives.

Another additional activity consists of sharing project’s documentations by CRTD.A in international events CRTD.A participates in outside SEOW3 in addition to dissemination to its international network of partners.