Gender justice and human rights

The Danish Institute for Human Rights has worked for more than 20 years in Zambia, strengthening access to justice for people in marginalised and vulnerable positions, including women. We support the establishment of legal desks at community level, for instance in police stations, prisons, and courts; we provide training of paralegals, chiefs, and local court staff; and we engage in awareness-raising to inform people about the services of the legal desks as well as broader legal topics. 

Read Q&A with Chief Adviser Karol Limondin and Senior Legal Adviser Charles Dinda

How do you work with gender?

In all our work, we have a strong focus on women. When you work in a context where most people rely on customary law, as in Zambia, you cannot avoid this. Many of the issues that people deal with through customary law – inheritance, property rights, divorce – have a strong gender aspect. 

We have developed a training manual for local courts – it has several chapters related to women’s rights, equality, and non-discrimination. When we start training of trainers, these issues are an important part of our discussions. 

In our training, we engage with Local Court Magistrates, chiefs and traditional leaders and community members in a very open way, asking them where they see problems in current customary practices and assisting them in finding solutions. We emphasise that we are not trying to get rid of customary law or change it into formal law. But customary law can be adjusted if they think it makes sense – and human rights can provide useful guidance in this. 

We often use narratives of fairness and responsibility instead of an explicit human rights language. We try to talk about things in a way that resonate in the contexts where we work. When we discuss  property rights, for instance, we say: ”Although some customs deny daughters the right to inherit property from their parents, wouldn't it be fairer for both sons and daughters inherit from their parents?"

What have been the results?

Customary law in Zambia is quite flexible, and the local leaders we work with are open to changing their interpretations and practices. We see this in relation to issues such as child custody, widow inheritances, child labour, access to land for women and the inclusion of women as traditional court officials which are currently male dominated. Things are changing – sometimes in just a few days or weeks. 

However, it’s not enough to have a chief who is supportive and willing to eliminate customs which violate women's rights, without consulting with and sensitising community members to win their support. Once, we worked with a chief who was very critical of sexual cleansing practices, and when a widow was to be cleansed, he decided against this. But he didn’t involve the community in his decision. In the end, the woman begged the chief to allow her to be sexually cleansed, because she was under massive pressure from the community who expected her to undergo this practice. 

What difference does it make to integrate gender into this kind of work? 

We hope that this work can contribute to showing that women’s rights and customary law do not have to be in opposition to each other. Because customary norms and practices are not static but flexible and changing, it is possible to find solutions that can ensure protection of women’s rights within the framework of customary law. That will have very concrete consequences for women in Zambia, for instance in terms of increased representation of women in decision making at chiefdom and local courts level. This will in turn increase confidence among women to access and use traditional justice and formal justice to claim their legal rights.

The Danish Institute for Human Rights was contracted by The Independent Consultation and Investigation Mechanism (MICI) of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to support MICI to identify gaps relating to gender mainstreaming and to develop a common vision to strengthen the gender approach in MICI’s mandate.

Read Q&A with Chief Adviser Gabrielle Factor

How did you work with gender?

We conducted a targeted review of relevant MICI procedures and key documents to understand current procedures, how are they applied, their limitations and potential from a gender perspective. We also distributed an online survey to all MICI staff with the aim of gauging the level of awareness and ownership of the topic of gender. Parallel to this, we held more in-depth interviews with teams and selected MICI staff members. This allowed us to get a better understanding of the various functions and modalities of operations of MICI, as well as to collect input from the MICI team on opportunities to strengthen gender in their work. Finally, we performed an in-depth review of three specific cases previously handled MICI, with a view to understand their processes in practice and identify concrete gaps and opportunities to consider gender dynamics in their approach. 

What were the results?

We produced a final report where we presented the findings of our review and suggested ways forward for the institution. The findings of the report informed a training workshop for MICI staff and a discussion on the recommendations and way forward for MICI. Afterwards, MICI staff told us that the process has been transformative and enlightening, even for those who considered themselves well versed in gender. The work plan developed showed an immediate implementation, full commitment and a clear, ambitious way forward towards strengthening the gender approach in their procedures.

What difference does it make to integrate gender into this kind of work?

Projects financed by development financial institutions such as the Inter-American Development Bank often carry differentiated social and environmental impacts on women and vulnerable groups: For instance, impacts relating to limited access to land and natural resources which are not prevented, managed or compensated, indirect gender-based violence and negative impacts on intangible cultural heritage connected to women. But such gender specific risks are often overlooked in the safeguarding policies and independent accountability mechanisms of development finance institutions such as the MICI. Our review – and the process around it – contributes to building greater awareness and knowledge among staff, as well as developing and implementing procedures and approaches to ensure a more gender-sensitive approach in the future

The Gender Pointers is a set of basic questions that help us integrate gender into our work – they point us in the right direction, so to speak. The gender pointers focus on different aspects of our work, including advocacy, training, and development of tools. For each of these, the pointers list relevant questions to consider. 

Read Q&A with Senior Adviser Mikkel Schmidt-Hansen

How were the pointers developed?

The gender pointers were developed as part of a workshop for staff from our programmes on Responsible Business Conduct Programme and Sustainable OCEANS, supported by SIDA (Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency).  The purpose of the workshop was to familiarise staff with concepts, tools, and methods for gender analysis, and to develop concrete measures to integrate a gender perspective in their programme activities. Through a participatory and iterative learning process, we formulated the gender pointers. 

What could gender pointers be?

For instance, when you plan a training workshop, do you make sure that your needs assessment reflects the different needs, opportunities, and capacities of people of different genders? Or when you develop new tools, do you make sure that people of different genders are consulted and actively taking part in planning, design and follow-up of the tool?

What have been the results?

Obviously, the gender pointers are not a fix-it-all tool, but they can contribute – along with other initiatives and measures – to strengthening integration of gender into our work. Originally, they were meant as a working resource for staff working with responsible business conduct and the OCEAN-programme, but we quickly found out that they are useful for staff in other programmes and projects within the Danish Institute for Human Rights as well. 

The gender pointers have now been approved to be used as guiding principles to promote and encourage a stronger integration of gender justice across all international departments and activities at the Danish Institute for Human Rights. They have been presented at workshops with each department, and staff are using them in different thematic and geographic contexts. 

In Morocco, the Danish Institute for Human Rights works with the Ministry of Justice and the Inter-Ministerial Delegation for Human Rights, supporting them in implementing their mandates. With the Ministry of Justice, we are developing training on human rights education for justice professionals, and social workers in courts

Read Q&A with Programme Manager Fatiha Hassouni

How do you work with gender?

Gender equality is part of the ministries’ mandate in Morocco, so this is also a natural part of our work with them. In our partnership dialogue, we try to encourage reflections on gender equality: How can we make sure that our activities do not have a negative impact on gender equality? What can we do to actually integrate gender equality in the partners’ reflexion on their strategies? Where are the openings, the possibilities?

When you talk about gender equality, you need to pay attention to the context in which you work, and to the persons you are working with. You have to be humble. Your perception of gender equality is not necessarily the other person’s perception. In our work in Morocco, we don’t start by saying ‘if you do this or that, you will violate this or that’. We start by listening to our partners and their perspectives. And then we try to find the intersections and the overlapping areas, the common ground that we can build on together.

What have been the results?

For example, in the human rights education training for social workers that we are developing in partnership with the Ministry of Justice, we include a module on gender-based approaches. Equality and non-discrimination will be mainstreamed in the other modules dedicated to social workers’ mandates and practices. 

Another example: We have been invited by our partner the Inter-ministerial Delegation for Human Rights to participate in their dialogue with the Faculty of Law and Political Studies of Kénitra on the establishment of a Master’s Programme on human rights and public policies. In our discussions on the content of the Master’s Programme, the university agreed to our proposal to add a module on gender-based approaches.

What difference does it make to integrate gender into this kind of work? 

The purpose of our work is not to do advocacy for gender justice or monitor violations of women’s rights. There are many good gender experts and organisations in Morocco who do precisely that. Our work is about building capacities of state institutions, supporting them in fulfilling their human rights duties. By directing attention to gender in this work, we can contribute to ensuring that gender is mainstreamed in the policies and practices of the ministries. And that can potentially have a big impact.