The Autumn Session of the INGO Conference of the Council of Europe took place between 9-11 October 2023, coinciding with the session of the Parlamentary Assembly. It also celebrated 30 years of civil society organisations like us being part of the European efforts around human rights. As always, our Supervisory Board Member, Herminio Correa represented Parents International and he was also the co-organiser of a very topical round table discussion on gender equality. You can read his report about it below.

The Committee “NGOs as advocates for gender equality and women’s rights” organized a round table on the subject of “Gender equality is a Human Rights issue. How can we join forces to promote and protect it today?” with which the Autumn Session of the INGOS Conference began.

This round table intended to highlight the relevance of gender equality and women’s rights as a cross-cutting theme that affects all INGO Committees in the outcome of their work. The Conference of INGOs’ common objective is to make the INGO Committees cooperate with each other on cross cutting topics. For the Gender Equality-Committee, this means contributing to gender mainstreaming and to support other INGO Committees to observe the gender perspective.

Respect and full compliance with human rights will only be a reality if men and women have the same rights and the same opportunities. Therefore, the defence of gender equality must be a joint task of all and everyone.

Cécile Gréboval, Senior Gender Equality Adviser, Gender Equality Division outlined the relevance of human rights and gender equality to the work of the Council of Europe and highlighted many inequalities between men and women that remain in our days.

Then five of the seven INGO Conference committees spoke about gender aspects in their work, namely in the areas of the environment, interreligiosity, children’s rights. education and migration.

This round table, as an introspective session, was a meaningful way to exchange experiences and lessons learned from the past and to obtain ideas and suggestions for the future. Based on the information obtained and the results of this round table, a strategy will be developed on how best to implement gender equality as a cross-cutting task in the work of the INGOs Conference.

Bettina Hanne (Chair), Anita Schnetzer-Spranger (Vice Chair) and Sara Pilia were the collaborators of Herminio Correa in the organization and execution of this round table.