In partnership with IM Swedish Partner, Arab Network for Civic Education launched the project “Youth Academy for Democracy” that aims at influencing the internal system of 10 targeted Unions to be more youth responsive and gender sensitive in their structure and mechanisms. In addition, the project aims to build and maintain a strong baseline and resources of the youth and women engagement in the democratic bodies at the unions; build the capacity of youth members (half of them girls) of unions to enhance the culture of dialogue with existing leaders and build coalition to introduce changes within the structures of their institutions; and increase capacities and mechanisms for social dialogue by enhancing the quality of youth participation in unions in the tripartite policy dialogue (government, employers and workers) in advocating for employees’ rights through dialogue initiatives led by youth to defend the right to equal and fair work and access to decision-making mechanisms in unions, and reach out to unions more responsive to young people's demands.
The project is implemented in partnership with Lawyers Without Borders Network of Arab Youth Activities (NAYA) that contribute in presenting expertise in areas of legal and internal reform, accountability, transparency and evidence-based policies, and implementing of the capacity building model.
This project comes to address the factors that contribute to determining the representation of women and youth in decision-making platforms. According to a study conducted by Jordanian National Commission for Women, a lot of women don’t join unions due to social norms and stereotypes. The same study found that although the percentage of women membership in unions exceeds 28% but their representation in the elected unions councils is only 12%, although they represent more than 55% of the members of some unions. As for youth, due to regulations limiting the candidature for unions' councils to those who spent more than 7 – 10 years as members (depending on the union), the representation of youth below the age of 30 in unions councils is 0%; this situation leads to the lack of representation of the majority of unions beneficiaries in decision making mechanisms within their institutions, leading to the non-representation of their concerns and priorities. This goes against international standards and practices related to unions and civil society at large and the loss of the rights of majority of their members.
The project is based on providing beneficiaries with the tools to reach decision making levels within their unions through working on a multi-level strategy. This strategy will be built on working with women and youth within unions to advocate for increasing women’s membership in unions in general, increasing women representation inside unions elected councils and working with youth to lobby for amending the internal regulations to allow youth to run for unions’ councils. This will lead to increasing the diversity within the unions and creating change agents equipped with the necessary skills to achieve better representation of majority of unions members.
This will lead to establishing trusted partners among ANHRE and partners to their beneficiaries and contributors to the foreseen change through working with women and youth within PAs and building common grounds for the advancement of PAs structures and mechanisms based on international best practices and human rights.
Click here for Terms of Reference for Promoting the Participation of Youth and Women in Union Work