The Inclusive Legislatures For Gender Responsive Policies (ILGRP) project is funded by Global Affairs Canada and implemented in partnership by African Centre for Parliamentary Affairs (ACEPA) and Parliamentary Centre (PC). The ILGRP project supports the Parliaments of Ghana, Kenya, and Togo to strengthen institutional capacities for gender-responsive administration, legislation, budgeting, oversight, and representation. The project places particular emphasis on advancing the rights and inclusion of women, girls, and marginalized groups, while enhancing legislative effectiveness, transparency, and inclusiveness. It also promotes meaningful engagement between parliaments, civil society organizations, and women’s rights organizations.
The proposed initiative is a pioneer effort in providing larger scale support to the strengthening of the three respective Parliaments on inclusiveness and gender equality issues.
This four-year project (2022-2026) provides support for Ghana, Kenya and Togo parliaments to adequately assess gaps and strengthen their capacities to incorporate gender aspects across the exercise of their legislative, oversight and representation roles.
More specifically, ILGRP aims at enhancing the capacity of the three parliaments to
- formulate and operationalize detailed gender-responsive institutional strategies and plans,
- implement administrative reforms for efficient gender-sensitive resource utilization and service delivery,
- amend and pass inclusive gender laws, including gender-sensitive budgets,
- oversee the achievement of gender equality commitments by executive branches, and
- connect with citizens, in particular women and girls, to take into account their views and needs in legislative and oversight processes.
The project also aims at strengthening the knowledge of civil society organizations (CSO) and women’s rights groups (WRG) working on parliamentary-related issues and their capacities to engage effectively with parliaments and it includes a substantial focus on engaging civil society groups as well as individual women and girls and having their voices taken into account in the decision-making process. Ultimately, these experiences will inform institutionalization and the development of practices and tools aimed at making the parliaments’ legislative and oversight work more inclusive and gender-responsive.
Activities include citizen engagement, institutional strengthening, knowledge exchange, parliamentary networking, and practical training. The project works on exploring mechanisms to facilitate citizen participation including the use of digital technology.
Engaging directly with these three African parliaments in a concerted effort will be an efficient way for cross-fertilization and knowledge sharing amongst themselves and with Canada’s parliament. Experiences and valuable knowledge acquired during the project can provide opportunities to share lessons learned, good practices and models that can be scaled up across Sub-Saharan Africa.
As the Parliaments of Ghana, Kenya and Togo build practical capacity to apply a strong gender lens to the execution of their legislative and oversight roles, ILGRP offers a deeper understanding of how governance challenges can be better addressed in achieving the goals of the Canadian Government’s Feminist International Assistance Policy (FIAP), as well as larger internationally shared goals such as pandemic interventions and the SDGs.
The expected outcomes for this project include:
1) strengthened legislatures to represent the needs of the poorest and most marginalized populations, with a focus on women and girls;
2) improved abilities and effectiveness of elected officials to design and develop inclusive and gender-responsive laws, policies and budgets; and
3) improved engagement of civil society and marginalized populations, in particular women and girls, in decision-making and democratic processes, to ensure that policies and services better respond to their needs.
Countries: Ghana, Kenya, and Togo
Duration: 2022-2026
Focus: Parliamentary Institution; Citizen Outreach and Engagement; Parliaments and Gender
Funder: Global Affairs Canada
