First Regional Training of Trainers Workshop for the Arab region takes place in Tunis

Water Resources Management in the Arab Region

26 November until 03 December 2007

Hotel Mercure El Mechtel, Tunis, Tunisia

From 26 November- 02 December 2007, GWA conducted its first regional Training of Trainers course in Gender Mainstreaming in Integrated Water Resources Management in Tunisia. The course was hosted by the Center for Arab Women Training and Research (CAWTAR) and organized in collaboration with AWARENET, Cap-Net, IDRC/WaDImena and GEWAMED.

The TOT course aimed to strengthen the capacity of trainers and increase the number of trainers in the Arab Region that can effectively train others in Gender mainstreaming in Integrated Water Resources Management. A total of 13 women and 6 men coming from Algeria, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia and Yemen participated very enthusiastically in the course.

Dr. Sukaina Bouraoui , executive Director of the Center of Arab Women for Training and Research (CAWTAR) opened the course on 26 November by welcoming the participants and noting the importance of this course for the Arab region.

Subsequently, Ms. Chrisje van Schoot , Senior Programme Officer of GWA stressed the importance of this region in the agenda of GWA. She spoke about the recent activities of GWA and its partners for mainstreaming gender in IWRM in the Arab region. Also Prof. Atif Hamdy , Dr. Hamu Laamrani (IDRC) and Ms. Najat representative of the Ministry of Agriculture in Tunisia stressed the importance of gender mainstreaming in IWRM in the Arab region.

This first day was also attended by the Tunisian ex- Minister of environment, who lectured about water recourses in Tunisia.

The programme of the ToT consisted of sessions on gender concept, gender in the Arab region, gender mainstreaming in IWRM, gender and water demand management, poverty equity and equality, training techniques and transfer of knowledge gender audit with special attention to IWRM, exercises of gender analysis and case study from Egypt.

A field visit was part of the training course and participants visited the city of Kairouan and two villages. The objective of the field visit was to get to know about the social and economic situation of women in this region, and look at projects and water services to citizens. The city of Kairouan in Tunisia is a good example in terms of providing water to citizens, with water delivery to about 89% of the citizens in the region.

By the end of the course the participants had produced 15 national action plans on mainstreaming gender in IWRM in their own countries. GWA looks forward to see the results of these plans in the near future.