Women face many barriers to accessing spaces
within international justice bodies and mechanisms
at an equal level. One of these barriers is the lack
of information regarding the selection processes
and their requirements.
This tool, created by GQUAL, synthesizes the rules,
guidelines, and practices that regulate the
processes and documents opportunities to make
them transparent, participatory, and aligned
with gender parity principles.
There are a wide range of international bodies and mechanisms that make crucial decisions for the world, addressing diverse issues such as peace, economic development, climate change, human rights, and migration, among others. These bodies play a key role in the development of international law and justice. GQUAL is working to achieve gender parity in these spaces. You can learn more about our work on our website.
GQUAL monitors the composition of 102 international bodies, which together comprise 613 positions. Currently, only 44% of these positions are occupied by women. This percentage decreases even more when we exclude organisms where state nomination is not a requirement, or those whose mandates focus on women's rights or care-related issues.
One of the main obstacles that we have identified is the limited information available on vacancies, requirements, and procedures. GQUAL believes that making these processes more accessible, transparent and participatory, and ensuring that they respect the principle of equality and gender parity, is a fundamental step toward fostering the inclusive and equal participation of women.
The purpose of this tool is to organize and provide transparent information about the different selection processes in international bodies. It also collects information on recent developments that we have promoted at GQUAL to strengthen the processes, as well as areas where we continue to find opportunities for development. We hope that this tool will encourage greater study and discussion of these processes, as well as inspire more women to apply for international positions.
This is the first version, a guide that focuses on the selection processes of the UN Special Procedures and Expert Mechanisms and the bodies of the Inter-American System, where the campaign has achieved significant progress. We are working to expand this tool to include other international processes.