Guidelines For Good Practices At its 1998 meeting, the United Nations Inter-Agency Committee on Women and Gender Equality (IACWGE) endorsed a coordinated initiative to compile UN-system good practice information about implementing the Beijing Platform for Action, gender mainstreaming, and institutional processes. The initiative is designed to provide the UN Resident Coordinator system, UN management and staff, as well as external audiences in government, bilateral agencies, and civil society with information that supports improved programming to achieve gender equality. The goal of the collection is to make accessible the results and lessons learned from replicable initiatives worldwide, with a view toward promoting fulfillment of Platform for Action recommendations on gender mainstreaming and equality. A Task Force chaired by UNIFEM and UNDP, with representatives from UNICEF, Habitat, INSTRAW, the Division for the Advancement of Women, and UNFPA was set up to take this initiative forward. The Task Force articulated criteria to guide the identification of good practices. The collection will feature practices that: (a) make a specific contribution to gender equality (b) have an impact on the policy environment (c) are innovative and replicable, and sustainable. Attention will also be directed to projects emerging from a participatory process; that are of significant scale; that involve inter-agency collaboration; that address discrimination and inequalities from the life cycle perspective; and/or, demonstrate government commitment to further action and resources. GUIDELINES FOR GOOD PRACTICES IN IMPLEMENTING THE BEIJING PLATFORM FOR ACTION AND GENDER MAINSTREAMING The good practice initiative has the following objectives for the UN system: Demonstrate that gender mainstreaming can be effectively undertaken; Demonstrate specific, recommended ways of doing so; Share information on an ongoing basis both within the system and with external audiences on ways that each agency recognizes as "good practice". The good practices are aimed at three distinct sets of audiences: The United Nations Resident Representative/Resident Coordinator system; United Nations management and staff; External audiences: Governments, bilaterals, civil society - the "general public". Good practices can fall into the following broad categories: The twelve critical areas of concern of the Beijing Platform for Action; Gender mainstreaming and United Nations system institutional processes, including: training and capacity building; institutional and policy commitments; and resource allocation; Communications, outreach, and networking. Criteria for selecting good practices. (Not all criteria need to be present in each selected good practice.) The good practice should: Lead to an actual change that contributes to gender equality or breaks new ground in non-traditional areas for women. There should be a link between the `good practice' and some visible or measurable change in gender relations, gender balance, or women's options and opportunities; Have an impact on the policy environment, to create a more conducive or enabling environment for gender equality. This could include impact on legislation, the regulatory environment, or resource allocation. It should include an assessment of the degree of institutionalization of the identified good practice; Have the involvement of a United Nations entity. Since this is a UN system-wide initiative that emerges from recommendations about strengthening UN support to gender mainstreaming and Beijing follow-up, those practices with UN involvement will be the most likely to be replicated; Demonstrate an innovative and replicable approach. In the context of this set of good practices, this implies the capacity to demonstrate what is new or unique about the initiative -- either its product or process -- and offer opportunities for the initiative to be replicated in other countries and contexts; Be sustainable. In this context, the commitment of mainstream or institutional sponsors or participants in the initiative -- whether Government, academia, media, the UN, NGOs, etc. -- needs to be a component of the best practice. Special interest exists in good practices that: Emerge from a participatory process, involving a range of actors (civil society, private sector, Government, etc.); Have significant scale or 'reach'; Involve inter-agency collaboration; Address discrimination and inequalities from the life cycle perspective; Demonstrate Government commitment to further action and resources. Good practices will be assembled in the following two-page format. It should be: Be simple, user-friendly; Describe the method used; Indicate what good practice criteria have been met, and how; Identify obstacles faced and how they have been overcome; Include some note of what would be different if a gender mainstreaming perspective had not been adopted; Provide some analytical component for replicability; Provide cross-referencing of availability and other basic information. Process and time table for collecting/compiling good practices: The collection of interagency good practices will proceed in a phased approach. The ultimate goal is to establish an integrated information management system able to identify and disseminate good practices on an ongoing basis. Information about this initiative will be included into the overall information management systems of each entity. An immediate effort will be undertaken by the task manager to obtain a collection of existing good practices from United Nations entities. All entities will share other information already available on good practice in gender mainstreaming, including conceptual development of guidelines/criteria. The task manager, through the Chairperson of the Committee, will communicate with all entities seeking their full cooperation and contributions to this initiative. Entities will collect good practices and submit them to the task manager. They will be compiled and classified, and made available as a draft for the fourth session of the Committee. The task manager may avail itself of the support of an ad hoc working group in this project.