27Jan2015
Second Gender Training of Trainers Course for the Armed Forces
Within the scope of SEESAC’s Gender Equality in the Military project, which aims to support integration of women in the armed forces in the Western Balkans, a two-week long regional Gender Training of Trainers Course (GToT) is beginning on 28 January 2015 at the Peacekeeping Operations Center in Belgrade, Serbia.
The GToT is a NATO-accredited course, which prepares instructors and trainers to effectively plan, conduct, and evaluate education and training for troops, units, staff and officers on the gender perspective in military operations.
Organized by SEESAC and the Nordic Center for Gender in Military Operations (NCGM), and hosted by the Peacekeeping Operations Centre in Belgrade, the course is specifically tailored to the needs of the Ministries of Defence (MoDs) and Armed Forces (AFs) in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia – and is delivered in close cooperation with these institutions.
Seventeen (17) representatives of the MoDs and AFs in the Western Balkans will be participating in the course. They will also be joined by two representatives of the British Army, one representative the Swedish Armed Forces, and one representative of NATO’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE).
In addition to the NCGM instructors, representatives of the four MoDs from the Western Balkans will also serve as instructors as well as take on a significant mentoring role during the group work sessions of the course.
The course comes as a follow up to the 1st NCGM and SEESAC-organized GToT Course, which was hosted by the Peace Support Operations Training Centre in Bosnia and Herzegovina in March 2014. The first course saw 16 representatives of the MoDs and members of AFs complete the training, together forming the Regional Network of Gender Trainers.
Since then, the trainers have been actively working on increasing gender awareness in the military through delivering seminars and trainings on gender equality in their respective institutions. The network of gender trainers has been holding regular regional meetings to review their work and progress.