On 5-6 July 2021, EU TACSO 3 organised the Training Mainstreaming Human Rights-Based Approach (HRBA) and Gender Equality (GE) for civil society organisations (CSOs) in Turkey. The training aimed to encourage CSOs to develop explicit policies and to integrate human rights principles and gender equality into their internal policies and operational activities, as well as become more inclusive and participatory in terms of respecting, protecting and fulfilling the full range of human rights. The Training Programme was conducted on two consecutive half-day sessions and was held on-line.

The event has gathered representatives of various CSOs, CSO networks, local CSOs and grassroots organisations from different thematic areas including human rights, children’s rights, youth rights, rights of the people with disabilities, humanitarian aid etc. The two half-day Training Programme was focused on the historical evolution and classification of human rights and human rights derogations. Limitation clauses especially during the COVID-19 pandemic as well as the concepts of GE and Gender Mainstreaming (GM) were tackled. The participants together with the guest speakers  discussed the concept of “mainstreaming” itself from the perspective of human rights organisations, children’s rights and gender equality. The training programme provided the participants with concrete examples of mainstreaming HRBA and GE and provided practical information on how to mainstream HRBA and GE in the organisational structures of the CSOs. The Training Programme also covered the principles of data collection and emphasized the importance of reporting in terms of transparency and accountability of CSOs.

During the evaluation session of the training the participants described the training as: “updated”, “professional”, “full of content”, “inclusive” and “impressive”. Most of the participants expressed that in this training they had the chance to learn different aspects of mainstreaming and learned a lot of new things in terms of HRBA and GE.

The training programme is consisted of regional advanced training, monitoring support, basic trainings in main language groups and check-list for CSO to be published on the EU TACSO 3 project website.