January 2023: Closing reflections and results
After more than four years of exciting collaboration between Canadian municipal experts and their counterparts in Tunisia, the project is now complete. We are extremely proud of the professional and personal relationships we built and the positive change we helped to foster. For a summary of PIML’s reach and achievements, as well as a sense of the lasting impact the project will continue to have in the lives of women and their communities in Tunisia, please see below.
We thank our implementing partner, the International Development Center for Innovative Local Governance (CILG-VNG International).
We also acknowledge the support of our funder, Global Affairs Canada.
PIML by the numbers:
- 706 people (504 women, 202 men) from municipal councils, municipal administration and civil society trained around 16 themes related to decentralization and good governance, as well as inclusive and gender-sensitive planning.
- 242 elected women benefited from a training program through the Network of Tunisian Elected Women. The number of Network members increased from 15 to 1,000 in less than three years.
- 26 gender-specific services were developed in 8 partner municipalities.
- 24 municipal experts from municipalities, local government associations and civil society organizations, mostly from Quebec and French-speaking Canada, collaborated on the project.
- 4 Municipal Councils for Children have been set up in Tunisia.
Fall 2022: We are launching a new Gender-Responsive Budgeting Course
This free, online course was developed in collaboration with our other international projects, as well as with our program Canadian Women in Local Leadership.
The course is an introduction to gender-responsive budgeting and is meant for municipal staff and elected officials. It will also be of interest to civil society members engaged in municipal action. Registered participants who complete the final test successfully will receive a certificate of completion.
Learn how to identify gaps and inequalities between men and women in the provision of services, as well as in payroll management. Understand the causes of these discrepancies and explore corrective, or affirmative, measures, in order to promote equality between men and women.
Register here by entering your name, preferred language, and email.
Spring 2022 Progress Report
The activities of the Inclusive Municipal Leadership Program in Tunisia will come to an end in December 2022. So far, hundreds of women, elected and non-elected, have been touched and transformed by the program. The partner municipalities are better equipped for, and sensitive to, the adoption of inclusive practices that promote gender equality. National partners collaborate and unite to integrate gender considerations into laws and programs that have an impact at the local level.
Priorities for the final months of the program include the development and adoption of a Tunisian Charter for the Right to the City (another tool for promoting inclusion), the finalization and promotion of gender-specific pilot projects, the election of parity municipal councils for children, as well as the documentation and sharing of innovative practices developed throughout the project.
The Fortnight: Tunisia-Canada Municipal Exchanges
For two weeks in May 2021, Tunisian and Canadian municipal actors came together to share experiences in a series of virtual activities. The Fortnight: Tunisia-Canada Municipal Exchanges was organized through the Inclusive Municipal Leadership Program (IMLP) to facilitate peer learning and foster collaboration in a time of restricted in-person meetings.
Dozens of participants shared good practices and reflections on the common municipal challenges they face, such as diversity and inclusion, women’s participation and crisis management. Most activities included simultaneous interpretation for broader engagement.
The Fortnight was organized in collaboration with CILG (International Development Centre for the Innovative Local Governance).
See the lessons learned from each of the workshops.
Why did we launch IMLP?
A new generation of women leaders is emerging in Tunisia. Following the adoption in 2016 of an amendment to the Tunisian electoral law that included a provision supporting gender parity among municipal councils, 47% of representatives elected in the 2018 local elections were women. However, discrimination against women is ongoing and often undermines their involvement in local politics.
The goal of this project is to ensure that women as citizens and elected officials have more influence over the management of local affairs in eight Tunisian municipalities. With technical support from Canadian municipal specialists, these municipalities reinforce their ability to integrate the gender aspect into their day-to-day management practices. They develop a better ability to provide women and the most vulnerable groups with inclusive and gender-specific services in partnership with civil society. This project also provides support to various national institutions to create an environment that promotes the political involvement of women in the management of local affairs.
This initiative spans 40 months (2018 to 2022), and is implemented in partnership with the Centre international de développement pour la gouvernance locale innovante (CILG-VNG International).
