The Embassy of Sweden in Bangkok (Sida) has commissioned the review of the Swedish strategy for regional development in Asia and the Pacific 2016-21. The strategy aims to contribute to sustainable development by “strengthening the ability of regional actors to deal with transboundary challenges and opportunities in the areas of human rights, democracy and gender equality, and environment and climate change in a mutually reinforcing way”.

Since the Human Rights Based Approach and Gender Equality are at the core of the Regional Strategy, the Embassy has decided to review how the present programme portfolio has managed to mainstream these perspectives into the contributions and expected results.

The review will identify if there are any gaps in the contribution management process and provide concrete recommendations to the Embassy/Sida on how this can be improved to strengthen the work of mainstreaming gender equality and HRBA further. The review will also analyse how the partners have integrated HRBA and GE into their programs and identify strengths and weaknesses in this regard.

The NCG-led consortium has been awarded this contract and the team is composed of NCG partner Paul Dalton as Team Leader and HRBA and Asia and Pacific Development Expert, Ulf Färnsveden (Nordic Consulting Group Sweden) as Gender Equality, Climate Change and Environment Expert, and Dr. Sarah Forti (Tana Copenhagen) as Gender Mainstreaming and Organizational Development/Organizational Management Expert.