Section 2: Develop Your gender strategy Section 2 takes you through four stages involved in developing an NHRI gender strategy and the steps associated with each: 1. Prepare your NHRI 2. Agree your Strategic Framework 3. Build your strategy 4. Put the strategy into action Phase 1: Prepare your NHRI Identify leadership Obtain organisational commitment Establish a Gender Strategy Development Team Develop an action plan Understand the current situation 1 PREPARE YOUR NHRI Communicating internally Mapping, and engaging with, external stakeholders Without NHRI preparation – leadership support; budget, personnel, resources and systems in place; and early stakeholder buy-in – a strategy will not be successfully implemented Building a strong base on which to develop a gender strategy assists the NHRI avoid tokenism or symbolic commitments that don’t lead to real change. As importantly, unless the gender context and key issues are understood, the priorities and actions built into the strategy will not be adequately informed. If the preparation phase is skipped, or not allocated enough time, the gender strategy risks being unrealistic, unsupported, and poorly implemented - undermining the NHRI’s ability to advance gender equality and its national and international credibility. This section is made up of seven (7) steps that will guide you through this preparation phase. It has a checklist at the end and an example from our fictitious Human Rights Commission of Assuwa. You may have other activities and tools that you would include in this phase. We are interested to hear about those so they can be included in this developing resource. Gender Strategy Toolkit 2026 20