Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions NHRIs AND GENDER EQUALITY NHRIs are essential to ensuring protection of the human rights of women and girls and others experiencing gender-based inequality and to building an environment for gender equality. The NHRI must reflect this both in its external work and in its internal policies. Gender equality includes more than the binary distinction between male and female. It also includes transgender and third gender issues and issues of sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and sex characteristics. Integrating gender elements into the CA process helps the NHRI to translate and instil key gender concepts into its mandate, functions and programs. It provides important opportunities to identify and implement long term strategies to strengthen the way gender issues are approached within the institution. This includes understanding the gender dimensions of all human rights, monitoring the State’s implementation of the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and all other human rights treaties and accepted UPR recommendations, and handling gender related complaints, especially as regards sexual and genderbased violence. It also includes working towards an appropriate gender balance among staff at all levels, providing learning opportunities for staff on basic gender concepts, understanding and acting upon the needs of female staff as they carry out their human rights protection and promotion work, and developing technical capacities to conduct gender responsive budgeting. To improve its mandate to protect and promote the human rights of women and girls, the NHRI also requires technical capacities to collect sex disaggregated data. Guide statements from the UNDP Capacity Assessment Framework for Gender Mainstreaming have been incorporated into the CA process for NHRIs to ensure that women’s empowerment and gender equality, both within the NHRI and in wider human rights work, are visible and prioritised. The focus on training in the CA process can also encourage NHRIs to take up APF opportunities for training and learning on gender equality and the rights of women and girls and human rights relating to sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and sex characteristics, including use of the two relevant APF manuals for NHRIs, Promoting and Protecting the Human Rights of Women and Girls and Promoting and Protecting Human Rights in relation to Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Sex Characteristics.9 Guidelines for the mainstreaming of gender and the human rights of women and girls have been developed by the APF, to support APF members and prospective members to effectively mainstream gender within their institutions and across their external work. NHRIs may also wish to adopt or adapt these Guidelines as the basis for their own specific institutional mainstreaming guidelines. 3.4.4. The capacity assessment questionnaire9 The CA questionnaire contributes further to the qualitative component of the CA and provides the quantitative component. One page of the questionnaire is prepared for each core capacity issue identified for the NHRI. 9 30 See www.asiapacificforum.net/resources/manual-on-women-and-girls/ and www.asiapacificforum.net/resources/manual-sogiand-sex-charactersitics/.