Gender Equality - An Obvious Aspect in Our Operational Activities

Daily, the Civil Defense Agency provides organizations such as the UN and the EU with experts in areas like disasters and conflicts. To succeed, we have long aimed to increase the proportion of female staff in our secondments to other organizations, says Caroline Källner, Head of the Planning and Implementation Department. With a better understanding of how climate change and security risks affect different groups, it is possible to design more targeted measures and strengthen societal resilience in the long term. In ten years, I hope that gender and equality perspectives are an integral part of all climate work and how we address the risks posed by climate change, in policies, action plans, and budgets. Over the coming year, I will work with colleagues to develop a tool to help decision-makers among OSCE participating states incorporate a gender perspective into policies and programs. I work both on the political level—how climate issues are discussed and managed by decision-makers (OSCE has 57 participating states I interact with!)—and on a very practical level with local actors and civil society facing climate challenges in their daily work.