Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women and Girls in the Middle East.
People throughout the Middle East and North Africa are demanding change. This should force critical self-reflection within the international community about how business-as-usual partnerships may have maintained and sustained the same structures and systems that people within those nations are rallying against. In addition to reconsidering its relationships and role in the Middle East and North Africa, Canada has re-oriented its own approach to official development assistance, with the introduction of the Feminist International Assistance Policy. This report presents 7 country studies, which are priorities for Global Affairs Canada. The content within the report was informed by the needs of Global Affairs Canada, as it assesses what lessons can be drawn from the past as well as potential new directions for the future. In line with the new orientation, there is an explicit focus on gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls throughout.
The authors of the country chapters in this report were students in an honours seminar in the Global and International Studies program at Carleton University (GINS 4090A: Evaluating Development Projects and Programs). Summaries of these findings were presented by the respective authors at Global Affairs Canada in November 2019. The group of students took on a challenging task, authoring reports in a short period of time and covering new thematic and geographic ground doing so.