Advocacy
Together with members and partners, MenEngage Alliance engages in advocacy work in various policy spaces and processes. This includes global human rights and women’s rights spaces such as at the United Nations, as well as through regional and national level bodies.
Our global advocacy efforts are supported and guided by the global Advocacy Working Group made up of members from across MenEngage Alliance.
Regional networks, including MenEngage Africa and MenEngage Europe, have their own regional Advocacy Working Groups directing efforts in those regions and contexts, and in coordination with the global Advocacy Working Group. See the Working Group tab to learn more about the Advocacy Working Group.
MenEngage Alliance co-director, laxman belbase, speaking at the feminist Foreign Policy Conference in The Netherlands in November 2023.
Members of MenEngage hold a strategy meeting at the Human Rights Council in geneva in 2018
Nyasha Sithole, MenEngage Alliance Program Officer and Youth Leadership Coordinator, speaks at the Interactive Youth Dialogue at the Commission on the Status of Women in New York, USA, in March 2023.
MenEngage Alliance co-director, laxman belbase, speaking at the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW63) at the UN in New York, USA, in 2019.
What does MenEngage Alliance advocate for?
We believe that when policies are carefully designed and well-implemented, they play an essential role towards achieving gender and social justice for all. MenEngage Alliance advocates for policies that address the root causes of gender inequalities and that work towards transforming the systems that perpetuate inequalities. We support advocacy efforts of feminist women’s rights and LGBTQIA+ rights activists.
We do not necessarily push for more policies focusing on engaging men and boys. Instead we call for such policies to be developed in partnership with feminist women’s rights and social justice actors, and to complement broader feminist advocacy efforts. We aim to advocate as a supporting voice for inclusion of key feminist demands in resolutions on engaging men and boys.
We encourage ongoing critical reflection and openness to criticism on what it means for those working with men and boys to have a voice in gender policy spaces.
We advocate for the uptake of policy framings that are:
- Human rights based
- Accountable
- Informed by intersectional feminist approaches
- Gender transformative
While there have been notable advocacy successes in recent years, a substantial amount of our advocacy work has been to advocate against harmful framings on men and masculinities within policies, political debates, programs and initiatives with government policy-makers and UN agencies.
In essence, this means that members work together through MenEngage Alliance to ‘hold the line’ to ensure the language about men and boys is not diluted or framed in ways that may harm the achievement of gender justice.
Learn more about what we believe makes a strong gender policy that includes men and boys in the MenEngage Policy Analysis Toolkit.
What are we doing around advocacy?
We do a range of advocacy activities including direct lobbying with policy makers as well as advocacy capacity-strengthening activities with members and partners. Our work includes:
- Providing inputs into policy consultation processes
- Direct lobbying with policy makers
- Publication of Policy Briefs to provide a critical men and masculinity lens on a range of gender and social justice policy issues
- Policy analysis tools to support those wanting to assess a policy with a focus on engaging men and boys
- Learning spaces such as MenEngage CoLab sessions on advocacy
- Convening Advocacy Working Groups to shape our collective policy agendas and efforts
See the ‘Latest’ tab for some of the most recent advocacy resources, events, and updates.
Where is MenEngage Alliance doing advocacy?
Successful advocacy means working at different levels, from local government to the United Nations. Finding meaningful ways to connect advocacy and movement building from national to regional to global levels can make a big difference to the level of success our advocacy efforts have.
MenEngage Alliance has worked with policy and decision makers in UN agencies and governments, delivered political statements at global policy making events, and provided concrete policy recommendations, building on the work of members. We have supported the inclusion of engaging men and boys in official policy agreements within UN policy spaces and processes, including:
- The annual Commission on the Status of Women (CSW)
- Generation Equality Forum (GEF)
- Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development (SDGs)
- United Nations General Assembly
- CEDAW Committee
- OHCHR Special Procedures
- Human Right Council Resolutions
Key advocacy resources
Policy analysis toolkit taking you through the steps for conducting a comprehensive analysis of gender equality policies that include ‘engaging with men and boys’. Using this toolkit allows you to create a score for a policy against a number of key criteria.
10 Policy Recommendations derived from over two decades of lessons learned by organisations working with men and boys for gender equality, women’s rights, and LGBTQI rights.
Mapping of men and masculinities language across international policy frameworks.
Click here to browse all our advocacy resources.
Explore our advocacy positioning on a range of issues
We regularly develop Policy Agenda documents as a collaborative process through the global Advocacy Working Group. These documents represent the attest agreed advocacy positions of MenEngage Alliance. They aim to explore a topic of policy interest from a men and masculinities lens: