Belgium

Gender in the Belgian Defense diversity policy

Belgian Defense is compliant with the national legislation on gender mainstreaming. This law obliges the federal government services to keep track of differentiated statistics on gender and to develop and regularly update relevant gender indicators in order to provide the best possible report on the gender issue in their department. In addition to these obligations, Defense is convinced that the systematic integration of the gender dimension in all its policy will strengthen its success in general and that of the operations in particular. Therefor it applies a global strategy – gender mainstreaming – that integrates the gender dimension into its policy at all levels. This implies that special attention is given to the possible consequences of all policy decisions and measures on fairness, equity and equality between women and men.

The diversity policy, including gender, revolves around five fields of action: leadership, recruitment, education and training, operations and communication.

Within BEL Defense, four offices have the lead when it comes to integrating gender perspectives and all matters related to WPS & UNSCR 1325:

• Staff CHOD
• ACOS STRAT for the strategic level;
• ACOS Ops&Trg for everything related to operations and training;
• DGHR for the overall policy, the Defense Action Plan and everything related to recruitment, retention and education.

These offices are called “Reference Gender Advisors”.

A formal gender structure with Gender Advisor and Gender Focal Point functions throughout the entire organization will be created in the near future.

Belgian regulations:

• Act of 22 May 2014 to combat sexism in public space.
• Law of 10 May 2007 to combat discrimination between women and men.
• Act of January 12, 2007 to check the application of the resolutions of the world women’s conference that took place in Beijing in September 1995 and to integrate the gender dimension into all federal policies.
• Royal Decree of 26 January 2010 laying down the composition, tasks and operating rules of an interdepartmental coordination group as well as the level of minimum qualifications of its members in implementation of article 8 of the law of 12 January 2007 to check the application of the resolutions of the World Women’s Conference held in September 1995.
• Royal Decree of 27 February 1990 containing measures to promote equal opportunities for men and women in public services.
• Note to the Council of Ministers of 26 March 2015 – The implementation of gender mainstreaming at the federal level.
• National action plan to combat all forms of gender-based violence 2015-2019.

Internal (BEL Defense) regulations exist concerning:

• Diversity policy at Defense;
• Gender in the Diversity Policy;
• Defense Action Plan (DAP) Women, Peace and Security / 2017-2021 – Implementation of the National Action Plan (NAP) 2017-2021;

On December 4th 2018, during the BEL conference “15 years of Diversity Policy in Belgian Defense” an internal informal gender network “Gender in Motion” was officially created in order to promote the integration of gender in BEL Defense policy through a bottom-up approach.

Link to the diversity page on our website (only in Dutch and French):

https://www.mil.be/nl/pagina/diversiteit

POC: