Gender Trainers of Ministry of Defence of Serbia Initiate Revision of Gender Training Manual

The gender military trainers from the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the Serbian Armed Forces (SAF) met to discuss how to revise the Gender Training Manual on 15 September 2022 in Belgrade, Serbia.

The Manual’s revision comes as a need to update the document by including new course materials and topics, new normative and legislative information, and research results produced between Manual’s first and revised versions. The revision will be based on the lessons learned collected by the gender trainers in the six years, the period in which the Manual has been in use. The trainers identified areas for revision and agreed on the further steps, working methods, and the work plan for revising this knowledge tool. 

The meeting, organised by SEESAC at the request of the MoD, gathered seven gender military trainers and enabled experience sharing and knowledge exchange among them.

The Manual was designed at the initiative of the gender trainers of MoD and SAF, whereas the proposal for its development was presented at the First Regional Meeting of Gender Trainers, held in Belgrade on 22 May 2014. At this point, the trainers recognised the need to prepare a manual that would help them develop and implement training programmes for different target groups in the MoD and SAF to improve all military personnel’s knowledge on gender equality in the security sector. The Manual helped the training on gender in the military standardisation and was a useful tool for trainers to prepare and deliver gender awareness activities.

This activity was implemented within the Strengthening of Regional Cooperation on Gender Mainstreaming in Security Sector Reform in the Western Balkans project and is financed by the Governments of Norway and the Slovak Republic. With the support of SEESAC, the project provides the Ministries of Defence and the Armed Forces from the Western Balkans a platform where, over the period of three years, they can exchange ideas and develop policies to ensure long-term and sustainable inclusion of the gender perspective in defence policies and practices.