The Policy Advocacy program is UWONET's core program and forms one of the key functions for which UWONET was created. Through this program, UWONET seeks to make the policy and decision making space more democratic by highlighting and championing the voices and concerns of women by women themselves. It seeks to include women as a key constituency in the formulation and implementation of any laws, policies, programmes and practices to the end that women's and society's status improves, thus contributing to the vision of a prosperous Uganda. UWONET's policy advocacy programme targets policy and decision makers at national level, i.e. Parliament, government ministries and the donor community.

Strategic Objective:

To engender laws, policies, programmes, structures and processes in order to address the needs of both women and men leading to the achievement of gender equity and equality.

UWONET focuses on:

* Engaging the structures, systems and processes of policy formulation, law making as well as program formulation and implementation to ensure their gender responsiveness. Emphasis is on building gender consciousness, gender analysis and mainstreaming in the above areas.

* Increasing the role, numbers and influence of women in politics and decision-making at national level. Areas of focus include advocacy for a legal and policy framework for Affirmative Action, advocating for the establishment of the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC), and advocating for budgetary allocations to issues of concern to women.

* Research to understand the function and manifestation of patriarchy and other forms of oppression and how they perpetuate discrimination and marginalization of women and use the findings in UWONET's advocacy work.

The Policy Advocacy Programme focuses on women's rights advocacy; economic policy advocacy; health rights advocacy; as well as increasing women in politics and decision-making. Since lobbying and advocacy is our major strategy in this area, the advocacy covers areas such as: advocacy against gender violence, the Domestic Relations Bill, and tracking implementation of key regional and international women's rights treaties and conventions which Uganda is signatory to (such as CEDAW) as well as tracking of key policies and programmes such as the Gender Policy and the National Plan of Action on Women. Under the area of economic rights advocacy, UWONET envisages advocacy on the Land Policy as well as women's labour rights advocacy through research and lobbying for Government of Uganda's ratification of the relevant ILO conventions. Under health rights advocacy, UWONET engages in gender and human rights advocacy in HIV/AIDS as well as reproductive rights advocacy. As a way of increasing women's participation in politics and decision making at all levels, UWONET provided legislative and policy support to women Parliamentarians and the Ministry of Gender, actively engaged in the political transition as well as gender monitoring of presidential, parliamentary and local council elections in 2006 and 2007.

The Key Activities under the Policy Advocacy programme include the following:

Activity 1: Monitoring of International and Regional women's rights conventions esp. tracking CEDAW
As a way of keeping track of Government of Uganda's international commitments to women, UWONET shall engage in annual tracking of CEDAW to produce an annual report on the state of its implementation in Uganda. In this process the membership and allies engage in the tracking and produce annual reports on the CEDAW thematic areas. After every three years, UWONET mobilises women's organisation to compile an Alternative Report in preparation for the Alternative Reporting process.

Activity 2: Advocacy for the ratification of international and regional conventions
UWONET engages in advocacy for the ratification and signing of international and regional women rights conventions especially the Additional Protocol on Human and People's Rights, and the ILO convention on Workers with Family Responsibilities. The advocacy initiatives above are aimed at garnering support to influence government of Uganda to sign and ratify the above conventions, which will enable for the protection and promotion of women's rights.

Activity 3:Gender Audit of laws and key policies and instruments relating to women
Researches on various laws and policies were undertaken to ensure their gender responsiveness.

Activity 4: Advocacy for the Enactment of the Sexual Offences Bill, Domestic Relations Bill and the Domestic Violence Act
UWONET is coordinating the Coalition on the Domestic Relations Bill (DRB), which coalition comprises of about 40 women and human rights organisations advocating for a just family law. The DRB is intended to consolidate all laws related to marriage, separation, divorce and property rights. This activity will involve holding DRB coalition meetings, sustaining the DRB campaign in the media, holding a harmonisation workshop on the DRB, conduct taskforce meetings as well as hold DRB coalition meetings to agree on advocacy strategies. The fact that there is currently no legislation to address violence against women, UWONET will also lobby and advocate in the area of violence against women specifically for enacting of enabling laws such as the Domestic Violence Act and Sexual Offences Bill. This will be through tracking media reportage of violence, dialogue with various stakeholders, commemorate 16 days of activism against gender violence and hold meetings with legislators and line ministries.

Activity 5: Advocacy for Women in Armed Conflict on Peace and Conflict
After documenting women's experiences in armed conflict in Arua District in North Western Uganda during the past programme phase, it was found out that, there are a number of challenges (relating to health, education, domestic violence and rape to mention but a few) that women are facing in conflict areas. UWONET as a national network plans to develop specific programmes for support for Northern Uganda. UWONET will advocate for the enactment of laws and formulation of policies that address the plight of women in armed conflict as well as the development of gender sensitive policies that protect the rights of women in Internally Displaced Camps (IDP). UWONET will also advocate for the increased visibility of the role and impact of women's organisations in peace and conflict resolution.

Activity 6:Capacity Building of Women's Organisations in Peace and Conflict
Women's organisations working in conflict areas with the support of UWONET will receive training in lobbying, advocacy, and negotiation skills. These capacity building sessions are aimed at enhancing their capacity to work in peace and conflict areas and increasing women's participation in peace brokering.

Activity 7: Advocacy to reduce gender-based violence
UWONET plans to track media reportage of cases of violence against women and use this for advocacy to reduce gender-based violence. In addition, it is planned that the network will join the rest of the world in organising activities every year to commemorate 16 days of activism against gender violence.

Activity 8: Engaging in the Beijing +10 Process
UWONET is engaging in regional meetings to track the Beijing Platforms For Action (PFA's). This is through documenting government's process on the Beijing PFA's, participation in preparatory meetings, participating in the Eastern African and African regional meetings as well as simplifying and dissemination of the Beijing +10 review document.

Activity 9: Advocacy for the Establishment of the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC)
UWONET is actively involved in advocating for the establishment of the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC)' the only statutory body (as granted by the 1995 Constitution of the Republic of Uganda) that has never been established. Action for Development (ACFODE) one of the members of UWONET is heading the Coalition on the Equal Opportunities Commission. UWONET as a network will support ACFODE with a media campaign and produce a policy brief and briefing paper on the EOC.

Activity 10: Women's Labour Rights Advocacy
Women's economic rights have to date been left at the periphery in spite of the current initiatives that are aimed at poverty eradication in Uganda. To this effect, UWONET engages in labour rights advocacy in the form of carrying out a research on women workers with family responsibilities as well as developing an advocacy strategy. These efforts are aimed at feeding into the advocacy for the ratification of the ILO Convention on Workers with Family Responsibilities as well as amending the Employment laws in Uganda.

Activity 11: HIV/AIDS Advocacy
As part of the heath rights advocacy ' a new aspect of the UWONET advocacy programmes, the Network developed a gender and human right HIV/AIDS advocacy strategy to guides women's organisations in HIV/AIDS advocacy, build partnerships with various stakeholders to lobby and advocate for the formulation and dissemination of a gender sensitive HIV policy and enact HIV law and organise capacity building workshops for 20 women's organisations.

Activity 12: Health Rights Advocacy
Health indicators of women in Uganda are still very poor indicating high maternal mortality rates, low access to healthcare services as well as minimal decision making of women in healthcare provision. Against that background, UWONET plans to engage in collaborative meetings with the ministry of health and civil society, train health practitioners on the rights based approach, and hold a national stakeholders consultative workshop.

Activity 13: Increasing Women's Participation in Politics and Decision-Making
This is three-fold: Monitoring of elections from a gender perspective, legislative and policy support to women parliamentarians and engaging in the political transition process. UWONET will hold regional consultations with women on their minimum demands to political parties and organisations, organise regional public dialogues in upcountry districts for women to dialogue on the political tradition, hold workshops for with women leaders at various levels to equip them with gender monitoring tools, develop IEC materials and mobilise women to understand their role in politics and decision-making. Under this activity, most sub-activities will be undertaken more at regional level so that women at that level can have an input into policy and decision making as well as interface with policy and decision makers.

Activity 14: Land Policy Advocacy
UWONET membership and its allies will sustain the debate on women's land rights through holding a series of consultative meetings with the Ministries of Lands and Gender as well as actively get involved in the process of developing the Land Policy.

The key expected outputs/outcomes of the Policy Advocacy programme are:

* Women's concerns incorporated into laws and policies (like the health policy and land policy) by 2007
* An engendered law, policy making and implementation process in Uganda by December 2008.
* Signature and ratification of the Additional Protocol on the African Charter on People and Human Rights and the ILO Convention on workers with family responsibility by December 2008.
* Increased participation of women in politics and decision making by at least 40% by 2008
* Women's political, social, health and economic rights promoted and protected by 2006.
* Government adherence to and implementation of women's rights as contained in regional and international treaties and conventions such as CEDAW through UWONET's monitoring.