The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development aims, among other goals, to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls. Since NTFCs are bodies working on the development of trade policies and trade facilitation standards, achieving a gender balanced membership is crucial.
As explained in UNECE’s Briefing note on the contribution of UN/CEFACT to Sustainable Development Goal 5:
Guiding women in understanding trade procedures, setting guidelines for standards bodies to ensure a more balanced representation of the interests of women and men, promoting participation and decision-making of women in trade facilitation and standards related activities, could have an enormous success in increasing exports and enable women to achieve higher income opportunities
Recent UNCTAD research shows that national trade facilitation committees are far from being gender balanced bodies. Most of these committees consider specific actions for gender mainstreaming in trade facilitation neither a priority nor relevant at this stage.
There is a lack of awareness on the importance of gender mainstreaming in trade facilitation at national level.
International agencies that support national trade facilitation committees could play a role to address this gap. For that to happen, national trade facilitation committees should place the gender issue on their agendas and, if necessary, request support on this specific subject from international partners.
