In an effort to better support national governments and other partners to implement the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in a gender-responsive manner, UN Women and the West and Central Africa (WCA) Regional Gender Thematic Group (comprised of UN Women, UNFPA, OIM, UNESCO, UNODC and UNICEF Regional Offices) organized a regional training of trainers (ToT) in order to train experts from the UN System to better integrate gender perspectives into UN Country level programming and SDG processes. This first ToT was held from 28 November to 2 December 2016 in Dakar, Senegal with 40 participants from WCA Francophone countries.

The five-day face-to-face workshop delivered by the UN Women Training Centre worked to strengthen concepts, skills and attitudes to mainstream gender in the UN Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF), while also looking at methodologies, techniques and skills to plan, design and deliver effective training based on the subject.

The training aimed to prepare participants to:

• Define the strategic contribution of the gender dimension in the national development and humanitarian programming based on the regional, national and local context
• Support the integration of gender in the processes of appropriation, implementation and follow-up of SDGs in relation to the normative framework and the global and regional mechanisms on gender and human rights (i.e. CEDAW, Beijing + 20, ICPDB2014, UPR, etc.)
• Replicate and adapt training content to support UN Country Teams and Gender Theme Groups to mainstream gender in their joint programming at country and local level, including technical support provided by UNCTs to government and other partners for the incorporation, implementation and follow-up of the SDGs
• Facilitate and contribute to planning participatory trainings and workshops for UN System and their partners on gender mainstreaming in UN joint country programming and in the field