Burkina Faso

Advancing Equality Through Human Rights Education in Burkina Faso

The ultimate goal of the Advancing Equality project is to increase the empowerment of women and girls to advance gender equality. In Burkina Faso, reaching this goal implies promoting women’s inclusion and participation in decision-making processes. The project focuses on strategies to address social norms and deconstruct gender stereotypes that enable practices that harm women and girls and limit their empowerment.

The situation today

In Burkina Faso, many efforts are being made to protect women and girls’ human rights. However, some realities indicate obstacles to their fulfillment :

• 52% of young women are married before 18
• 13% of women in Parliament
• 95% of girls in primary school, 40% in secondary, 4% in tertiary

Our approach

The Project adopts a participatory approach to advance gender equality that includes:

Knowledge and capacity-building

• Training on human rights and gender equality
• Community initiatives and forums

Collaboration 

• Awareness-raising campaigns
• Support to networks and coalitions

Engagement with decision-makers

• Joint actions on human rights and gender equality
• Dialogues and forums

Learn more about our work in Burkina Faso

The planning and implementation of the Advancing Equality through Human Rights Education program is done in cooperation with the target communities in Burkina Faso. Thus, community members have been consulted and have themselves outlined the most pressing gender equality issues in their communities through data collection conducted by Equitas and its local partners during the baseline study. The data collected were subsequently shared back to the communities and validated by them as truly reflecting the issues they had raised. Through human rights education, Equitas will provide them the tools and skills needed to achieve the desired change.

Fact sheets created on women’s participation in decision-making

Thanks to financial support from the International Organization of La Francophonie and Global Affairs Canada, the Burkina Faso Human and People’s Rights Movement (Mouvement Burkinabè des Droits de l’Homme et des Peuples), together with Equitas and Burkinabè organizations, were able to create thematic fact sheets based on two recommendations made to Burkina Faso by the Human Rights Council during the country’s most recent Universal Periodic Review. Civil society organizations play a key role in monitoring the implementation of recommendations accepted by a state. Discover below the fact sheets created on women’s participation in decision-making and on the access of women, particularly women living with disabilities, to education, health care and employment.

Fact sheets on women’s rights in French
Fact sheets on women’s rights in Dioula
Fact sheets on women’s rights in Fulfulde
Fact sheets on women’s rights in Moore
Fact sheets on women’s participation in decision-making in French
Fact sheets on women’s participation in decision-making in Dioula
Fact sheets on women’s participation in decision-making in Fulfulde
Fact sheets on women’s participation in decision-making in Moore

Equitas works in Burkina Faso with Mouvement burkinabé des droits de l’homme et des peuples (MBDHP).

Our work in Burkina Faso is part of Advancing Equality through Human Rights Education project, funded by the Government of Canada through Global Affairs Canada (GAC).