👥 Partners: UN Women, Beity Association, Lebanese Army, Internal Security Forces

🎯 Objective: Developing strategic, long-term frameworks for integrating gender equality into national security policies.

💡 Planning for the Future: Can Gender Mainstreaming Be Institutionalized in Security Forces?

Change in security institutions does not happen overnight. It requires vision, planning, and leadership that sees beyond immediate challenges to long-term reform. This training was not just about gender equality—it was about strategizing how to make gender integration a reality in the Lebanese Army and Internal Security Forces (ISF).

Through an intensive strategic planning methodology, officers and security personnel worked through complex institutional challenges:

• How can security policies reflect gender-responsive governance rather than just inclusion targets?
• What tools can security institutions use to institutionalize gender-sensitive policies beyond leadership changes?
• How do we ensure that gender mainstreaming is not just an agenda item but a core operational principle?

These were not just theoretical discussions. Every participant left with a concrete strategy—a roadmap for how they will integrate gender perspectives into their work, their teams, and their institutions.

🔹 Training Beyond Gender Awareness: A Strategic Planning Approach

The training focused on equipping participants with the tools to lead policy transformation. Rather than simply discussing gender dynamics, we worked on:

• Long-term strategic planning—how to build multi-year frameworks that secure gender mainstreaming as a pillar of security operations.
• Institutional assessment models—how to identify gaps in current policies and integrate gender-responsive strategies within existing structures.
• Policy impact analysis—evaluating how changes in national security plans will influence the daily realities of both security personnel and civilians.
• Scenario-building for gender-sensitive operations—ensuring that security forces anticipate, plan for, and integrate gender dimensions in all crisis response and policing operations.

This was a shift away from gender as a training topic to gender as a security framework—a crucial distinction for institutions that hold power over national safety, stability, and governance.

📊 From Training to Institutional Change: The Real Impact

By the end of the program, participants had:

• Designed gender-responsive strategies tailored to their respective units.
• Developed a clear roadmap for integrating gender perspectives into national security policies.
• Strengthened inter-agency collaboration between the Army, ISF, and civil society to ensure accountability for these strategies.

This wasn’t about individual awareness—it was about institutional transformation.

💡 Personal Reflection

“Strategic planning is not just about setting goals—it’s about creating mechanisms that outlast leadership changes, political shifts, and operational challenges. This training was about embedding gender responsiveness into security governance in a way that becomes non-negotiable. Seeing participants map out real strategies—ones that will be implemented, not just discussed—reinforced my belief that sustainable change starts with a structured vision. Gender is not an add-on to security; it is a foundational principle of effective, inclusive governance.”

📩 Ready to Build Gender-Responsive Security Strategies?

If your organization is working on integrating gender mainstreaming into national security policies, let’s collaborate.