Gender Audits: Asia Indigenous People’s Pact & the Mzimba Youth Organisation

Many of the ILCs member organisations aim to strengthen the land rights of women, either as a primary focus or as part of their broader intervention to promote secure land rights.

Therefore, the ILC supports and facilitates gender audits and gender action plans for its member organisations, promoting gender awareness, gender transformative practices and organising training activities for any identified gaps. In order to investigate the value of these gender audits in the eyes of the recipients, I spoke with Dharmodip Basamutary from the Asia Indigenous People’s Pact (AIPP), and Moses Khana from the Mzimba Youth Organisation in northern Malawi to learn from their gender audit experiences. From these conversations, I was able to gain a greater understanding of how these audits benefit the operations of their organisations, and how much the knowledge and assistance of the ILC is valued.

The interviews were guided by the questions below:

When did you conduct your gender audits?

AIPP conducted a gender audit between 2021 and 2022, which identified some gaps within the organisation that were able to be addressed and worked on speedily. As of the Mzimba Youth Organisation, the audit took place in 2023/2024, following an initial application in 2022, and helped the organisation respond to the previous issues that emerged. This led to the development of a gender action plan implemented in 2024/2025 as part of an award granted to Mzimba Youth Organisation as Africa gender justice charter champions.

What was the main impact of Gender Audits on organisations in the short and long term?

Asking about the main impacts of the gender audit on the AIPP prompted Dharmodip to discuss the audit’s largest benefit; the opportunity to refresh the AIPP on gender justice by identifying and targeting gender policy gaps and mobilising more funds to develop a policy on sexual harassment and exploitation on a secretariat level. The added benefit of these improvements, he explained, was the trickling down of these policies and efforts to reinforce gender justice to AIPP member organisations, ensuring that the AIPP continues to practice and promote a strong message of gender justice, in line with the core values of the ILC.

According to Moses, the gender audit provided a set of recommendations for Mzimba Youth Organisation to address the challenging results of the preliminary assessment. From this, they have added the position of a gender focal person to their staff and implemented a gender action plan. In response to a significant gender justice knowledge gap amongst staff being identified in the audit, Moses emphasised that the implemented gender action plan ensured that “each member of the staff, starting from the gate, to the driver, to the head of programs, to the board members- we all have the same knowledge, so that when speaking, we are speaking of the same”.

He continued, stating “we are talking of board of directors to have the same understanding, the management, regardless of your position, to have the same understanding in the context of gender analysis, gender matrices, gender justice, and all those terminologies.” Therefore, regardless of position within the organisation, all individuals are intended to possess the same knowledge and expertise on gender justice, ensuring clear communication and messaging to individuals and communities they work with in the future.

In your experience, what is the added value of the ILC supporting member organisations in conducting gender audits and gender action plans?

The positive impacts brought about by the results and recommendations of these organisations’ gender audits strongly imply a highly valued contribution of the ILC to its member organisations. But how is ILC’s direct involvement on gender justice matters viewed? And what is the added value of conducting gender audits?

Dharmodip expressed clearly that the ILC’s support and gender audits have added much value to the AIPP, due to the already well-developed gender policies and core values promoted by the organisation, and the access to ILC gender experts who are able to provide advice on these matters. A particularly valuable part of this support highlighted by Dharmodip was the opportunity to interact with other ILC organisations who had also conducted gender audits. This provided comparisons and other perspectives of gender justice, which Dharmodip claimed was useful for revealing aspects they may have missed in their own audit.

It was also clear during our discussion that Moses also considered the gender audits and expertise of the ILC to be a highly valuable asset for Mzimba Youth Organisation. According to Moses, without the ILC there would be no ability to discuss gender justice within the organisation, as there are no other accessible organisations focused on gender matters. Whilst the Malawi government works on issues related to gender and land justice, they are unable to provide resources or expertise to organisations working on the same issues. The involvement of the ILC is therefore critical to Mzimba Youth Organisation’s gender-focused operations, both internal and external.

When organisations focus their efforts on gender-related social and policy matters, it is imperative that their internal structure confidently maintains its own gender justice policies and practices.

Without this, the organisation’s success in improving these matters elsewhere would be hindered. This is why the ILC’s gender audits are vital to the success and validity of organisations striving for a more gender just world, and following my conversations with Moses and Dharmodip, it is clear that this value is acknowledged. Based on the discussions it can be affirmed that both the AIPP and Mzimba Youth organisation will continue to succeed in their missions having effectively integrated the knowledge and advice provided by these gender audits. With a solid knowledge foundation, refreshed policies and continued support from the ILC, they are sure to achieve the goals they set their sights on.