The CELAC-EU Summit of Heads of State and Government, scheduled for 17 and 18 July 2023, will provide an opportunity to generate a high-level strategic dialogue on the challenges and opportunities for bi-regional cooperation on gender equality in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) and the European Union (EU) countries. In the framework of its mission to facilitate the exchange between governmental and civil society authorities of the two regions, the EU-LAC Foundation organised on 11 and 12 May 2023 a Gender Equality Forum with the objective of generating outputs to feed the discussion agenda of high-level authorities in the field of women's political, economic and social rights, political leadership, care, gender-based violence, peacebuilding and sustainable security.
The EU-LAC Gender Equality Forum took place at the German Federal Foreign Office and the GIZ Representation Berlin and in hybrid format and was supported technically and financially by the Unidas Women’s Network between Germany, Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as with the institutional support of the German Federal Foreign Office, the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, International Trade and Worship of Argentina, and the Secretary of Foreign Affairs of Mexico.
The Forum gathered 81 face-to-face participants and 56 virtual participants – representatives of civil society networks and organisations working on gender equality, the rights of girls, women and LGBTIQ+ people, academic experts as well as cooperation agencies and international organisations specialised in the field, and governmental representatives from LAC and the EU. This report reflects, in synthesised form, the dialogues held during the Forum, along with the information shared by several experts through a previous online survey.