Tool 7: Parliamentary Oversight of the Security Sector and Gender analysed all sectoral allocations of the government’s budget from a gender perspective to determine its differential impacts on women, men, girls and boys. The underlying idea was to analyse all forms of public expenditure or methods of raising revenue in the context of the benefits that would accrue to women and girls in relation to men and boys. The first phase of the initiative focused on four sectors – welfare, education, housing and the Reconstruction and Development Programme. The second phase included areas such as health, justice, safety and security, correctional services, transport, home and foreign affairs, agriculture, land affairs and energy.7 It is significant that a key to success was the close cooperation between parliamentarians and civil society organizations. 5.2 Engaging parliamentary gender structures in security sector oversight As explained in section 2, parliaments’ oversight function concerning the security sector tends to be centred in committees on security and defence. They can investigate the activities of the security forces and provide a public forum for political parties to deliberate on security policy and activities. Parliamentary committees on security and defence should actively communicate and co-operate with the parliament’s dedicated gender structures – most commonly a committee with a particular focus on gender equality, or a women’s caucus. As of 2015, 144 parliamentary bodies with a mandate to address gender equality existed in 116 countries. Examples include the Belgian Advisory Committee on Equal Opportunities for Men and Women, the Canadian House of Commons Standing Committee on the Status of Women, the Indian Committee on the Empowerment of Women, the Spanish Committee on Equality, the Dominican Republic’s permanent Gender Committees, the Committee of Equal Opportunities of the Assembly of North Macedonia, the Gender Equality Committee in Montenegro’s Parliament, the Sectoral Oversight Committee on Women and Gender in the Parliament of Sri Lanka, the Gender Equality Committee of the Danish Parliament, Finland’s Employment and Equality Committee, the Committee of Equal Opportunities of the Bosnia and Herzegovina House of Representatives, the Gender and Children Committee of the Parliament of Ghana and the Women’s Parliamentary Group in El Salvador. It is an essential role of these committees to hold public hearings and consult with the policy community to determine the effects of policies, programmes and legislation on women, men, girls and boys. In Moldova, for example, the Women’s Committee has sought expertise from the Gender Equality Platform, which comprises 19 prominent civil society organizations.8 A women’s caucus can bring women together across party lines. Cross-party women’s caucuses exist in, among other countries, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kyrgyzstan, North Macedonia, Poland, Slovakia and the United States of America.9 An OSCE/ODIHR study on structures for women MPs in the OSCE regions revealed that while the type of parliamentary and political system in place does not appear to affect directly the emergence of a women’s parliamentary body, the political environment can influence what type of body emerges. Likewise, the existence of legal gender quotas or voluntary measures to support women’s election to parliament does not appear to be a direct indicator of the likelihood that a women’s parliamentary body will be established. Nonetheless, many women’s parliamentary bodies have played a key role in advocating for the introduction of gender quota provisions in electoral laws, in lobbying for amendments to gender quota provisions and/or in monitoring the implementation of quota provisions.10 A good example of a women’s caucus is the Association of Women Parliamentarians and Ex-Parliamentarians in El Salvador. When the association was founded, the president 29