Anne-Brigitte Albrectsen departs after a two year term as the UNFPA Representative in Turkey.

During her term, she initiated several successful projects, including the “Stop the violence against the women” campaign

In an interview she told us about her new career, her contribution to the Joint Programme, women in Turkey and UNFPA Turkey.

Question: Ms Albrectsen, you are the main architect of the United Nations Joint Programme to promote and protect women’s and girls rights in Turkey. Why is this programme important for Turkey?

Albrectsen: Despite many important legislative improvements in the past years implementation of this legislation is still slow. This is due mainly to lack of knowledge and capacity to implement the legislation at the local level – and occasionally also lack of political will. On the positive side, many local officials and politicians have come to the UN asking for assistance to plan and implement changes to improve the lives of women and girls and we have responded with this programme. The programme is designed to ensure that women’s needs are highlighted and heard through a series of participatory processes. It will not meet all the needs of women, but it will create a political environment under which priority needs can be met in a better and more effective way.  

Question: Several countries and private foundations finance the programme. Please tell us about the challenges you have faced to secure funds for the programme.

Albrectsen:From the beginning we decided to think BIG. Many previous projects in the field of women’s rights have not been sustainable because the funding ran out very quickly We knew that to make a sustainable impact we had to convince interested donors and sponsors that pooling resources into a large joint programme would be beneficial both for the donor and for the women of Turkey. So over the course of 8-9 months we set about meeting with all potential embassies in Ankara and we met with about 100 private sector companies to find interested partners. Today we have 6 country donors and 1large private foundation donor as well as the funding available from the UN itself. We hope that more country donors will join the programme. The benefits are easy to see – even a small contribution can leverage big impact because the sum of the whole is larger that the individual parts. 

Question: After two years in the country, tell us about your experience regarding the developments in issues related to gender in Turkey.

Albrectsen:I think the past 2 years have been very exciting and rewarding from a gender perspective in Turkey. Many important new initiatives at the legislative level have been taken and the public debate around women’s rights and violence against women has taken a positive turn. The Hurriyet stop violence campaign, the parliamentary inquiry into honor killings and the dismissal of the deputy who beat his wife from the AKP executive committee show that this is now clearly on the national agenda. I hope that the momentum is kept because there is still a long way to go and I fear that the coming months electoral talk may suppress some of the positive efforts – but lets hope that the predominantly male politicians remember that 50 per cent of their constituency is women.

Question: Turkey is a big country with a big population. How did you manage to reach out to most of the population?

Albrectsen:The truth is we probably didn’t. But we tried to work with partners who have an outreach in difficult to reach areas. For example we have worked for many years with local radio stations and local media, we worked with the Turkish Football Federation to bring a message out to a predominantly male audience and we have sought assistance from the Ministry of Religious Affairs to ensure that issues such as honor killings and domestic violence are addressed in Friday prayers.

Question: UNFPA office in Turkey is very active. You are running several projects in partnership with government and private sector companies. Please tell us about them and the project that was most exciting for you.

Albrectsen:Apart from the work on women’s human rights, the most exciting work has been with young people and addressing their rights. There are a lot of taboos in Turkey about young people, their relationships and their sexuality. In fact world experience tells us that when these taboos are broken youth generally live a safer, happier and healthier life for the good of the entire society. HIV/AIDS, for example, cannot be prevented without knowledge and full reproductive rights. We have partnered with two private sector companies – Dogus Holding and Johnson & Johnson – to provide age appropriate and culturally sensitive information about healthy lifestyles to pre-teens and to girls and boys in orphanages. The fact that the private sector has become an active socially responsible partner has been another important and exciting aspect of the job over the past years. 

Question: How do you rank women’s movement in Turkey? What should be done to make it more active?

Albrectsen: I actually think that it is very active and has been the driver behind many of the recent reforms. I wish that the government and local government would be more genuinely interested in a dialogue and partnership with them and I also wish the NGO’s themselves would find ways of overcoming their suspicion of the government bodies. Both sides have to learn to appreciate the others strength rather than fighting each other which is mostly the case today. The women’s movement has a lot to offer any government who is pursuing political and social reform.

Question: How do you rank Turkish media’s coverage of gender issues?

Albrectsen:It’s a very mixed picture. On one side women’s issues are being discussed and reported on much more in the media today than just 3-5 years ago – and this is good. On the other side I believe that the editorial practices of most media outlets are still dominated by quite traditionally thinking men and the readers/viewers tend to look for sensationalism and the portrayal of women in traditional or super sexy stereotypical roles. I think it will take real effort on the part of the media to help re-shape the image of women in line with their rights and own self-expression.

Question: Please also tell us about your new job.

Albrectsen:I’ll be working in Copenhagen, which is my hometown, for the Danish Foreign Ministry as an expert on international organizations and performance management. So, while I’m going to leave the UN system, I will still be working very closely with it. I hope to have an impact on UN reform and improving the way the global system of development organizations delivers results for the people of the world. I will miss Turkey and the work here terribly, but I also hope that our positive experiences here can be used for the improvement of development elsewhere.