On 23 and 24 September 2024, the World Customs Organization (WCO), in collaboration with Benin Customs, held a follow‑up mission in Cotonou (Benin) on implementing the Gender Equality and Diversity in Customs (GEDC) policy. The event comprised a workshop raising awareness on this topic for the staff at Benin Customs.
The follow-up mission forms part of the West Africa Security Project (WASP) and, more specifically, its gender equality and diversity (GED) component. This project, which is funded by Germany’s Federal Foreign Office, is a collaboration between the WCO and the German Central Customs Authority. The project’s purpose is to focus on the need to secure a work and service environment that respects diversity and promotes both equal treatment and equal opportunity in the partner Customs administrations, and to ensure that those partners receive assistance in the development and implementation of their GED action plans.
During the mission, the WCO team, comprising one expert from Morocco Customs and one expert from the Regional Office for Capacity Building for the West and Central Africa Region (ROCB WCA) in Côte d’Ivoire, held a workshop with directors and officials from the various Benin Customs directorates to discuss the implementation of the different activities set out in the GED action plan. The plan is the result of the diagnostic conducted following Benin’s involvement in a sub‑regional workshop held in July 2024 in Abidjan (Côte d’Ivoire), the latter focusing on the appropriation and use of the Gender Equality Organizational Assessment Tool (GEOAT) that the WCO had made available to its 186 Members to facilitate their GED self-assessment.
The seminar raising awareness on gender equality and diversity was attended by over 50 Customs officers (directors, heads of department, officials of all grades and trainees) and afforded them the opportunity to acquire and embed knowledge of the key GED concepts.
In the light of the discussions, recommendations were made for consolidating further the concept of gender equality and diversity across all departments of Benin Customs.
The WCO looks forward to continuing its collaboration with Benin Customs in order to implement the recommendations resulting from the GED follow-up mission.
For more information on this mission, please contact capacity.building@wcoomd.org.