Espresso for Equality #4 Building Rights That Endure: Lessons in Equality Architecture

When:
August 25, 2026 @ 09:15 – August 25, 2026 @ 10:00
Where:
Geneva Centre for Security Policy, 6th floor committee room
in Geneva
Contact:
Email

*To register, please send an email to [email protected]. 

Context
The WEF Global Risks Report 2026 ranked mis- and disinformation as the second highest global risk in its two-year outlook. Anti-gender narratives sit at the centre of this challenge. They distort facts, stall policy progress, and erode trust in public institutions. Across countries, far-right movements have converted these narratives into electoral gains and used that political power to dismantle rights and protections built over decades.          
While responses have often focused on communications and narrative defence, these efforts remain largely reactive: protecting existing gains rather than building new ones and strengthening the systems that sustain them. This upcoming session of the IGC’s Espresso for Equality series explores an alternative approach: equality architecture. It examines how laws, institutions, governance mechanisms, and safeguards can be intentionally designed to make equality commitments more resilient, ensuring that rights are embedded as load-bearing elements in public systems, so that they can withstand political pressure over time.         

Purpose of this briefing         
Equality Architect Cyrus Engerer, former Member of the European Parliament and Co-Founder of AequitasBridge, will share practical lessons from over twenty years of building equality institutions, including Malta's 2013 to 2019 reforms, on how to design structures that survive backlash rather than merely respond to it.
During the optional discussion, participants will be invited to exchange on the following questions:

  • What distinguishes an equality architecture that holds under political pressure from reforms that erode the moment power changes hands?
  • How can organisations move from defending past gains to designing institutions built to withstand attack?
  • What practical approaches can Geneva-based actors adopt to strengthen the institutional foundations of gender equality across their respective mandates?
  • What is one structural safeguard you could test or propose in your own organisation's next reform?

Logistics
The briefing session will be held on 25 August, from 9:15-10:00am, at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, 6th Floor Committee Room. The meeting will be limited to in-person participation. Short on time? Feel free to attend the espresso-length briefing and exit after the input.

Agenda

5 min Welcome
10 min Presentation: Building Rights That Endure: Lessons in Equality Architecture by Cyrus Engerer, Co-Founder, AequitasBridge, former MEP
30 min Interactive discussion  

*To register, please send an email to [email protected].