Blerina Vila has nearly two decades of experience (most of which at international level) in institutional capacity building and policy advice on development planning with a rights-based approach, with focus on gender equality and child labour. For the past 12 years she has worked closely with the European Commission as expert on gender equality mainstreaming contributing to identifying feasible solutions to the problems posed by the delivery of technical assistance in areas such as human rights and governance, education and health reform, commerce, infrastructure, nutrition, food security and social protection, reform of the judiciary system, and how gender issues and women's rights need to be integrated into them. Until end of 2014 worked as a programme officer with the Gender and Non Discrimination Programme at the International Training Centre of ILO (ITCILO http://gender.itcilo.org/cms/). Currently she is director of consultancy firm Wexam Consulting vof.
In 2015 she assisted the EC’s and EU Member States’ Task Force that drafted the EU Gender Action Plan 2016 – 2020 (http://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2015/10/26-fac-c…), including working very closely with the DEVCO B Directorate in identifying institutional mechanisms to facilitate its implementation. Currently she is the leader of the team of experts tasked to assist the EC and EU Delegations to comply with the GAP requirement of generating and using gender analysis for purposes of planning the cooperation with partner countries.
She is fluent in Albanian, English, French, Italian, has a good knowledge of Spanish and Dutch. She is based in Belgium.