Budget Support and Gender Equality

Transcription

1 Budget Support and Gender Equality Strengthening the Development Results and Impacts of the Paris Declaration through work on Gender Equality, Social Exclusion and Human Rights. London, United Kingdom March 2008 Satu Lassila, MFA Finland

2 Definition of Budget Support Budget support means direct transfers of funds from donors to the partner country's budget. Funds are channelled by using the recipient governments own allocation, procurement and accounting systems and towards implementing the PRSP. Aid is monitored through the Performance Assessment Framework according to a set of predefined indicators and common principles. As BS is a tool for funding the PRSP, the quality of the poverty analysis and the linkages between gender and poverty in the PRSP become a key issue. Evaluations indicate that there is plenty of room for improvement. The capacity of public administration to implement PRSP is also important. Civil society and donors can influence the formulation and revision of PRSP and also the emphasis that government places on the implementation of various policy elements of PRSPs. Joint Reviews are moments when the implementation of PAF is assessed, revisions are made to the PAF matrix/plans and priorities for next year are discussed. It is an opportunity to build consensus at high-level on gender equality goals as a cross-cutting theme. Theory: BS creates opportunity for enhanced policy dialogue.

3 Mozambique as a success story : Clear reductions of absolute poverty. Reconciliation: three successful parliamentary and presidential elections. The capacity of government institutions for strategic planning increased. Good dialogue and partnership between government and donors, functioning platforms of coordination. More information available for donors/transparency of the governance increased. Opening up the PRSP-process to civil society, civil society is now better participating at various levels, yet there is space for improvement. Despite multi-party appearance, in practice Mozambique is controlled by one party. Checks and balances in the political system are weak. High corruption and climate of impunity. Criminal networks linked to the police, human rights abuses. The political opposition is currently ineffective. Voter apathy: radical decline in voter turnout (88% in 1994/40% in recent elections). Inequality increasing.

4 Women s status is low Mozambique has still one of the lowest adult literacy rates in SADC region: 37.5 for women/ 67 % for men. High HIV/AIDs infection rates, especially among young women (15-24 years). Violence against women. High fertility and maternal mortality rates, unsafe abortions the third cause of maternal mortality. Women heavy workloads due to lack of basic infrastructure: less than 40 % of population have access to safe water. Early marriage: around 30 % of girls are estimated to have had sex before age 15 years and 22% marry before age 15. Improved primary education enrolment rated, but low completion rates for all levels. Low HDI. Women do most of the agricultural work, but their benefits are low.

5 Gender mainstreaming in MOZ Very little focus on women s economic empowerment in the key economic and social documents, focus on social sectors. Improvement in the second PRSP. No systematic attention to women rights or application of rights based approach in general. There is no strategic approach or results orientation. Agriculture has a separate strategy on gender equality, but the substance is weak. There has been progress in institutionalizing gender mainstreaming mechanisms such as Gender Units and the appointment of Gender Focal Points, however, it is not clear what is their true capacity, resources and motivation. The MMAS which is suppose to provide leadership on gender equality issues has no capacity to do so. MMAS is weak in terms of human resources and authority.

6 Gender in Joint Review Gender equality is considered in the JR as a cross-cutting issue. There is a Gender Coordination Group, composed of government, donors, UN agencies and civil society. The mandate and capacity of GCG is week and unclear: group did not meet during the review process or carried out a common analysis. Instead, there has been individual gender experts providing comments on the Joint Review documents. None of the sectoral groups used the comments from the GCG. At least agriculture, poverty monitoring systems and education have considered gender issues in their meetings. The economic and hard sectors do not pay any attention to gender equality. In 2006, a consultant was hired to provide input. A report was prepared: no signs of its wide dissemination/recommendations have not been acted upon.

7 Theory and practise Sectoral focal points do not appear in the JR meetings. In agricultural sector the motivation among government officials to discuss gender issues seemed low. A lot of gender training have taken place, yet the staff cannot apply the theory to practice. Some sectors collect gender disaggregated data, some don t. There is room for improvement in all sectors. Gender issues are treated as ad-hoc, not based on an analysis; systematic approach for gender mainstreaming is missing. It appears that gender has not seriously been included in neither planning nor monitoring. Joint Review from a gender perspective suffers from all the ills we know from elsewhere; fragmented mainstreaming, general marginalisation, gender focal points do not have much voice in the process, lack of gender expertise and motivation, lack of clear instructions to the sectors how to mainstream, etc.

8 How to move forward At technical level: Formulate clear, measurable objectives, indicators and link with annual information sources. Promote gender disaggregating of relevant data/sectoral indicators/balanced PAF Promote capacity building, also for the civil society to contribute to the monitoring process. Sectoral Focal Points to be empowered. Promote the establishment of few gender priorities in the sector and try to form consensus on their implementation in the sectoral groups. More difficult: How can aid support the adoption of rightsbased approach in policy-making? How to support the creation of assertive culture among citizens and poor people to claim for their rights?

9 Ownership and Accountability? There is a need to improve the process and the working methods. Extremely labour intensive- takes weeks. Transaction costs for GOV high (running BS and projects). Too time consuming for civil society. Accountability linked to monitoring. The performance assessment is partly based on unreliable data, varying by sector and nature of the work (enrolment rates versus maternal mortality- trend unclear). Poverty monitoring systems still need improvement. Need to resolve the tension around the concept of ownership: donors want to promote certain policies and solutions, but at the same time provide space for the goverment for domestic policy-making. Replacing conditionality with agreed conditions, prior actions and benchmarks. Gender need to be seriously considered in these. JR process is partly micro-managed by donors. We promote national ownership, but at the same time donors have taken too much responsibility over the policy making and should watch out for their own role. (compare TOR for CTA/advisers? equal partners?). The policies and practices are largely negotiated between donors and the government rather than between the government and the people. Accountability is skewed towards donors.

10 Message for Accra Aid as any distribution of resources have profound political impacts. There should be more explicit commitment to good governance, human rights and right based approach in the Paris Declaration both as precondition for and as a desirable outcome of improved aid effectiveness. Governance related indicators? There is a need to establish a stronger link between budget support and political dialogue. Better political/governance analysis are required. Do we shy away from the difficult and sensitive issues? What gets measured gets done improve PAFs. Economic emphasis, get SD advisers onboard, widen the expertise. Strengthen the role of parliament in the aid monitoring.

11 Message for Accra Clarify the role of donors in the policymaking. More emphasis on human rights, justice, independent monitoring of government s performance by civil society, information dissemination and promotion of rights based approach. THANK YOU!!