African Woman and Child Feature Service

One of the key components of the Beijing Platform for Action, which is crucial for the achievement of other action points is the mobilisation of sufficient resources for gender equality programmes.

The crafters of the of Platform for Action who emphasised on the need for increased funding, were aware that without governments, donors, civil society and financial institutions mainstreaming gender in their budgetary process and allocating or redirecting resources in a gender sensitive manner, the plan would come to nought.

But 15 years after the Beijing conference called on governments and donors to avail resources to the process of gender empowerment, there is little to celebrate about.

While structures such as gender ministries or gender focal points have been put in place to help with gender mainstreaming, these institutions are poorly resourced, making it difficult for them to execute their mandate.

“When the Beijing Platform of Action was formulated, two strategies were proposed to help avail resources for gender equality programmes.

One was through funding organisations dealing with purely gender issues,” says Ireen Dubel, HIVOS Programme Manager Gender, Women and Development. “The second was to mainstream gender in all the sectors of the society.”

Dubel says none of these strategies has received sufficient funding “making it difficult for us to realise greater success with gender equality and empowerment initiatives”.

The gender focal points in ministries are under resourced and ran by people who are not well grounded in gender and human rights issues.

The Ministry of Women’s Affairs and Children in Ghana, Ministry of Gender and Children Affairs in Kenya as well as Gender Commission (Kenya) have complained of not receiving adequate funding and the attention that they deserve.

In other instances, notes Mary Nkare from Uganda, resources meant for gender focal points within some ministries are usually reallocated to other areas which ministry officials describe as “needy and of priority”.

In a radical proposal, she says, all the money meant for gender programmes should be allocated to the gender ministry which should in turn fund gender specific programmes in other ministries.

“This will help monitor utilisation of such funds and stop this habit of reallocation or non-allocation of monies meant for gender programmes when it is given directly to individual ministries.”

Such an approach, Nkare says, will ensure women are involved in the planning, budgetary decisions, implementation as well as monitoring and evaluation processes around gender programmes.

A study conducted among over 1,000 women organisations by the Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) between 2005 and 2008, dubbed: Where is the Money for Women’s Rights? found serious cutbacks and difficulties in accessing of donor money by these organisations.

Despite playing a vital role in advancing women’s rights and gender equality, “it was alarming to see that between half and two-thirds of the women’s organisations surveyed reported annual budgets of less than US$50,000”, the study notes.

Gender advocates are proposing a formula explaining how massive resources from donors as aid money can reach the poor women who need it most.

That is why the Paris Declaration on AID effectiveness which was adopted in 2005, is one of the areas gender experts attending the 54th Session on the Commission on the Status of Women are considering with keen interest.

The Declaration, which is guided by five principles — Harmonisation, Management for Results, Ownership, Alignment, and Mutual Accountability — was designed to change how aid is disbursed and used by recipient governments.

Gender pundits argue that aid cannot be effective when it does not acknowledge the centrality of human rights, gender equality and women’s empowerment, as well as social justice and environmental sustainability.

Dubel says to make aid effective, at least between 10% and 15% of the funds should be set aside for gender programmes if governments are serious about the Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the Beijing Platform of Action, which they have committed themselves to.

Dorcus Coker-Appiah, CEDAW committee member, says: “We cannot leave government officials to decide how gender will be tackled in these new funding mechanisms. There is need to put in place water tight measures and systems that ensure gender issues are catered for.”

During the Third High Level Forum on Aid effectiveness held in Accra, Ghana, in September 2008, several gender advocates lamented the failure by donors and governments to give emphasis to gender issues in the Paris Declaration.

In addition to defining how aid money is used, women’s organisations propose the use of basket funding or specific budgetary allocation where institutions in charge of gender mainstreaming and women empowerment enjoy their own vote in parliament.

Zambia, Burundi, Kenya, Senegal and Ghana, are examples of countries where such initiatives have produced positive results.

In Zambia, gender is recognised as a distinct sector, which enjoys a budgetary vote in parliament like any other ministry. This approach has helped it tackle gender priority issues.

In Zimbabwe and Kenya, the use of basket funds supported by various donors that focus exclusively on specific gender issues, has worked well in addressing gender issues.

Kenya’s Gender and Governance Programme is designed to address women participation in decision making processes as well as the achievement of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), particularly target 3.

These approaches are expected to cushion women from governments that push to the periphery gender issues in the development plans, policies, and allocation of resources.