WUNRN
GENDER RESPONSIVE & INCLUSIVE
BUDGETING & SUPPORT ESSENTIAL BY GOVERNMENTS, UN, FUNDERS +
AMIDST INCREASED HUMANITARIAN
CRISES, CIVILIAN EMERGENCIES AS WITH CONFLICT & WAR, UN MEGA AGENCIES,
INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONAL CONTROL, CLIMATE CHANGE DISASTERS,
SERIOUS NEED FOR BUT ELUSIVE GENDER BUDGETING, TRANSPARENCY & CORRUPTION
ISSUES, SPREADING OF THE CLASSES, SOCIAL UPHEAVALS......
HOW WILL SUFFICIENT MONEY BE
DESIGNATED TO ADVANCE GENDER EQUALITY, FULFILL WOMEN'S HUMAN RIGHTS, PROVIDE
FOR INDEPENDENT, STRUGGLING NGO'S ADVOCATING FOR WOMEN & GIRLS? HOW
CAN HUMAN RIGHTS SURVIVE VS. POWER & PROFIT, INSTITUTIONAL
BUREAUCRACY, CONTROL BY GOVERNMENTS WHO DESIGNATE BUDGETS & MONEY
ALLOCATIONS?
IT WILL SOON BE 20 YEARS SINCE
BEIJING, BUT THE CHALLENGES REMAIN....WILL THE POST 2015 DEVELOPMENT AGENDA
TRULY BRING A REDUCTION OF POVERTY, MORE GENDER RIGHTS & EQUALITY, GENDER
JUSTICE, PEACE & SECURITY FOR WOMEN & GIRLS??
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UN Women - http://www.gender-budgets.org/
GENDER RESPONSIVE BUDGETING
Gender-responsive budgeting (GRB) is government planning, programming and budgeting that contributes to the advancement of gender equality and the fulfillment of women's rights. It entails identifying and reflecting needed interventions to address gender gaps in sector and local government policies, plans and budgets. GRB also aims to analyze the gender-differentiated impact of revenue-raising policies and the allocation of domestic resources and Official Development Assistance.
GRB/Gender Responsive Budgeting initiatives seek to create enabling policy frameworks, build capacity and strengthen monitoring mechanisms to support accountability to women. This website provides governments, non-governmental organizations, parliaments and academics with resources for understanding and applying GRB.
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http://www.irinnews.org/report/98500/analysis-the-un-in-2023
THE UN - AID - FUNDS - 2023 - ANALYSIS - HUMANITARIAN FUTURES
A
series of reports exploring the likely changes in the aid world over the next
decade.
DAKAR, 31 July 2013 (IRIN) - The UN and other aid agencies
face ever-increasing levels of humanitarian need: the number of recorded
disasters has doubled in the past two decades, according to the UN, while the
needs-response gap remains stubbornly steady in the context of a shifting
humanitarian landscape - with the dominance of UN agencies and the largest 10
international NGOs gradually being eroded as power shifts to the east and
south.
Against this backdrop loom a number of risks that could drive the disasters of
the future and for which many humanitarians are unprepared: new disease
outbreaks, growing water scarcity, crises hitting mega-cities, cyber-crime,
biological and chemical weapons. IRIN asked analysts and UN staff what broad
changes in approach, structure and attitude UN agencies need to make to become
fit to better tackle our humanitarian future.
Over the past decade the UN has made significant reforms to improve its
humanitarian response, many of them positive: protection of civilians is now
more central to UN operations; internally displaced people are no longer
overlooked; several agencies, including the Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), are reaching out to a more diverse set of
humanitarian partners; and accountability to beneficiaries is increasingly a
focus (linked to the real-time scrutiny made possible by social media.)
Norms and guidelines have been strengthened. UN agencies and NGOs have improved
their work in every phase of the programme cycle, says Paul Knox-Clarke, head
of research and communications at learning network ALNAP, from early warning to
needs assessment, from programme implementation to evaluations.
“Many of the traditional challenges - that assessments are not coordinated,
that methodologies don’t match up - are being addressed,” he told IRIN.
Humanitarian response is increasingly driven by evidence rather than anecdote,
which marks a “profound shift”, says Peter Walker, head of Tufts University’s
International Feinstein Center, “akin to the change in how health care was
delivered in the 1970s and 1980s.”
Emergency Relief coordinators and humanitarian coordinators now garner more
respect (or at least agency heads turn up to their meetings); there is more
transparency across the funding spectrum - 160 agencies and donors have signed
up to the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), and clusters
and pooled funds have improved how the UN organizes itself and coordinates in
some response settings.
But change in the UN’s humanitarian sector has too often been incremental,
amounting to add-on individual initiatives, rather than involving major
structural change and an overhaul of approach, processes and attitudes, say
critics. A number of evaluations have pushed for the UN to be more
anticipatory, more strategic, more innovative, and to harness the power of the
UN’s many branches to anticipate and prepare for future crises.
Individual initiatives are tackling aspects of this - for instance OCHA’s
“transformative agenda” draws on learning from the Haiti earthquake and
Pakistan floods to try to improve accountability, strategic planning,
coordination and leadership. But the revolutionary changes that are needed, are
not happening, say analysts.
As Randolph Kent, long-term humanitarian leader with the UN and now head of
King’s College Humanitarian Futures Programme (HFP), put it: “What company in
the world, that is surviving, has not had a fundamental change in its business
model or operating procedure for 60 years?”
Analysts and staff made the following recommendations:
Open up club membership
The most powerful actors in the humanitarian sector are still Western in
orientation and assumption, say critics, which has created a “two-tier system”
of those who are in and out of the club. The UN risks forgetting about the
contributions of the informal humanitarian community - grassroots groups, civil
society groups, the Diaspora, host communities, said Ed Schenkenberg van
Meirop, head of humanitarian think-tank DARA. “Many still think everything happens in the
humanitarian country team,” he said.
Some agencies are making valiant attempts to reach out to other actors without
realizing that the rules of the club may need to change. “The traditional
humanitarian community tries to turn itself into an exclusive club and now it
is reaching out to “non”-traditional members to ask if they want to join. We
shouldn’t be surprised when countries turn around and say No,” said van Meirop,
referring to Turkey which decided to act outside the cluster system, in
Somalia. New actors, like China and Qatar, may not agree on the club rules,
stressed Antonio Donini, a senior researcher at the Feinstein Center, who
worked with the UN for 26 years.
“There’s a need to open up these rules or re-discuss them… [using] an openness
that so far we have not seen,” said Walker. It requires traditional actors: UN
agencies and the nine or so largest international NGOs - to “let go”, he said.
“The recent trajectory has been to concentrate, not disperse, power. This will
challenge the way business has been done for the past 30 years.”
Likewise on humanitarian principles - do not water them down, says Cyprien
Fabre, head of European Union aid body ECHO in West Africa, (they already have
been), but try to understand different perspectives - some NGOs prioritize
justice over impartiality - and come to a mutual understanding.
What can you do for me?
Re-jigging the power imbalances that are so integral to the humanitarian system
must also feature in a transformed relationship between humanitarian “givers”
and “takers”, says Kent. “We’ve moved away from the sense of the hapless victim,
but we are still a system that inherently promotes a sense of inequality… We
need something more interactive… something more along the lines of: I can offer
you this, and you can offer me that.” For instance, in Ghana excellent work is
under way about climate change adaptation - someone should be questioning how
to apply that expertise in the UK, or India. “That is a more interesting
perspective,” he said.
Humanitarians of the future need to test public-private partnerships and
business models, and give the space for innovation and embrace the risk that
this entails. “A government may not want another international NGO in its
country, but it might like having a private sector company that may have an
enduring interest in the country. Might Johnson & Johnson, for example, be
as or even more effective in promoting health than an NGO,” queried Kent. “Do
we understand how business can promote sustainability and resilience? Can OCHA
set up a platform in collaboration with the World Economic Forum to demonstrate
how innovations and innovative practices coming from the private sector and
other non-traditional actors can strengthen crisis prevention, preparedness,
response and post-crisis recovery?”
UN agencies need to “support people to take risks and put money behind good
ideas,” said OCHA humanitarian affairs officer Andy Thow. “Most good ideas come
from national or regional staff, not from headquarters,” he said.
Some agencies, such as the World Food Programme, are engaging in these debates;
systematically addressing how markets can deliver food, and how they can help
them to, through cash or other approaches. “This challenges the notion of
humanitarians as food or health deliverers. It’s very interesting and we’re
just at the beginning of this debate,” said Walker.
Advocate, anticipate and lead
Over recent years, many analysts have stressed the need for the UN to
concentrate on improving leadership, advocacy and strategy in humanitarian
crises. “UN agencies must tackle these issues over the next 10 years if they
are to improve the quality of responses globally”, said Sara Pantuliano, head
of the Humanitarian Policy Group at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI).
If UN agencies come together to collectively set standards, monitor the quality
of response, disseminate lessons learned, and improve and monitor progress on
disaster risk reduction, early warning and preparedness, “now that would be
remarkable,” said one interviewee. This would involve visionary thinking but
also lightening up daily administrative processes (tasks like hiring staff or
procuring equipment require endless steps and form-filling) and opening space
for longer-term planning. A 2011 HFP study of six UN country teams, judged the majority
of agency leader’s staff time was spent on short-term planning tasks.
Opinions differ on whether implementing operations weakens UN agencies’
capacity to advocate on complex issues of humanitarian principle - like access
in Syria. It depends on the context, says von Meirop: in a Syria-type context
where the government is a party to conflict, strong, punchy advocacy might have
more ultimate impact if not trying also to implement. “Let’s not be naive, the
political agenda dominates everything… In a context like this, accountability
goes way beyond communicating with disaster affected populations. It is about
involvement and participation and choice. Take those Syrian refugees who are
forced - by host governments - to live in camps, which are often criminalized
and dangerous - rather than settling with families.
“Accountability is working out the best way to protect them and help them to
retain their dignity.”
Better leadership on all of these fronts might involve a move towards genuine
coherence. “We’ve broken up the needs of human beings into different agencies,
many of which have different accountability frameworks - it doesn’t make
sense,” said a UN staff member. Bringing agencies together under fewer roofs
would solve a lot of problems around institutional turf and mandates. However,
such an ambitious project would have to be Member State driven, and “Member
States don’t want this - they like having a say over their individual UN
agency.”
Pitching for multi-sectoral funding ought to be more manageable, though
cluster-led coordination has pushed for more demarcation. Funding reform is way
overdue, said the staff member. "We haven't adapted the CAP [Consolidated
Appeals Process] in 10 years... People should have figured it out by now."
Security crossroads?
Innovation and risk-taking should extend to UN security protocols and policies,
said several interviewees, arguing that in complex emergencies such as Iraq,
Afghanistan and Somalia, the UN’s role has shrunk because of risk averse
policies that severely limit the UN’s access to communities in need. If the UN
does not figure out more flexible ways to work and stay in complex emergencies,
“it could become irrelevant in politicized crises,” warned Pantuliano. Another
critic summed it up: "It's just MSF and the ICRC who are out there."
Focus
more on anticipating future disasters, say analysts.
Allegra Baiocchi, head of OCHA in West Africa, told IRIN: “We need to be able
to be nimble, flexible, rapid,” when it comes to security decisions… "We need
better intelligence of risks that are connected to operations rather than
siloed in separate departments. Security incidents set back operations by
months, even years. I think we are at a security crossroads - we need to work
on our acceptance but also improve our security management systems.”
Syria is a "watershed moment" said von Meirop. "It should be the
catalyst for finding the way to be more effective in situations of armed
conflict. And that includes the coordination role of the UN."
Catch up on accountability
In line with inhabiting its leadership role, the UN should find ways to
navigate, verify and authenticate the mass of information that emerges from
crowd-sourcing and social media, so that communities, authorities and aid
agencies, can use it better. In 10 years’ time agencies will have to have
realized that information is a right in crises - something as important as food
or shelter, says Walker. And “this speaks to OCHA’s very mandate and mission,”
he said.
What won’t we do?
Over the next decade UN and other humanitarian agencies need to more clearly
define what they will and will not do. “That conversation about what we are
here to do, about what the system is, who is in it and what their roles are,
needs to be had,” he said. “If you see it as a universal fire service that will
respond to each disaster and save all lives possible, and then add to that
prevention, early recovery, and resilience, then that is very ambitious and a
lot more capacity is needed.” But if the role is just stepping in when the
state cannot or will not respond, it may be more manageable.
The current mismatch between what defines humanitarian aid and how it is used
must be cleared up, agrees Walker. “The nub of humanitarian aid is providing a
light in the darkness - and accepting that we can only really deal with
symptoms,” said Walker. This includes protecting people from fear and violence
- including sexual violence - which while improved in some areas (child
protection, say), still lacks the leadership and coherence of one agency to
drive it forward. “But that is very different from where the money goes.” As
Development Initiatives' funding specialist Oliver Buston put it: "You
would come up with a very different programme if you were funding a decade-long
$500 million project in Sudan versus 10 one-year $50 million projects."
The top 10 recipients of humanitarian aid have changed little year on year over
the past decade - Sudan, the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Somalia,
Afghanistan among them. He went on to say that that is where resilience
comes in: an activity that must be politically-driven, and involves long-term
flexible funding. As Kent said, “The UN has a profoundly important role to
play, but not the one it is doing."
Let governments lead on resilience
UN humanitarian agencies cannot drive the resilience debate, says Baiocchi.
They must involve the entire UN Development Group, including the UN Development
Programme, UN Division for Sustainable Development, and the monetary
institutions, regional organizations and national stakeholders. “Take the Hyogo
Framework for Action”, said Mihir Bhatt head of the Asian Disaster Reduction
and Response Network (ADRRN),
“This must contribute to each of the post-2015 development goals, or resilience
will go nowhere.”
And in many cases this will involve supporting national capacity to respond.
“We say we want to work with governments, build a real partnership, but do we
really?” asked Biaocchi. “With actively engaged governments, we say they’re
interfering - we’re quite schizophrenic about this.” Some need less help -
Mozambique, Indonesia, Pakistan, the Philippines, have significantly improved
their ability to respond to large-scale disasters and in these instances UN
agencies will need to step back and play a service role.
“The traditional view of many northern aid agencies is to build capacity
through a workshop,” said Jemilah Mahmood, ex-president of NGO Mercy Malaysia.
“That’s not what’s needed: it means money, people to be seconded into local
authorities to strengthen them internally."
Ultimately, building this capacity and focusing on resilience “is not up to
ECHO or the UN or the World Bank, but it’s up to governments,” said Fabre.
“Unless there is political will to push this, you can put in as much money as
you want, but it won’t make a difference. That change has to come from within.”
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EU
Cohesion Policy: Member States Remove Crucial Provision on Gender
Equality
[Brussels, 26 April 2012] The ongoing negotiations on the EU cohesion poliy 2014-2020 took an alerting turn, when EU member states decided to remove a crucial provision on gender equality from the legislative text proposed by the Commission.
The provision on so-called ’general conditionality’ on gender equality would require that all member states have a strategy to promote gender equality in all EU funding programmes part of cohesion policy and establish mechanisms to ensure its effective implementation. In case these conditions are not fulfilled, the Commission could reject the national programmes.
Funding programmes under cohesion policy represent a third of the EU budget, available for the member states to promote social and territorial cohesion and to fund policies that help to exit the crisis. This is the part of the EU budget spent closest to the women and men living in Europe.
Cohesion Policy can help the EU to address gender inequalities at home and in the labour market in all Member States. Currently it is not up to the task. Targeted funding for gender equality is decreasing, and gender mainstreaming is not fully implemented. The Commission’s proposal was a step in the right direction
The Council’s new text is a serious setback in times of crisis and recovery. Taking a gender perspective into account is all the more important: We must be sure that the programmes will not perpetuate the deep-rooted gender inequalities present in all European societies, and aggrevated by the crisis, but deliver equally for women and men.
Together with a coalition of NGOs, the EWL has called upon the Council of the European Union to uphold the general ex-ante conditionalities regarding non-discrimination, gender equality and disability. These ex-ante conditionalities are necessary to remain coherent with the EU Treaties and legal framework. Removing them is against the spirit of the Treaties.
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GENDER BUDGETING RESPONSE FROM AFGHANISTAN
Dr. Massouda Jalal - Founder of Jalal Foundation, Pediatrician, & Former Minister of Women of Afghanistan
I think that women NGOs should fight for a gender budget policy as a means to sustain initiatives for women. You should do it as a single, distinct and separate agenda, rather than just embedded in this resolution. It should be a campaign that deserve the unity and coming together in full force of all supporters of women.
One way to do it is to adopt a policy that will earmark 30 percent of all budgets for women and this can be managed by the MOF/Minister Of Finance. Another option is to adopt a policy that all donor assistance should earmark from 5 to 30 percent of its ODA to women's projects. You can also think about a distinct funding mechanism for women, like a "basket" to which all donors will contribute.
We all know that in the Philippines, the General Appropriations Act has a special provision allocating no less than five percent of all government agencies' budget to gender, including the budget of local governments. The type of expenses that could be charged to that 5 percent could be projects for women clientele and for women inside the ministry. Every year, each agency submits a report on how they spent the gender budget to the Commission on Women. The Commission analyzes the report and make the results available to the Parliament who question ministries about issues on how it is spent. It is effective because it keeps the women's agenda alive in the work of government agencies.
For the local governments, women NGOs could actually ask for funding for their projects. It creates good relationship between women NGOs and local government units and also keep the women's agenda alive.
There are hundreds of countries with gender budgets. It begins with a policy, then you can talk about the funds once the policy is in place. A resolution could be a basis for the adoption of a policy.
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AWID SURVEY REPORT:
WHERE IS THE MONEY FOR
WOMEN'S HUMAN RIGHTS?
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