Consider gender issues in national budgets — Oye Lithur
The Minister of Gender, Children and Social Welfare, Nana Oye Lithur, has called on the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to engage with Heads of State and Government when considering gender issues in national budgets.
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Contributing to a high-level round-table discussion on “Investing in gender equality and the empowerment of women”, at the 59th Session of the Commission on the Status of Women, in New York, Nana Oye said discussions on gender issues in national budgets should be regular and a deliberate strategy.
The discussion was moderated by Amina Mohamed, the Secretary-General’s Special Advisor on Post-2015 Development Planning and chaired by Marina Kaljurand, Deputy Foreign Minister of Estonia.
To facilitate the process, she said African governments needed to generate data to depict the low budget allocations and their negative impact, and share the data.
Best practice
Offering Ghana’s example as a best practice, the minister, who is leading Ghana’s delegation to the UN session, said the country had adopted gender budgeting and this had helped to increase budget allocation, although it still remained low, comparatively.
The Gender Ministry, she said, was engaging strategically with the finance and planning sector by strengthening their capacity to understand the issues and appreciate the positive dividend of increasing resources to promote gender equality and the empowerment of women.
In addition, Nana Oye said, to address the gaps in donor support and strengthen global partnership, the Ministry of Gender had put together the Gender Empowerment Sector Working Group, co-chaired by the minister and a development partner, which is working to ensure investment in gender equity.
Furthermore, a partnership with Brazil through South-South cooperation has resulted in support for social protection.
Opening the discussion, Ms Kaljurand called for investments to be increased for the advancement of gender equality, stressing that “Gender responsive budgeting should be institutionalised across policies and sectors.”
“We have a year of action in 2015,” said Ms Mohamed in her introductory remarks, noting that the run-up to the September adoption of a new development agenda offered a timely opportunity for discussing investments in gender equality and women’s empowerment.
Governments, she stressed, must increase their capacity to raise revenue for social protection and decent work, and should also carry out reforms to eliminate gender discrimination, especially in tax policies.
Discussions
In the ensuing discussion, ministers and senior officials from around the world outlined national policies, legislation and programmes designed to improve financing for gender equality.
The representative of Vietnam said 80 per cent of the $50 million spent on its national strategy and programme was from the state’s budget, with the remainder obtained from international organisations and a community fund.
Along similar lines, the representative of Nigeria described a pilot programme to support disadvantaged women and girls, carried out by the ministries of agriculture, communications, technology, health and water resources and works.
Others who contributed to the discussions were ministers and senior officials from Thailand, Angola, Sudan, Iran, Nicaragua, Senegal, Ireland, Papua New Guinea, Mozambique, Indonesia, Philippines, Fiji, Palau, Mongolia, South Africa, Spain and Uruguay.