Efforts on to ramp up gender-responsive budgeting

KABUL): Six ministries were the focus of a workshop on implementation of gender-responsive budgeting (GRB) that concluded in Kabul on Sunday, a United Nations agency said.

The Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, with support from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Gender Equality Project (GEP), jointly organised the workshop

Representatives from the ministries of education, Irrigation & Livestock participated in the event.

The workshop covered topics such as gender analysis of the budget, translating policy into action, programme budget cycle, result-oriented budgeting, strengths and weaknesses of GRB in Afghanistan, a statement from UNDP said. 

MoF Budget Director Ahmad Massoud Kamal noted that workshop marked the first step that MoF and UNDP is taking together to formalise GRB. This is crucial to bringing gender equality to government processes.

“The policy, planning and finance departments of all ministries must take the lead on GRB and put in place a coordination mechanism. Each workshop participant bears the responsibility to transfer knowledge to fellow colleagues, so that we can rapidly spread the understanding of gender-responsive budgeting…”Kamal said.

GEP Project Manager Ms. Fulya Vekiloglu observed UNDP recognised the crucial role of supporting the Afghan government to ensure that the national budget is promoted as the key tool for addressing development priorities. 

“It is essential that adequate resources are allocated by concerned ministries and organizations for effective mainstreaming of gender equitable interventions into their programmes and activities that would guarantee that women and men, girls and boys benefit equally from the development process”, she said.

Rahima Zarifi, MoWA policy and planning director, said gender units had been set up across ministries to serve as a catalyst for ensuring integration of gender-sensitive approach in budget formulation and implementation. 

Dr. Zuljan Farhat, head of the gender unit at MRRD, said: “Thanks to this workshop, I now have a checklist for monitoring the budgeting process of the ministry to observe women’s inclusion. GRB is important because most of the ministries lack a budgeting system responsive to the needs of both men and women.

“I will consider inclusion of capacity building programs for women’s empowerment in order for them to compete with men especially at workplace in the hope that one day key government positions will be equally divided between both genders.”

mud/pr

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