| Pro-Poor,
Gender- and Environment-Sensitive Budgets
Project |
Background
Budgets are basic tools for fiscal policy-making at both
national and local levels. National development strategy and
budgetary policy reflect the balance of power within society and are
often constructed without consideration of the effects that they may
have in perpetuating or aggravating structural injustices such as
gender inequality, absolute and relative human poverty and
environmental degradation.
A
variety of initiatives all over the world have developed
gender-sensitive or pro-poor budgets as devices of intervention at
the macroeconomics level of policy making. Their purpose has been
not only to review and analyze national budgets (i.e. taxation and
expenditures) to determine which groups benefit from fiscal policies
and whether biases against women, the poor or other disadvantaged
groups are built into budgets, but also to outline participatory
mechanisms for intervening. Throughout these efforts, the ultimate
objective is to make macroeconomic policies responsive to the needs
of disenfranchised groups. Similarly, green budget initiatives aim
to reduce environmental degradation.
UNDP
aims at drawing lessons learned concerning, for example, the
strengths and weaknesses of initiatives launched both inside and
outside government, identifying future steps for UNDP and its
development partners (it is producing a resource book towards this
end) and exploring the possibilities of synegy with other
on-going policy initiatives such as debt reduction and
relief so that the latter can be made to work for the poor and
other disadvantaged groups. At a latter stage, UNDP could
facilitate country level implementation by organizing training and
capacity building workshops for parliamentarians, governments and
civil society.
Activities:
- UNIFEMhas also been supporting numerous
gender budget initiatives through a series of programs and
workshops:
1998: UNIFEM sponsored a workshop for NGOs,
parliamentarians, academics and officials from government finance
and planning from Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique, Malawi and
Tanzania to learn first-hand from South Africans experiences with
the budgeting process.
1999:
A follow-up workshop was held in Harare to assess the advances
made in implementing national action plans around gender-sensitive
budgets.
2000:
In March, a similar workshop was sponsored in the
Ocean Island States and a conference in London in April in
conjunction with the Commonwealth Secretariat and the
International Development Research Center
(Ottawa)
Contact: Contact: Martha Mahonde,
UNIFEM Harare Office, Phone: 263-4-792-681 or 686, Email: martha.mahonde@undp.org)
http://site.mweb.co.zw/UNIFEM/bulletin2.htm UNDP-UNIFEM Pro-Poor, Gender- and
Environment-Sensitive Budgets Workshop:
In
a workshop on "Pro-Poor,
Gender- and Environment-Sensitive Budgets", held in New York on
28-30 June, 1999, UNDP’s Bureau for Development Policy in
partnership with UNIFEM, explored the question of how national and
local budgets can be formulated towards the reduction of poverty,
gender inequality and environmental degradation. Another aim was to
initiate cross-fertilization across these different approaches with
a view to formulating a more holistic approach to budgeting.
The workshop brought together an international group of experts and
practitioners from governments, civil society organizations, UN
agencies and other development partners who had experiences with a
variety of alternative budget initiatives and those who were
interested in pursuing such projects. Participants examined and
shared the experiences of various budget initiatives including those
in Australia, Bangladesh, Barbados, Brazil, Canada, Ghana, India,
Mozambique, the Philippines, South Africa, Switzerland, United
Kingdom, and Zimbabwe.
The
workshop documented lessons learned concerning, for example, the
strengths and weaknesses of initiatives launched both inside and
outside government, the role of parliamentarians in furthering
participatory budgeting, the links between green budget initiatives
and poverty. The workshop ended with a roundtable discussion which
aimed at identifying future steps for UNDP and its development
partners.
Working Papers
& Budgets Resource Book:
Web-based Clearing
House:
Stay tuned for a more interactive
product of the workshop: a web-based clearinghouse for resources on
budgets and budget initiatives, and discussion groups on alternative
budget initiatives that will be coming to this
website.
|
This page is copied from the
UNDP website. Links may not work or will lead directly to the
Internet. If you wish to follow links and have access to the Internet look
at the original site at www.undp.org/poverty/initiatives/budgets.htm
