October 2007

The Moroccan Report to the CEDAW Committee is one of the first national reports to acknowledge that the fulfillment of women’s human rights requires the proper allocation of adequate resources.

This is an eloquent affirmation that compliance with CEDAW entails ensuring that budgets and budgeting processes are formulated with a gender perspective and are designed in a manner that addresses gender inequalities and discrimination against women. 

The reference to GRB can be found under paragraph 69 of the Moroccan report at http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/40sess.htm (scroll down to Morocco).

The report which is available in Arabic, English, French, Spanish and Russian will be presented to the CEDAW Committee in January 2008.

NEW YORK – September 26, 2007 

Gender Equitable Local Development seeks to improve women’s access to basic services

As part of the worldwide effort to meet the Millennium Development Goals, there is increasing emphasis on the need for local government reforms to be associated with improving service delivery through local governments. What is often left out of the dialogue, however, is a major cross-cutting concern that merits more attention: the gender dimension of local development and in particular women’s effective participation in local government, to help meet their specific needs and address gender inequalities.

To address this gender gap, three United Nations organizations -- the UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF), the UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) -- have launched a joint programme to ensure gender equitable local development and improved access to resources and services for women. The programme is being piloted in five African Least Developed Countries and will concentrate on gender responsive planning, budgeting, implementation, monitoring and evaluation.

20 April, 2007 

Islamabad: Speakers at a workshop here on Thursday called for joint efforts to introduce the conceptual framework and methodology for formulating a Gender Budget Statement (GBS). The one-day workshop, titled Gender Responsive Budgeting Initiative (GRBI), was facilitated by South African researcher Debbie Budlender, while the Finance Ministry’s Additional Secretary Ahmed Jawad was chief guest on the occasion.

Government officials, gender and social sector specialists, and representatives of non-governmental organisations, international donor agencies and research institutes attended the workshop. Jawad briefed participants about the level of gender inequality in Pakistan, and said the government was working at various levels to reduce gender gaps, adding that gender responsive budgeting was one of the tools for achieving this goal within the overall framework of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP).

Full article

 26 June, 2007

Gender activists congratulate the Finance Minister of Mauritius, Rama Sithanen, for making moves in the right direction with the 2007/2008 budget. The budget makes provision to close the gender gap and challenge gender stereotypes. While Mauritius has reformed its legislation and awareness, the budgets to back them up have so far missed.

For the first time in the history of Mauritius, a whole chapter in a budget speech covers breaking cultural barriers for women and challenging stereotypes. "This will help give a backbone to the organisations and individuals who are working hard to raise awareness about gender inequality," activists hope.