Delivering on Commitments to Gender Equality and Women’s Rights

1. Delivering on Commitments to Gender Equality and Women’s Rights Key issues for HLF4 on aid effectiveness, Busan November 2011

2. Outline Gender equality and the aid effectiveness agenda HLF4 and its process Why is HLF4 relevant for gender equality? Key gender equality priorities that HLF4 can address

3. Gender equality and the aid effectiveness agenda the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness (2005) (PD) outlined a number of commitments by donors and development partners building on the five principles of: national ownership, harmonization, alignment, managing for results and mutual accountability. “we believe they will increase the impact aid has in reducing poverty and inequality, increasing growth, building capacity and accelerating achievement of the MDGs..”

4. The Accra Agenda for Action (AAA) “Developing countries and donors will ensure that their respective development policies and programmes are designed and implemented in ways consistent with their agreed international commitments on gender equality, human rights, disability and environmental sustainability.”   deepen engagement with CSOs and creating an enabling environment for ensuring their contributions to development (para20). significant emphasis on building capacity of all development actors to take an active role in policy dialogue on development and aid as well as in implementing and monitoring the efficacy in reaching the aspired results (para23).

5. The Accra Agenda for Action (AAA) Donors and partner countries jointly commit to: Strengthen the application of EIAs … and develop and apply common approaches for “strategic environmental assessment” at the sector and national levels - Continue to develop the specialized technical and policy capacity necessary for environmental analysis and for enforcement of legislation. Similar harmonization efforts are also needed on other cross-cutting issues, such as gender equality

6. HLF4 • reviewing implementation of the Paris Declaration targets. • focus on addressing questions related to how aid management systems can better support development effectiveness and promote policy coherence. • identify future actions to accelerate implementation of the PD principles and identify avenues for continued follow up beyond the OECD. • Generate thinking around a new “aid and development consensus” and a post 2015 framework

7. REPORTS ON • PD implementation evaluation • PD monitoring survey (including 3 GE indicators optional) • Emerging donors • Outcome document

8. Why is HLF4 relevant for gender equality? Demands for achieving national and international commitments on GE & WRs (substantive equality) and development effectiveness (MDGs & growth) require a gender sensitive approach Aid effectiveness is more pressing with scarce resources and effectiveness cannot be realized if we use gender blind systems Evidence shows that gender equitable outcomes are not an outcome of gender blind policies Evidence shows that past financing and actions measures have not been effective

9. Key gender equality challenges that HLF4 can address? • Weak frameworks for ensuring policy coherence between economic policy and women’s rights agendas • Isolation of institutional drivers of gender equality from mainstream processes: • Technical aid/development management mechanisms and instruments do not adequately operationalize commitments towards gender equality (from design to implementation) • Gender focused aid is mostly restricted to specific types of interventions in limited sectors with limited targets and indicators

10. UN Women’s demands from Busan: That any articulation of a development cooperation framework at Busan and beyond emphasizes the centrality of gender equality, democratic ownership and mutual accountability as essential pre-requisites for achieving development results. Improving the adequacy and quality of financing for gender equality entails expanding the scope of support to women’s priorities across sectors and in strategic areas. Respect for women’s rights and gender equality commitments in line with SCRs 1325, 1820, 1888, 1889 & 1960 should be at the forefront of all financing in fragile and post-conflict settings.

11. UN Women’s demands from Busan: • Equitable development results can only be achieved if the systems and processes that are in place are designed to ensure equitable outcomes • Development effectiveness requires investment in strengthening capacity for mainstreaming gender in national planning and budgeting and in aid management systems. • Stakeholders must strengthen and use gender responsive monitoring mechanisms for tracking adequacy and effectiveness of investments towards implementation of gender equality commitments

12. Key allies to advocate and respond to those demands • Partner countries • Development partners • Government of Korea • OECD Gendernet • UNDG Task Team on Aid effectiveness • Women organizations • Gender equality practitioners

13. Looking ahead • Advocate for a forward looking development agenda that places women’s rights at the center and is based on “broader than PD” principles (e.g. inclusive, transformative, democratic ownership and aligned with HR standards) • Build alliances within the UN system for strengthened policy spaces and outcomes on financing forgender equality (in the UNDCF, FFD, Rio+ and other) • Support the expansion of evidence based analysis for policy advocacy and strengthened accountability on implementation and financing of gender equality • Strengthen national capacity of strategic actors and gender equality advocates in government and donor agencies for effective GRB • Strengthen south-south technical cooperation around good practices in integrating gender in PFM

14. LET’S NOT WAIT FOR HLF5 …………… NOW IS THE TIME • www.unwomen.org • www.gender-budgets.org • www.gender-budgets.or/rwanda • www.gender-budgets.org/busan