No Aid Effectiveness without Gender Equality

“Over a billion women worldwide continue to be trapped in poverty,” said UNIFEM Executive Director Inés Alberdi. “Where women can’t thrive, national development strategies and progress towards the Millennium Development Goals are in jeopardy. There can be no aid effectiveness without a focus on gender equality.”

European Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid, Louis Michel, added: “Today, we know how important the role of women is to society, to health, nutrition and education of children, to economic growth and the development of a country. The Accra High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness offers a unique opportunity for governments and donors to come together and commit to accelerate achievements in gender equality. This opportunity is not to be missed.”

The European Commission, UNIFEM and the International Training Centre of the International Labour Organization (ITC/ILO) have for the past two years worked to support government, civil society and donor partners efforts to advance gender equality and aid effectiveness. Based on this work, they urge that the following steps be undertaken:

• Stronger involvement of gender equality advocates and women’s ministries in decisions about national development and aid delivery;
• Adoption of gender-responsive budgeting to ensure allocation of resources for women’s priorities in national budgets and new forms of aid delivery;
• Putting in place accountability mechanisms that can track progress towards gender equality and women’s empowerment.
  

Country-level data gathered through the EC/UN Partnership programme shows that the aid effectiveness agenda has helped to open some spaces to allow gender-equality advocates to actively participate in national development planning.  For them to have measurable impact, however, governments and donors must go further and ensure that gender equality advocates are part of the entire development planning, programming, budgeting and monitoring process.

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Source: UNIFEM