By IPS Correspondents
NAIROBI, Nov 17 2008 (IPS)

With the world slightly past the halfway mark to the Millennium Development Goal deadline of 2015, pressure is mounting to promote gender equality. Goal Three is to promote gender equality and empower women – but in fact, every goal relates directly to women's rights.

Meryem Aslan Credit:

In a one-on-one interview with IPS, Meryem Aslan shares her thoughts about gender financing in the region.

IPS: Where are we at with gender budgeting in East Africa? Meryem Aslan: What I would say is that gender budgeting is an issue that is talked about. The region is a big region and we cover eight countries – Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya and Djibouti. We are currently working in all these countries except Somalia.

Of course the situation is different from one country to another. Some countries are at the very beginning in terms of looking into budgets, understanding budget processes, budget structures, and starting to analyse budgets in line with programmes from a gender perspective. Some countries are a bit more developed and some are further away in terms of implementation of gender budgeting.

In some countries there are more civil society organisations taking care of gender budgeting or creating pressure groups to pressure for implementation of gender budgeting, which is important. In some countries we do not have that kind of pressure.

IPS: What can gender budgeting achieve? MA: Nothing is a magic ball that can bring equality. One has to see equality as an integral part of all the other actions. It is not gender budgeting alone that will achieve equality, but it is an important part of it. If implemented properly, if governments or multilateral or bilateral institutions start to integrate gender budgeting, what we will achieve is equal access of women and men to services.

For example, if you are designing an education project in a country where access to education for girls is very problematic, and you are keeping gender considerations in mind, then you will not see investment in education only as building more schools or increasing the number or teachers, but you will also think about factors that are affecting girls' access to schools.

Maybe it is the distance, maybe it is the traditional practices like early child marriages, that stop girls from enrolling in schools. Maybe it is facilities like girl's toilets that are missing from the school. Maybe it is the poverty around that area that prompts parents to immediately take girls out of the schools instead of the boys. Then you make investments to mitigate against these factors to ensure equal access of boys and girls in schools.

So what governments can do is to make sure that this investment in the school benefits both boys and girls equally. It might be a continuous campaign that promotes the importance of education for girls and boys, and creates a demand in the communities for schools and girls staying in schools, it might be mechanisms to address certain traditional practices like early child marriages, it might be a policy of free lunch to prompt boys and girls to come to school or it might be additional support to families so that they do not pull girls out of school.

All in all one has to see how certain investments can affect women and men and we have to understand why access of boys and girls to education is not always equal even when you have a facility there. It is the same with health. You build a clinic – your first obligation is to have the facility and to make sure that you have services for women and men.

The whole message is that governments cannot afford to cite certain traditional practices or certain excuses for not providing certain services. No government can say my people prefer traditional practices so they cannot go to school or a health facility. Governments are there to understand their population and to design policies so that they can facilitate for their citizens, women and men, a healthier life, a better life and equal access to their rights.

IPS: How has legislation on gender budgeting fared in the region? MA: Many governments in the region, by virtue of being members of UN, and accepting the UN charter, have an international framework that accepts equality of men and women. In addition to that charter and the declaration on human rights, there have been so many additional conventions, treaties, agreements to which governments have put signature.

And there are not only the international agreements but regional agreements; Africa-wide agreements from the African Union and other sub-regional agreements. In all these, governments have committed themselves to equality of women and men. Some have been more successful in the domestication of these, meaning establishing the compatibility of the national laws with these international agreements, which is a must for every government and an obligation for every government. Some have been faster, some have been slower in the area of legislation.

IPS: What are some of the best practices? MA: I would not say [these are found] at government level. I would say in cooperation between the civil society and governments.

In certain countries there have been some efforts – for example in the water sector. What has been done is a very sound analysis of investments in water sector from a gender perspective, and based on that analysis, recommendations have been made for modifying the investments so that women and men can benefit equally. This is a very important step because you see how to provide services that ensure equal access between women and men. This has been done at least in two countries in the region – Tanzania and Uganda.

IPS: What is the impact of the global finance crisis to gender budgeting? MA: It is a risk. Of course it is a worry for us that the financial crisis might affect development in investment in general but also investment for gender equality. It might affect aid flow in general; the amount of aid given to developing countries might be decreased.

I am saying "might be" because at the moment we do not have any indications but we must be prepared to make calculations following the financial crisis, how far it's going to go, how deep it's going to go and how it might affect achievement of MDGs in general but achievement of gender equality in particular.

I think these calculations are very important for everybody, but mostly for national governments who will need to increasingly rely on their own resources, their own national income for development.

The commitment of governments to development can be best measured by the amount they invest from their internal resources to development, not by the amount of aid that comes in the country.

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