Funding & Budgeting

The increased attention to the situation of women affected by armed conflict has led to a significant shift in the discourse of multilateral and bilateral institutions in recent years. Many organizations now incorporate gender perspectives in their narratives and assessments of post-conflict needs. But it is less clear whether the rhetoric has in fact translated into budgeting processes and measurable programming objectives and outcomes for women affected by conflict.

UN Women and other advocates have begun to examine whether and to what extent budgeting processes in post-conflict needs assessments take gender perspectives into account. There are, however, many challenges in answering these questions. For one, the discourse on gender is inconsistent from organization to organization, and from one conflict-affected country to another. There is also significant variation in approach, with some organizations treating gender as a cross-cutting theme, while others deal with it as a distinct policy issue.

In addition, very few organizations systematically track funding for gender issues, making it difficult to identify and compare allocations. One notable exception is the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which collects and analyses budgeting data from multiple donors, using a gender marker. UNDP has adapted this tool with the aim of evaluating the inclusion of gender issues in its own budgeting allocations.

For these and other organizations that do employ gender-responsive budgeting, research suggests that funding tends to focus on specific issues such as health, education and social infrastructure. By contrast, very little attention has been paid to gender considerations in other policy areas, including economic infrastructure and private sector development.

These areas have traditionally been considered gender neutral — an assumption that has proved incorrect. For example, factors like discrimination, illiteracy, the threat of sexual and gender-based violence, and uneven household responsibilities can mean that investments in the private sector are not equally accessible to men and women.

The result in many cases has been the development of gender-blind early recovery programmes, which exacerbate existing socio-economic disparities between men and women. These early initiatives can also impact on long-term development.

UN Women’s Approach

UN Women has been instrumental in conducting and supporting research on the extent to which donors, organizations and recipient governments currently factor gender perspectives into budgeting processes.

For instance, UN Women has analysed the mainstreaming of gender in Post-Conflict Needs Assessments (PCNAs) — multilateral exercises that are used as an entry point for conceptualizing and financing a common strategy for recovery and development in post-conflict settings. In the eight PCNAs examined, gender issues were rarely specified in cost estimates for priority spending. Out of the total US$77 billion budgeted, only 16 percent were associated with targets, outputs or indicators specifically addressing women’s needs.

UN Women also supports organizations in developing more systematic and gender-responsive budgeting practices during Post-Conflict Needs Assessments. A tool to integrate gender in PCNAs has been developed and its implementation has been piloted in Pakistan.

UN Women is committed to capacity-building for women’s rights advocates in conflict-affected countries, to enable them to influence agenda-setting at the national level.