Gender Responsive Budgeting in Afghanistan

Following up the start of the Governance Forum for Afghanistan their first open dialogue took place on 5th August between Afghan and German policy makers. The event was hosted at the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU) and the Deputy Director, Mr. Mir Ahmad Joyenda, encouraged the dialogue between all participants while emphasising on the importance of inclusion of gender responsive planning and budgeting at local, sub-national and central level. Ms Nicole A. Hofmann, Deputy Head of Development Cooperation at German Embassy in Kabul, stressed the importance of the participatory approach of the Govern4Afg project in discussing the gender responsive budgeting and she add that the Embassy is very interested to receive participant’s views and discussions.

During this dialogue the Afghan-German researcher team presented their findings on Gender Responsive Budgeting, which were compiled over the last three months. Afterwards they engaged in discussions with over 30 senior representatives of relevant institutions such as the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Woman Affairs and Ministry of Economy but also the German Embassy and GIZ experts. Besides governmental institutions also members of civil society and international organisations were present.

Ministry of Finance embarked on Gender Responsive Budgeting pilot-projects some years ago aiming to integrate gender perspective into the public finance management system. Through such budget-approaches the socio-economic empowerment of women should be supported, as often their needs and development priorities differ from men due to other roles, responsibilities and capabilities in the Afghan society. During this open dialogue all stakeholders were informed about the existing initiatives led by the Ministry of Finance and discussed their impacts and other key findings of the issue-paper on Gender Responsive Budgeting. It was discussed that the reform initiative would benefit from supportive policy-framework to enhance gender equality and women’s empowerment within the Afghan public finance management system. The Afghan-German researcher team will include the information and discussion in the revision of the issue paper, which will be presented to the high-level policy dialogue in the end of 2015.