Politics of aid / Comment
Financing for gender equality
18/06/2008 By Ana Lydia Fernández-Layos
The Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), an organism of the United Nations Economic and Social Council, is dedicated to following up on and assuring compliance with multilateral commitments on gender equality. Among these is the Beijing Platform for Action. Each year a two-week meeting is organised bringing together government representatives and a large number of non-governmental organisations for negotiations, reflection and the exchange of ideas. The 52nd session, held in 2008, has centred on financing for gender equality.
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With a new consensus based on the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness (2005), the amount of finance going to gender equality and women’s empowerment has been reduced. At the same time, while the emphasis of development aid has changed from specific projects to the use of multiple pragmatic foci and the revision of policies, new opportunities have opened up for the adaptation of existing strategies and instruments to facilitate gender equality.
Ana Lydia Fernández-Lagos argue that in recent years gender equality has not been adequately taken into consideration in the new aid architecture. For this reason, the international summits that will take place this year, for example the High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Accra and the revision of the Monterrey Consensus on development finance in Doha, offer an important space for the global feminist movements to win concrete commitments with regard to the promotion of gender equality through development aid.
The 52nd Session of the CSW in February and March 2008 made the integration of gender perspectives in the international development aid a priority. Taking a civil society standpoint, this Comment article explores the key issues being negotiated between North and South, and between governments and NGOs, and proposes courses of action to move forward with the promotion of gender equality .
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Keywords
Aid policy Development cooperation Gender Harmonization Multilateralism UNRelated publications
Bio author: Ana Lydia Fernández-Layos
Ana Lydia Fernández-Layos Fernández is a consultant specialising in gender and development. She has extensive experience in gender, international cooperation and the politics of Spain and Latin America.
