FRIDE Humanitarian Action and Development

Financing for gender equality

Ana Lydia Fernández-Layos — 2008-09-07T21:57:41+01:00

Gary.fotu in Flickr

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.

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 .

Ownership with adjectives

Stefan Meyer, Nils-Sjard Schulz — 2008-09-07T21:57:41+01:00

AFP/Getty Images

This synthesis report carried out by Stefan Meyer and Nils-Sjard Schulz, looks into the impact of donor harmonisation on
democratisation processes in recipient countries. It is based on four case studies (Mali, Nicaragua, Peru and Vietnam) and explores the political implications of the aid effectiveness agenda and particularly of the new aid modalities.

Following the Paris Declaration, donors and governments engage in a closer relationship in defining policies. In this dynamics, other stakeholders such as CSOs, parliaments, public oversight institutions, the media and sub-national governments (dubbed the oversight triangle in this paper) may become increasingly marginalised, which could hamper the democratic process and lead to negative “side-effects” for democratic ownership and domestic accountability.

The focus is thus on donors’ performance as increasingly active actors in the domestic political economy dimensions of participation, transparency and accountability, rather than as external and neutral aid deliverers. Among the conclusions aimed at sensitizing policy-makers and planners, the study stresses the necessity to address country specific political dimensions and the overall quality of compliance with the five PD commitments, especially regarding downwards accountability and “good” ownership.

An abridged version in German has been published in FriEnt Impulse.

Transparency in the extractive sector: deepening Spain's commitment with the EITI

Nils-Sjard Schulz — 2008-09-07T21:57:41+01:00

Peter Eigen, Sarah Wykes and Marie-Ange Kalenga

On 28 May 2008, FRIDE facilitated a meeting of members of the Commission for International Cooperation of the Spanish parliament (Congreso de Diputados) with representatives of the Board of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) and the CSO platform Publish What You Pay (PWYP).

The meeting was organised in parallel to the PWYP outreach event on 25 May and the EITI board meeting in Madrid between May 26 and 28. It aimed at, firstly, discussing the state of the EITI process and, secondly, exploring the specific contributions of Spain and the Spanish parliament to the fostering of governance in resource-rich developing countries by improving transparency and accountability within the EITI.