| Overview : BACKGROUND
The Gender-equitable Local Development (GELD) programme has been developed within the new UN governing principle of “Delivering as One”. It therefore forges a partnership between UNCDF, UNIFEM and UNDP. This partnership is to support local governments in five African countries to produce gender equitable development and the improvement of women’s access to resources and services at the local level. This will be achieved through gender responsive: (a) planning, programming and budgeting, and (b) implementation, monitoring and evaluation.
The central hypothesis is to construct a causal a link between planning intentions and real results, so that (a) the reasons for success can be recorded and replicated and (b) the reasons for failure can be identified and avoided in future. These two dimensions are supported by the two specialist UN organisations.
UNCDF has a solid record of achievement in local development with a strong performance-based technical justification. This performance-based assertion is founded on two facts. First, the UNCDF local development fund (LDF) mechanism is predicated on the need to achieve certain capacity requirements (such as a development plan; a financial management capability), in order to perform. Secondly, UNCDF has taken this idea of performance on infrastructure and service delivery further, in order to establish a normative framework for measuring the performance of local government, from all its income and expenditure sources; the concept of performance budgeting.It is increasing its concerns for gender development from an equitable perspective.
UNIFEM has pioneered gender-responsive budgeting (GRB) since 2000 at both national and local levels in more than twenty countries around the world. A practitioner’s manual has resulted. A major feature of this experience has been the application of GRB through the analytical framework of performance budgeting (PB). UNIFEM’s approach has focused on institutional capacity building, applying ‘gender’ to decentralization systems and supporting women’s participation and ensuring accountability to women’s rights at the local level. Experience of local level gender responsive planning and budgeting initiatives have included Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Mexico, India, Uganda, Morocco and the Philippines. In November 2004, UNIFEM in collaboration with the Indian National Institute for Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP), convened an international experts meeting in New Delhi on local level gender responsive planning and budgeting.
Description of Assignment:
The GELD framework will seek to identify a gender responsive framework for local government systems in relation to planning, budgeting and monitoring and evaluation. The research will identify requirements for gender responsive planning and budgeting as well as gender responsive monitoring approaches for examining local government expenditure. This work will benefit from examining different methodologies for analysis of expenditure on particular client groups, including: gender budgeting tools (sex disaggregated benefit incidence analysis); participatory budgeting experiences; public expenditure tracking surveys; citizens report cards; and community based monitoring systems. Country experiences on gender responsive planning and budgeting in Latin America, East Africa, India and the Philippines are also of relevance. This list is not exhaustive. The successful bidder is expected to bring knowledge “to the table” that is wider than that currently know to us.
This research assignment is to review existing knowledge and practice within the cited sources, technical annexes here, and other sources known to the successful bidder. The result is to be a critical consolidation of such knowledge into a “leading-edge” technical paper. This paper will then become the conceptual and analytical reference point for testing the first two annual cycles of the GELD programme. It will also provide a test of the current exploratory practice of UNCDF in its approach to the gender-equitable local development. The counterpart to this assignment is to be baseline study in each of the five selected countries (which will NOT form part of this assignment).
In summary, this R&D assignment is to:
- Review critically, the cited material in page 1 of this text, supplemented by wider knowledge brought “to the table’ by the successful bidder;
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Break down and reconstruct as necessary, Annexes 1 and 2, in the light of the critical review; and
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Present a conceptual and analytical framework for gender responsive local development planning and budgeting arising from 1 and 2 above, as the theoretical foundation for the implementation and review of the GELD project.
The resulting conceptual and analytical framework should give roughly equal weight to the ‘planning’ and ‘implementation’ sides of the gender-sensitive PEM cycle.
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