4—Memorandum
submitted by One World Action
PROMOTING GENDER EQUALITY AND EQUITY IN DFID
DEVELOPMENT CO-OPERATION
1. One World Action welcomes the Department
for International Development's (DFID) Annual Report 2006. One
World Action wishes to concentrate this submission on the impact
of the DFID's work in promoting and advancing gender equality,
equity and women's human rights in its development co-operation.
One World Action will address four issues outlined in the IDC's
Press Notice announcement of the 11 May, 2006 viz:
— The coherence of DFID's policies
and practices with those of other Government departments.
— The organisation of the Department.
— EU Development Cooperation.
The coherence of DFID's policies and practices
with those of other Government departments—within DFID's
partner countries as well as in the UK.
2. DFID is perceived to be a leader in the
development co-operation field so is in a strong position to lead
on women's rights/empowerment, gender equality. It has a strong
track record and is respected for its work in this area. Many
other government departments such as the Department of Trade and
Industry (DTI) and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) take
their lead on gender equality and equity issues from the DFID.
Within the European Commission and with developing partner countries,
the UK is considered to be a key player in furthering this agenda.
However several evaluations show that there is a widening gap
between policy and practice and DFID needs to make it a priority
to close this gap. With an increased aid budget in the UK (and
elsewhere) and push towards 2015, now is the right time to step
up its commitment and performance. It is urgent that DFID take
action in the following areas:
— Allocate significant financial and
human resources to gender mainstreaming.
— Build up a strong programme of support
to women's organisations and specific activities.
— Strengthen accountability systems,
processes and procedures at headquarters and country office level.
This could be achieved through clearly defining and expressing
expectations of delivery in performance appraisals, work plans
and reports, using clear guidelines on accountability to governance
structures, annual reports, and reporting on progress. DFID could
consider developing an accountability matrix similar to that prepared
by the World Bank9[9]
to ensure that lines of responsibility are clearly defined.
— Strengthen senior level commitment,
leadership and support, through training, exposure sessions and
information analysis.
— DFID should consider developing country-specific
gender action plans clarifying priorities and objectives and developing
mechanisms for monitoring progress on gender equality.
— Much more needs to be done to explore
and develop the linkages between cross-cutting themes, such as
gender, governance, human rights, environment, etc. At present
these are often regarded as separate agendas and staff feel overloaded.
Our research shows that, in practice, aid management offices tend
to pay more attention to "pro-poor" issues and neglect
the intersections between gender equality goals and other development
goals such as poverty reduction or cross cutting priorities such
as HIV/AIDS. Theorising poverty in a vacuum ignores the structural
issues such as gender, caste, class or race that compound poverty.
3. Linked to the coherence agenda, the European
Consensus on Development (November 2005) is the most recent
reaffirmation of the commitment to greater policy coherence. It
states the EU will "Take account of the objectives of development
co-operation in all policies that it implements which are likely
to affect developing countries and that these policies support
development objectives." It explains that the "primary
and overarching objective of EU development co-operation is the
eradication of poverty in the context of sustainable development
including the pursuit of the MDGs". In its draft work programme
for 2006-07 (new Commission Staff working paper) discussed at
the April 2006 GAERC, it was proposed that the Commission and
Member States would pursue their work on policy coherence for
development in 12 different policy areas, considered important
for assisting developing countries to achieve the MDGs. These
are: trade, environment, climate change, security, agriculture,
fisheries, social dimension of globalisation, employment and decent
work, migration, research and innovation, information society,
transport and energy.
4. Increased attention to policy coherence
for development and stepped up actions are very welcome, however
there are concerns. Gender equality and gender mainstreaming are
usually marginalised to "social" dimensions of development
co-operation. The DFID must ensure that gender equality and women's
empowerment are incorporated in key areas particularly, trade,
environment, security, agriculture, migration.
The organisation of the Department—does
DFID's structure reflect the volume and purpose of UK aid? How
successful was DFID's 2003 organisational restructuring in fitting
the Department to meet its aims?
5. Prior to the 2003 organisational restructuring
Social Development Advisers (SDAs) were responsible for conducting
social, including gender, appraisal of all projects. SDAs gave
advice but often were not in control of budgets, therefore their
impact was very limited. [10]The
restructuring of the Policy Division has resulted in the position
of Gender and Rights Advisor in the Exclusion, Rights and Justice
Team. Currently there are two staff members in the team responsible
for gender. While this is a welcome move, it is difficult to comprehend
how DFID expects to mainstream gender fully into all its work
with such limited staff capacity.
6. In One World Action's evidence to the
1998, 2002 and 2004 Inquiry, we argued that women's rights and
gender equality were not high priority outside of the Social Development
Department within DFID. Today evidence of effective gender mainstreaming
outside of the social development cluster remains disappointing.
Within the five Policy Division groups and teams (Development
effectiveness group; Governance and social development group;
Growth and investment group; Sustainable development group, Human
development group) gender mainstreaming is patchy. While the section
on Gender, inclusion and rights in the Annual report explicitly
says that "DFID promotes participation, human rights, gender
equality and inclusion across all areas of work", there is
little evidence of this in "hard areas" such as climate
change and access to clean energy. Further, the restructuring
of the Policy Division has lead to reduced space for civil society
engagement.
Aid modalities—The implications of DFID's
withdrawal/reduction of direct budget support in Ethiopia and
Uganda for the future of budget support
7. DFID is committed to delivering aid through
governments' own systems. In the past few years, it has increasingly
moved away from project funding to Poverty Reduction Budget Support—a
form of aid where funds are provided directly to a partner government's
central exchequer to support government programmes. This has increased
steadily in the past two years from 15% in 2001-04 to an estimated
25% in 2006 with Africa receiving 32% budget support. DFID argues
that this new strategy of delivering aid will improve effectiveness
and impact of public expenditure within sectors and towards poverty
reduction goals overall. While this strategy is potentially positive
as it offers the possibility of direct policy dialogue with national
governments and fosters ownership, tracking aid effectiveness
through direct budget and sector support is difficult. These changes
also bring new challenges for Southern (and Northern) women's
or other civil society organisations wishing to monitor how development
assistance is spent and its relationship to stated government
and donor priorities. DFID could increase action in the following
areas:
— Identify and institute clear mechanisms
for tracking policy commitments in new aid modalities, especially
poverty reduction budget support,
— Greater transparency on levels of
poverty reduction budget support.
— Support to Southern CSOs, and especially
gender aware organisations, to strengthen their capacity to engage
in national budget processes and monitor expenditure.
8. Poverty Reduction Budget Support and
sector wide approaches are welcome but need strong and clear monitoring
mechanisms and public accountability. All sectors, in particular
those with major DFID funding such as infrastructure, macro economic
policies and aid for trade, need to ensure that the differential
impact of PRBS on men and women is considered and addressed.
9. One World Action fully supports the rights
of all human beings as enshrined in the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights, International Covenant of Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights, International Covenant of Civil and Political
Rights. Further the UK government is committed to international
agreements, such as the Beijing Platform for Action, and to achieving
the Millennium Development Goals. The UK government must uphold
these rights in its development co-operation as an absolute minimum.
With regard to PRBS, DFID should ensure that the principles are
applied transparently, consistently and fairly.
EU Development Cooperation—implications
for DFID of the European Consensus on Development and the EU Africa
Strategy
10. One World Action supports the European
Consensus on Development and the EU Africa Strategy.
11. Currently the European Commission has
put out a draft EC Communication on Promoting Gender Equality
in EU External Relations. One World Action welcomes the Commissions'
efforts to draft a Communication that aims to strengthen the promotion
of gender equality in EU External Relations. This is a timely
and crucial initiative that will help to ensure that the strong
commitments made by the EC and the Member States to "include
a strong gender component in all its policies and practices in
its relations with developing countries" in the European
Consensus on Development will be implemented in practice.
12. We particularly support the recognition
and reaffirmation of the importance of the twin-track approach—the
focus on both gender mainstreaming and on women-specific action—for
the promotion of gender equality and strongly encourage the up-coming
evaluation of the Action Programme of 2001. We also welcome
the envisaged stock-taking and re-examination of the role of the
EU and the EC with the aim of increasing accountability in management
structure and towards the public. In order to strengthen the Communication,
we would like to make the following recommendations:
— Improve conceptual clarity by explicitly
referring to the three domains of gender equality and women's
empowerment (capabilities domain, access to resources and opportunities
domain, security domain).
— Include more concrete actions on
how gender mainstreaming will be strengthened.
— Include a comprehensive list of EC
and EU commitments to the promotion of gender equality.
— Include reference to women's rights
throughout the Communication.
— Strengthen mechanisms for monitoring
and increased accountability.
— Improve the analysis of the structural
and global context.
DFID evaluation on gender mainstreaming
13. One World Action welcomes and supports
the DFID evaluation currently undertaken. DFID's overall policy
framework highlights gender inequality as a key factor in poverty
and expresses commitment to reducing gender inequality and promoting
women's empowerment as part of its overall strategy to eliminate
poverty. It has adopted a "twin track" strategy combining
specific activities aimed at empowering women with a commitment
to pursue gender equality in the mainstream of all development
programmes (gender mainstreaming). Preliminary evaluation findings
show that to date these commitments have not been implemented
thoroughly or consistently. [11]One
World Action strongly encourages DFID to use the evaluation as
an opportunity to step up and strengthen commitments to gender
equality, equity and women's empowerment.
International Development Committee follow-up
inquiry
14. We urge the Committee to conduct a follow-up
inquiry on women and development to assess progress on the recommendations
of its 1998 Inquiry. We recommend the Committee open up a formal
inquiry into DFID's Annual Report inviting civil society organisations
to submit oral evidence.
June 2006
9 Integrating Gender into the World Bank's Work:
A Strategy for Action. World Bank (2002). Back
10
Gender equality and Mainstreaming in the UK Department of International
Development: A brief for the UK Gender and Development Network.
May 2003. Back
11
Preliminary feedback from 2005 Evaluation of DFID's policy and
practice in support of gender equality and women's empowerment.
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