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Moroccan
National Budget includes Gender Report |
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New York, December
1, 2005—UNIFEM has been collaborating with the Ministry of Finance in
Morocco for the past four years, to engender their budgets-- and it seems
their work has paid off. For the first
time ever, the Moroccan national budget for the year 2006 has included a
special annex on how it will be addressing gender equity priorities. Made possible with funding support from the
government of Belgium and the European Commission, the Moroccan gender-responsive
budgets initiative has and continues to work extensively with the Ministry of
Finance as well as other line ministries at national and local levels. |
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The gender
budget statement, also referred to as the budget gender report, constitutes an
unprecedented achievement for Morocco.
"The production of a gender report in Morocco as part of the
Economic and Financial Report which accompanies the 2006 Finance Bill is at
the heart of a public management reform process geared toward the achievement
of results. It is a report which, in
an instrumental way, addresses sustainable human development concerns where
the status of women and their human rights are central and strategic for the
achievement of the Millennium Development Goals,” says Mr. Mohammed Chafiki, Director
of Studies and Financial Forecasts at the Moroccan Ministry of Finance and
Privatisation. |
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Issued by
the government, the gender report is a statement that summarizes the
implications of the national or local budget on gender equity using gender-budget analysis tools and
specifies targets and planned outputs vis-à-vis gender equality goals. The Moroccan gender report outlines the
ongoing budget reform in Morocco, which includes as one of its objectives, the
formulation of gender sensitive budgets. The ministries of finance, education,
health, agriculture and rural development were identified by the report as
priority sectors for mainstreaming gender in their budget formulation and
implementation processes. The gender
report addressed how these Ministries will seek to respond to women’s
priorities and address gender gaps within their mandates through their budget
allocations and programmes. It is
hoped that the gender report, a tool that has been used in India and France
as well, will become an institutionalized exercise that will be repeated with
each annual budget cycle. Gender
equality advocates will subsequently be able to track trends in allocations
in coming years, as well as monitor actual expenditures at end of 2006
financial year against the planned budget and women’s priorities. |
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The
inclusion of the gender report indicates the Moroccan government’s commitment
to gender responsive expenditures that ensure the achievement of specific
targets and goals within sectors such as girls’ school enrollment or
illiteracy eradication. The commitment
towards gender-responsive budgeting also reflects the serious measures
towards efficient and equitable use of public resources and effective
development. |
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For more information, please contact: nisreen.alami@undp.org at UNIFEM |
