Background to GBI

SUCCESS STORY: AFFECTING MACRO-ECONOMIC POLICY AND PROCESSES

THE GENDER BUDGET INITIATIVE - TANZANIA

By Tanzania Gender Networking Programme, Activism, Lobbying and Advocacy (ALA) Programme

A Tanzanian NGO dedicated to achieving gender equality and women’s empowerment illustrates the potential of influencing government to achieve policy changes with a gender perspective.

Background:

The Tanzania Gender Networking Programme (TGNP) is a non-governmental organization working to obtain social transformation with a gender focus in all levels of society.  The NGO has been pioneering a Gender Budget Initiative (GBI) since mid-1997 in close collaboration with other NGOs who compose the Feminist Activism Coalition (FemAct).  The GBI was developed in the context of cost sharing and retrenchment policies implemented as part of structural adjustment programs in the 1980s.  These programs precipitated vital social services, particularly health care and education, being dramatically cut at the same time as liberalization and privatization caused massive layoffs of government workers.  It was also coming at a time when the majority of civil society was feeling marginalized from policymaking and budgetary processes in the country.

Issue:

Created out of this context, the aim of GBI is to advocate for a more people-centred participatory development strategy with equitable and just allocation of resources. The strategy is to influence and transform planning and budgetary processes to utilize participatory techniques and to take into account the practical and strategic needs of marginalized communities, particularly women, poor men, and youth.  The concept is not to develop a separate budget for various groups but rather to integrate issues of equitable/just distribution of resources into all steps and stages of the budgetary process.

Objectives:

1.  To work towards influencing budgeting processes and allocations in relation to objectives of gender equality, equity and social justice;

2.  To promote the design and adoption of gender-sensitive pro-poor instruments for analysis, usage and monitoring of gender mainstreaming in the national budget;

3.  To organise and carry out a lobbying campaign to influence policy/ decision-makers and technocrats so as to meet activist objectives noted above;

4.  To strengthen lobbying and advocacy skills of civil society to organise an effective campaign to promote poor women and men’s participation in public resource allocation; and

5.  To provide popular information in order to educate and solicit support for the campaign.

Action:

To fulfill these aims, TGNP has been developing strategic points of entry within the government, Parliament, and civil society.  This process has included the following activities:  

1. Preparatory Activities/Planning

·                     Instituting the program within TGNP and FemAct structures

·                     Identifying and building working relations with key government actors

·                     Building a documentation base/ building links with other related initiatives, such as South Africa, Australia, and Commonwealth.

2.   Action-oriented research activities in the selected sectors

·                                 Research was conducted at the national level (Ministries) and district level (related sectors at the district level).  Research was done in the Planning Commission and Treasury, as the key sectors in the planning and budgeting process; Health and Education, as vital service providers; Agriculture as essential to the livelihood of most Tanzanians; and Industry and Commerce, given the significance of market/ trade liberalisation policies in the globalisation process.  

·                                 Data was collected and analysed with a gender focus on the process of planning and budgeting; composition of the budget officers, technocrats, and decision-makers; sources of income; allocation of the resources both to sectors and within and planned and actual output.  

·                                 Within each sector, data was collected by a team of three researchers, one from the university (economist or sociologist), one from NGOs and one from the government sector involved.  Government actors were integrated into the process as researchers, providing access to data that would otherwise be considered confidential. This also enabled building ties between TGNP and technocrats working in the respective ministries. The university researcher added the strong quantitative research and academic background and the NGO researcher contributed issues of gender, participatory techniques and analysis of social impact.

3.  Feed-backing and dissemination of research findings

·                       Reports were disseminated to different sectors of society beginning with activist organisations, government departments and external agencies. 

·                       Findings were shared through working sessions and public forums with civil society, donors, policy makers and technocrats within the researched areas, and various groups of MPs, specifically the Parliamentary Budget Committee.  

4.  Development of lobbying strategies and tools for Parliamentary and public lobbying

·           One such strategy was the publication and dissemination of a popular book called Budgeting with a Gender Focus, which outlined the gender gaps in the budget in an easy-to-read and understandable format.  

·           Entry was also made into Parliament through lobbying, and making contacts with individual women and men MPs and key Parliamentary Committees, such as Finance and Economics.

5.    Capacity building on gender as related to budgets

·           Capacity building was done of NGOs and CBOs at the national and local levels to support lobbying efforts on issues of gender and budgeting.  

·           Capacity building efforts were also made for allies and key actors in government Ministries, specifically in areas of gender as related to participatory planning and budgeting.

·           This project has now become more systematic, as the government has committed to gender mainstreaming the budget, as will be further described below.

6.   Development of tools/ instruments for gender budgeting

·           The organisation developed alternative budget guidelines, as an example of ways in which these guidelines could be gender mainstreamed.  

·           A checklist was also developed to guide budgetary planners and technocrats to mainstream gender into all parts of the process.  

·           Recently, a tool was developed to guide the collection of gender-disaggregated data.

7.   Information-sharing and coalition building and networking

·           Information has been popularised, through flyers on GBI in Kiswahili, usage of the media and website, and public forums.  

·           Members have also attended strategic fora to share information at the national, regional, and international levels.

·           Coalition building and networking at all levels has been used to create alliances, contacts and solidarity with other groups and people, promoting collective action.

8.   Lobbying and government and donors’ structures and processes

·           The organisation has sought to influence processes like the Public Expenditure Review (PER), Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) and Tanzania Assistance Strategy (TAS).

9.      Documentation of GBI processes

Results:

Due to these efforts and others stressing the importance of mainstreaming gender in budgetary processes and decision-making, the organisation has gained a great deal of access into government structures and strategic decision-making bodies.  The organisation has been invited by government and donors to be a part of the Public Expenditure Review (PER) process and the Tanzania Assistance Strategy (TAS) processes.  As a participant in these processes, TGNP in cooperation with the FemAct Coalition has been able to push a collective agenda and advocate for transformation in macro-economic processes, transparency and accountability by government actors and inclusion of more pro-poor gender perspectives in government decision-making.

As a result of lobbying, one paragraph on gender was included in the 1999-2000 budget guidelines.  In the 2000-01, two paragraphs were included, which mandated that all Ministry, department and agency (MDA) budget submissions be prepared with a gender focus.  In order to achieve this goal, TGNP was commissioned by the Ministry of Finance in partnership with SIDA to facilitate a project to gender mainstream six sectors of the budget.  The six earmarked sectors were:  Health; Education; Agriculture; Water; Ministry for Community Development, Women Affairs and Children; and Regional Administration and Local Government.  Activities within the pilot sectors included:

·    Conducting training workshops for budget officers in the sectors;

·    Providing backstopping services through organised working sessions with the budget officers during their preparations for the 2000-01 budgets, and

·    Developing tools, including a checklist, for assisting mainstreaming processes.

The above activity, which was recently evaluated by an external consultant for the government showed that government actors within the selected sectors and the Ministry of Finance acknowledged that they had benefited from the workshops and backstopping services.  The Ministry of Water (MoW), which was the Ministry, which made the most active use of TGNP’s backstopping services, also had the most wide-ranging insertions of a gender perspective into its proposed budget, demonstrating the impact of capacity building efforts, spearheaded by government and facilitated by TGNP.  On the whole, the evaluator commented that, “The government’s ownership of GBI processes and its technical application was a useful indication for its sustainability.”  Since then, the Ministry of Water and Livestock added a specific allocation for gender mainstreaming in the 2003 budget.

In the Ministry of Health, support for drugs to pregnant women so as to protect children from transmission of HIV/AIDS infection at childbirth was added to the 2003 budget after lobbying together. However, there has been less success in getting the government to increase resources in general to HIV/AIDS issues.

In the long-term, the Treasury plans to gender mainstream the budgets of all government sectors. The national budgetary guidelines developed by the Ministry of Planning for the development of the year 2001 budget specifically gave these sectors the mandate to mainstream gender into their budgets. This exercise increased the awareness and capacities of a variety of budgetary actors concerning the importance of taking gender into account when planning, and it is the hope of TGNP that it will be the first in a series of such activities.

Future Plans:

In order to lay solid ground for the coming campaign, Phase 1 of the GBI process (1997-2000) focused primarily on information collection, research and dissemination, and capacity building.  The second phase of this process, starting in the year 2000 has combined ongoing budget engagement with a national campaign, ‘return resources to the people’.  This campaign is aimed at three levels:

1.                    General Public / civil society – raising public awareness on the importance of playing an active role in resource allocation processes. The translation of the popular book on the budget into the national language, Kiswahili, has assisted in promoting economic and budget “literacy.”  The goal of this campaign is to create a public demand for a voice in the national budgetary processes, with an emphasis on participation, transparency, accountability, and transformation  

2.                    Government –Parliamentary lobbying efforts and advocacy activities in selected government Ministries will continue to an even greater degree.

3.                    Donors – Efforts would be made to influence the macro-economic frameworks, structures and systems, through engagement with the Public Expenditure Review (PER), Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS), Local Government Reform and other processes.

Lessons/ Challenges:

Building capacity at various levels is essential.  One of the main obstacles faced by the organization has been the low capacity of many actors in civil society to analyse and critique macro- and micro-economic issues.  This handicap arises from their systematic exclusion from participation in decision-making processes on policy and resource matters. A continuing barrier is having a sufficient pool of informed actors to meet training needs as well as future plans to raise public awareness.  Vital to the process is increasing the skills of government actors to link gender issues in relation to budgeting and macroeconomics.

Meeting expectations can be difficult.  While TGNP is eager to serve as a role model for similar processes in other countries and places a strong emphasis on coalition building and networking, the needs of various actors can sometimes spread the capacity of the organization thin.  A continued emphasis on bringing more actors into these processes is anticipated to assist in addressing this challenge.

Work with government while protecting the civil society agenda.  By viewing government officials as partners in the research and capacity building processes, the government and civil society were able to learn from each other and capitalize on each other’s strengths.  It has also given the NGOs involved insight into the constraints of government, while alleviating some of the bureaucratic red tape that can often hinder a project.  At the same time, a continuing barrier remains apathy and frustration on the part of budgetary planners caused by hierarchical processes that gave them little control over the actual budget allocations or process.  This is enhanced by extremely high donor dependency at the resource level, with associated donor power in decision-making. At the same time, an additional challenge remains ways to lobby government – and donors – to genuinely transform decision-making processes at all levels. 

Challenging international macro-economic frameworks is essential.  These frameworks, including structural adjustment and PRSP, have marginalized the government and meant that there are fewer resources to support development.  Therefore, one role of NGOs is to advocate for transformation of these processes.

More information on GBI issues is available in the following TGNP publications:

Budgeting with a Gender Perspective

Activist Voices

Against Neo-Liberalism

Gender Budget Analysis in Tanzania 1997-2000.