Technical Assistance Consultant’s Report

This consultant’s report does not necessarily reflect the views of ADB or the Government concerned, and

ADB and the Government cannot be held liable for its contents. (For project preparatory technical

assistance: All the views expressed herein may not be incorporated into the proposed project’s design.

Project Number: 40314-012 March 2013

Regional: Gender-Responsive Decentralized Governance in Asia (Financed by the Technical Assistance Special Fund)

Prepared by Jan Edwards, Kate Frieson, Sofi Ospina

Australian National University Enterprise

Canberra, Australia

For Asian Development Bank

RETA 6337/6493:

Gender-Responsive

Decentralized Governance in Asia

Final Report

March 2013

Photo credit: Community meeting, Meghauli, Nepal. Jan Edwards, Nepal, 2011.

Acknowledgements

This report was jointly prepared by Dr. Jan Edwards, International Team Leader, Dr. Kate Frieson, Gender Budgets Adviser, and Ms. Sofi Ospina, Research Coordinator, for Regional Technical Assistance (RETA) 6337/6493: Gender-Responsive Decentralized Governance in Asia1. It would not have been possible without the work of local implementing partners in Cambodia, Indonesia and Nepal, as shown below.

Cambodia

Mr. Giovanni Dazzo Senior Researcher, Economic Institute of Cambodia

Mr. Chhan Paul Researcher, Economic Institute of Cambodia

Ms. Chann Sokros Researcher, Economic Institute of Cambodia

Ms. Tous Sophorn Gender Consultant, Economic Institute of Cambodia

Mrs. Pok Nanda Executive Director, Women for Prosperity

Ms. Chan Somaly Facilitator, Women for Prosperity

Mrs. Kith Siphoung Facilitator, Women for Prosperity

Indonesia

Ms. Siti Fatimah Director of Program Development, Bandung Institute of Governance Studies

Mr. Markus Christian Researcher, Bandung Institute of Governance Studies

Ms. Siti Aisah Associate Researcher, Bandung Institute of Governance Studies

Ms. Dini Mentari Associate Researcher, Bandung Institute of Governance Studies

Ms. Farsidah Lubis Consultant, Bandung Institute of Governance Studies

Ms. Farsidah Lubis Consultant, Bandung Institute of Governance Studies

Nepal

Dr. Meena Acharya Team Leader, Institute of Integrated Development Studies and SAHAVAGI

Dr. Dwarika Dhungel Deputy Team Leader, Local Governance Expert, Institute of Integrated Development Studies

Associate Professor Mrs. Puspa Ghimire Niraula

Gender Expert, Institute of Integrated Development Studies

Mr. Pawan Lohani Budget Expert, Institute of Integrated Development Studies

Mr. Shanker Aryal Program Coordinator, Institute of Integrated Development Studies

Mr. Telegram Sharma Executive Director and Program Manager, SAHAVAGI

Mr. Barbara Zachary Governance and Research Expert SAHAVAGI

Mr. Sitar am Prasad Governance and Training Expert, SAHAVAGI

The RETA International Team, local implementing partners, and Australian National University Enterprise (managing contractors for the RETA) are grateful for the assistance, support, and guidance provided by Ms. Samantha Hung, Senior Social Development Specialist (Gender and Development), and Ms. Irish-Fe Aguliar, Social Development Officer,

1 The consultant’s report was submitted to ADB in March 2012. This final version of RETA report was edited by

Samantha Hung, Senior Social Development Specialist (Gender and Development), Regional and Sustainable Development Department, ADB, upon financial closure of the RETA.

ii

Gender and Development, ADB Manila. ADB Gender Consultants in each of the Resident Missions provided invaluable assistance: Ms. Chea Chandy, Cambodia Resident Mission; Dr. Ruly Marianti, Indonesia Resident Mission; and Ms. Suman Suba and Ms. Jaya Sharma, Nepal Resident Mission. Members of the Technical Advisory Groups in each country also provided invaluable assistance. Our thanks go especially to TAG Chairs, H.E. Dr. Hang Chuon Naron, Secretary-General, Ministry of Economy and Finance, Cambodia; Bapak Sanjoyo, National Planning Agency (Bappenas), Indonesia; and Mr. Bodh Raj Niraula and Mr. Lok Darshun Regmi, Joint Secretaries, Ministry of Finance, Nepal. A number of people provided extremely valuable support through participation in TAG meetings, comments, and provision of advice on request. Special thanks go to Mr. Nou Vinney, District Education Director, Moung Ruessei, Cambodia; H.E. Ton Sa Im, Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports, Cambodia; Mrs. Nhean Sochetra, H.E. Kheng Samvada, and H.E. Khim Chamroeun, Ministry of Women’s Affairs, Cambodia; Dr. Yulfita Raharjo, the Australia Indonesia Partnership for Economic Governance; Bapak Herman Siregar, Ministry of Women Empowerment and Child Protection, Indonesia; Bapak Dadang Harisuddin, West Bandung Regency, Indonesia, and local government officers from West Bandung Regency; Mr. Basanta Adhikari, Local Development Officer, Chitwan, Nepal; Mr. Uddab Prasad Timalsena, former Local Development Officer, Chitwan, Nepal; and Ms. Nigma Tamrakar and Dr. Dhurga Khatiwada, UN Women, Nepal. The RETA International Team would also to thank Program Managers and staff from ANU Enterprise who provided support to the Team and overall RETA implementation. Special thanks go to Ms. Juan Zhang, Ms. Laura Gibbs, Ms. Chris Reid, and Ms. Cynthia Ojiambo. Thanks also go to Dr. Sanjugta Vas Dev, Gender Budgets Adviser (2008-2010). Thanks are also owed to the many participants from villages, communes, government, and nongovernment and community-based organizations who gave their time and energy to be involved in the initiative. It is hoped that the report will be useful to governments at national and sub-national levels, nongovernment and community-based organizations, and individuals promoting gender-responsive decentralized governance.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations and acronyms

Executive Summary

Chapter 1: Introduction: Contextualizing the RETA 1

A. Gender-responsive decentralized governance ........................................................... 1

B. RETA 6337/6493: purpose and outputs ..................................................................... 1

C. Objectives .................................................................................................................. 2

D. Indicators and key results .......................................................................................... 2

E. Methodological approaches ....................................................................................... 3

F. Implementation .......................................................................................................... 4

G. Participating countries ............................................................................................... 8

H. Decentralization and good governance ...................................................................... 8

Chapter 2: Gender responsiveness of national policy, legal, and intergovernmental fiscal frameworks 10

A. Introduction ................................................................................................................ 10

B. Conceptual framework ............................................................................................... 10

C. Comparison of each country’s approach to gender equality ....................................... 11

Chapter 3: Comparative analysis of GRB as a tool for decentralized governance in Cambodia, Indonesia, and Nepal 30

A. Introduction ................................................................................................................ 30

B. GRB initiatives at decentralized level in Asia ............................................................. 36

C. Gender-responsive sector budget allocations and expenditures ................................ 37

D. The RETA’s markers of progress across the three country pilots ............................... 43

E. The RETA's contribution to better gender-responsive decentralized governance ...... 45

F. Summary and conclusion .......................................................................................... 50

Chapter 4: Enhancing women’s participation in local government 51

A. Introduction ................................................................................................................ 51

B. Action research approach .......................................................................................... 51

C. Research component................................................................................................. 52

D. Intervention component: capacity strengthening and advocacy for change ................ 56

E. Summary and conclusions ......................................................................................... 64

Chapter 5: Lessons Learned & Recommendations from the RETA 65

A. Technical Advisory Groups (TAGs)............................................................................ 65

B. Application of RETA findings and lessons to ADB Portfolio ...................................... 65

References 68

List of Tables:

Table 1. Summary of RETA implementation in Cambodia ........................................................... 5

Table 2. Summary of RETA implementation in Indonesia ............................................................ 6

Table 3. Summary of RETA implementation in Nepal .................................................................. 7

Table 4. Key comparative points in international commitments, national-level policies, legal

frameworks, and intergovernmental fiscal frameworks in Cambodia and Nepal ............ 13

Table 5. Funding allocations to national women’s machineries (% of GDP) ................................ 15

Table 6. Resource allocations to women’s machineries in Cambodia .......................................... 17

Table 7. Numbers of elected women at national and sub-national levels of governance

(% of number of seats available) ..................................................................................... 21

Table 8. Recommendations to improve gender equality commitments through political will ........ 28

Table 9. Cambodia basic education GRB initiative summary ....................................................... 31

Table 10. Indonesia housing renovation GRB initiative summary .................................................. 32

Table 11. Nepal agricultural roads GRB summary ......................................................................... 33

Table 12. Overview of RETA’s training programs ........................................................................... 34

Table 13. The achievements of RETA’s GRB pilots ....................................................................... 45

Table 14. Checklist of start-up requirements for GRB .................................................................... 47

Table 15: Proportion of respondents with no knowledge of government policies and process ..... 55

List of figures

Figure 1: Conceptual model of political will .................................................................................... 11

Figure 2: Budget cycle five-step analysis ....................................................................................... 36

Figure 3: Gender analysis model of sector budget allocations and expenditures.......................... 38

List of boxes

Box 1: Partnership between a local NGO and a Provincial Department in Cambodia .............. 25

Box 2: Issues related to the performance of local bodies in Nepal ............................................ 27

Box 3: Definition of GRB............................................................................................................. 35

Box 4: Expenditure and gender issues in Cambodia ................................................................. 40

Box 5: Grassroots gender situation analysis of equity in education – some challenging findings

from Cambodia ................................................................................................................ 42

Box 6: Gendered needs of beneficiaries in Indonesia ................................................................ 42

Box 7: West Bandung government perspective on the RETA ................................................... 44

Box 8: Minimum conditions for GRB initiatives .......................................................................... 46

Box 9: Issues identified by selected respondents in education in Cambodia ............................ 54

Box 10: Pre- and post-test data from Cambodia .......................................................................... 61

Box 11: Juna tells a beneficiary’s story ........................................................................................ 61

Box 12: Nepali NGO’s perspectives on the RETA ....................................................................... 62

Box 13: Snapshots from the field in Chitwan district, Nepal ......................................................... 63

Abbreviations and acronyms

Acronym Definition ADB Asian Development Bank APM All-Party Mechanism (Nepal) ASEAN Association of South-East Asian Nation Bappenas National Development Planning Agency (Badan Perencanaan Pembangunan Nasional)

(Indonesia) BIGS Bandung Institute for Governance Studies (national research institute, Indonesia) CBO Community-Based Organization CDP Commune Development Plan (Cambodia) CEDAW Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women CIP Commune Investment Plan (Cambodia) CPD Conference on Population and Development CPS Country Partnership Strategy DDC District Development Committee (Nepal) DoWA Department of Women’s Affairs (Cambodia) DMC Developing Member Country DMF Design and Monitoring Framework DPSFM Decentralized Public Service and Financial Management Program (Cambodia) DRILP Decentralized Rural Infrastructure and Livelihoods Project (Nepal) EIC Economic Institute of Cambodia (national research institute, Cambodia) ESDP Education Sector Development Program (Cambodia) FGD Focus Group Discussion GDP Gross Domestic Product GESI Gender Equality and Social Inclusion GRB Gender-Responsive Budgeting IIDS Institute for Integrated Development Studies (national research institute, Nepal) LGCDP Local Government Capacity Development Program (Nepal) LGFGR Local Government Finance and Governance Reform (Indonesia) LSGA Local Self-Government Act (Nepal) MCPM Minimum Conditions and Performance Measures (Nepal) MDG Millennium Development Goal MEF Ministry of Economy and Finance (Cambodia) MoEYS Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports (Cambodia) MoF Ministry of Finance (Nepal) MoLD Ministry of Local Development (Nepal) MoWA Ministry of Women’s Affairs (Cambodia) MoWCSW Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare (Nepal) NGO Nongovernment Organization NP-SNDD National Program for Sub-National Democratic Development (Cambodia) NWC National Women’s Commission (Nepal) PFM Public Financial Management RETA Regional Technical Assistance SPM Strengthening Public Financial Management Program (Nepal) TA Technical Assistance TAG Technical Advisory Group UNDP United Nations Development Program UNFPA United Nations Population Fund UNIFEM United Nations Development Fund for Women USAID United States Agency for International Development VCF Village Citizen Forum (Nepal) VDC Village Development Committee (Nepal) WCF Ward Citizen Forum (Nepal) WCC Women’s and Children’s Consultative Committees WDO Women’s Development Officer (Nepal) WfP Women for Prosperity (national women’s organization, Cambodia)

Executive summary

Introduction

RETA 6337/6493: Gender-Responsive Decentralized Governance in Asia was implemented in Cambodia, Indonesia, and Nepal during the period of mid- 2009 to early 2012. The overarching goal of the RETA was to contribute to more transparent, gender-equitable, and socially inclusive governance at a decentralized level in participating countries. The RETA aimed to increase women’s participation in decentralized governance, in particular policy, planning, budgeting, and implementation. This final report documents and reports on RETA implementation in its entirety, including key findings and lessons learned. The RETA implemented the following 4 Outputs:

Output 1: Desk review of inconsistencies and gaps in policy, legal, and intergovernmental fiscal frameworks.

Output 2: Pilot decentralized gender-responsive budgeting initiatives.

Output 3: Capacity building of selected women representatives and groups to effectively participate in local government.

Output 4: Production and dissemination of Technical assistance (TA) products. All 4 outputs were implemented in Cambodia and Nepal, whereas only outputs 2 and 4 were implemented in Indonesia2. Implementing partners included Bandung Institute of Governance Studies (Indonesia), Women for Prosperity and Economic Institute of Cambodia (Cambodia), Saharawi and Institute for Integrated Development Studies (Nepal).

Output 1

A desk study conducted in Cambodia and Nepal for Output 1 analyzed the implementation and operationalization of gender equality and gender equity policies, laws, and regulations from national level to the sub-national level. Intergovernmental fiscal frameworks were found to be in place in both Cambodia and Nepal. Nepal’s fiscal system is more advanced, given its longer experience with decentralization; Cambodia has committed to progress in the National Program for Sub-National Democratic Development (2010-2019). Cambodia and Nepal produced Technical Country Reports for Output 1 which identified inconsistencies and gaps in policy, legal, and intergovernmental frameworks. Output 1 analysis contributed to the design of gender-responsive budget (GRB) pilot initiatives for Output 2 and identified target groups for tailored training under Outputs 2 and 3.

Output 2

Output 2 used GRB as the gender mainstreaming tool to improve women’s participation in decentralized governance. GRB initiatives involved gender analysis of one program in one sector in a selected district(s) in each of Cambodia (Education), Indonesia (Housing), and Nepal (Local Development). Pilot GRB initiatives provided training to local government officials and those in decision-making positions in order to equip them with the skills, awareness, and knowledge to discharge their new duties in decentralized governance at the levels of competence expected of them. The trainings focused on gender-responsive development program planning, budgeting, implementation, and monitoring at sub-national levels.

2 The RETA was a small activity and it needs to be noted that the findings are therefore based on a small activity

in one district in each of the countries. Caution needs to be exercised in generalizing the findings to other locations.

Output 3

Advocacy approaches were developed and implemented for Output 3 and included capacity development in gender analysis at the grassroots level. Advocacy approaches were developed and implemented as a strategy to empower women, elected women, nongovernment organizations (NGOs), and other groups to take action at local level. The approach raised the confidence and ability of training participants to engage with decision makers to advocate for improved service delivery based on the needs of community members, especially women and girls and other disadvantaged community members. Implementation of Output 3 resulted in training being delivered to 50 community participants (35 of which were women, equating to 70%) and a total of 3900 participants in Nepal, including 2,038 women (approximately 52% of training participants) and 1862 men. The training resulted in the development of networks and coalitions between women at local level, and provided them with enabling skills and knowledge to hold governments accountable for funding expenditures in the future.

Output 4

Technical Advisory Groups (TAGs) were established under Output 4 at national level in each of the three countries to provide support to local implementing partners, oversight of field work, and approval of reports and presentations to Regional Workshops and ADB. TAGs helped to ensure that connections were made between the RETA and the initiatives of national governments. In all 3 countries, they were chaired by senior government officials, from the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) in Cambodia, the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) in Indonesia, and the Ministry of Finance (MoF) in Nepal. Representatives from each of the TAGs participated in the Regional Workshops, which increased ownership and potential for RETA findings to be taken up at national level.

Lessons learned

Key lessons learned from the RETA are summarized under the sub-headings below. These can be applied across ADB’s project portfolio and the forward-looking work of development partners to improve support for advancing the gender responsiveness of policy engagement and program/project support related to decentralized governance.

Support to the dissemination & implementation of gender equality policies and laws

While policies and laws on gender equality are often adequate, they are typically not implemented in other sectors due to a lack of relevant knowledge on the part of both officials (regarding their duty to implement), and communities (to hold governments accountable and demand implementation). A specific capacity development and communication strategy to raise awareness about the existence and application of gender equality policy and legislation to the particular sector, aimed at both government officials and the community, may need to be developed and implemented.

Support to gender-responsive local development activities

1. Effective participation of community members and government officials to contribute towards gender-responsive local governance will be limited if they do not have the appropriate skills and knowledge. Local training in areas including gender analysis, gender-responsive advocacy, and gender-inclusive participatory planning methods, needs to be planned and funded.

2. Women’s-focused NGOs and local community groups can be effective in mobilizing local resources, but they cannot be assumed to have the necessary capacity to implement development activities. The funding of development activities in areas

such as training of trainers, project management, gender analysis, and reporting will improve the effectiveness of women’s NGOs working with local communities.

3. Marginalized people (such as poor women) often cannot participate in community planning processes because the opportunity costs to them are too high (e.g. conflict with domestic tasks, lack of childcare, lost income, etc). Participation of women and other marginalized groups can be enhanced if community planning processes are carried out in a gender-sensitive manner (e.g. held at convenient times for women, ensuring women’s voices are sought and heard) or if participants are compensated for participating (e.g. small allowance for elected community roles).

Gender-responsive monitoring and evaluation at local level

Specific gender issues need to be addressed in monitoring and evaluation systems:

1. Build local government institutional capacity to include and report on gender indicators in their monitoring and evaluation systems, so that gender results can be tracked and reported against. This should include capacity to collect, analyze, use, and report sex-disaggregated data for the sound assessment, planning, budgeting, implementation, and monitoring of gender equality status and results.

2. Gender-related data collected should provide information on women’s involvement in decision making in both local government and the community. Simple community-based local research can be used effectively to provide baseline sex-disaggregated data on participation at the local level.

3. Variance analysis of planned and actual gender-related expenditure is one approach to monitoring and evaluating local government support for gender equality, and can be used for public accountability.

Gender-responsive capacity development for local authorities and communities

The RETA’s approach to capacity development consisted of training workshops, supplemented by field action research and mentoring of community and government groups by participating NGOs, and offered the following lessons:

1. Local training, focusing on practical application of gender-responsive policy and guidelines at the decentralized level, supplemented by intervening periods of trialing and action research, is both inexpensive and effective.

2. Effective action at local level requires the development of shared understanding amongst stakeholders and the encouragement of diverse viewpoints, best fostered through the joint capacity development of community members and government officials. Local planning workshops should therefore be inclusive to involve and enable voices of all relevant stakeholders to be heard, including marginalized groups such as women.

3. Separate training may be appropriate for government officials, as they likely need more detailed knowledge on areas such as gender-responsive project planning, budgeting, management, and monitoring and evaluation to effectively carry out their duties. Consideration should also be given to involving senior community leaders in these specialist courses. Nevertheless, this specialist training should be planned as part of an overall multi-stakeholder capacity development approach.

4. Training of trainers requires close professional management to avoid a rapid loss of training quality. Developing the capacity of local NGOs so they become effective trainers and mentors for gender-responsive local governance approaches is an effective and sustainable project strategy.

5. Community training activities provide an immediate context, links to practical trialing, are low in cost, and allow for maximum community participation. They are particularly

useful in increasing the involvement of local women, who may face restricted mobility and have many other demands on their time.

6. Training in local advocacy for GRB is effective in empowering women and local communities, increasing demand for good governance, and therefore improving accountability and transparency for improving gender-responsive local service delivery.

7. Gender-responsive advocacy training should aim for the development of coalitions and networks between local women (and men) in communities and local government officials. Content should include women’s and communities’ rights to participate in decision making and to benefit from government services and activities; training in gender analysis as a core part of development planning, budgeting, and decision making; and understanding and analysis of local budget documents and processes.

Public finance

It is essential that local women and communities see a direct link between planned and actual expenditure and that they be provided with the tools and skills needed to monitor and analyze variances. This is true in terms of both aggregate spending and gender equality expenditure, and can be supported through:

1. Addressing the unreliability in the distribution of funds from central to decentralized government level, which may involve working closely with central government Ministries of Finance to improve disbursement systems.

2. Dissemination of financial information and building of gender-responsive budget analysis skills at local level as part of participatory planning workshops, is a useful way to support accountability and transparency for implementing gender equality initiatives, reducing opportunities for corruption.

3. Support for the provision of budget information on planned and actual expenditures to allow for local community analysis of any variances. In particular, financial systems should allow for the analysis of expenditures from a gender perspective.

Key recommendations

Based on the above findings, the RETA offers the following key suggestions on how to support more transparent, gender-equitable, and socially inclusive decentralized governance, which are applicable across a wide range of ADB operations:

Support the effective dissemination of existing government policies and legislation on gender equality and social inclusion to local governments, civil society and communities, with particular sector focus where applicable.

Support and encourage the development of performance mechanisms for gender policy compliance at local government level.

Promote quotas or allocated representation and participation of women in decision making; consultation; employment; capacity development; and public sector employment in decision-making roles at local levels, within the scope of any project design; and require data reporting on women’s participation in all project activities.

Design and plan for forums so local government officials and other decision makers listen to citizens and ensure that the voices of women are heard. Existing groups can be used, but may need to be strengthened.

Design and implement locally–delivered advocacy training for women and other marginalized groups to improve their ability to demand better service delivery and

establish community-based accountability mechanisms for local authorities with roles in project and program administration and implementation.

Consider training community members in small-scale community-based research to develop baseline data where these currently do not exist.

Design, implement and allocate sufficient resources for capacity development for government officials to understand gender analysis, GRB and their roles in gender-responsive decentralization. Involve women and other diverse groups of community members to develop shared understanding, networking, and coalition building.

Support the development of effective systems of intergovernmental fiscal transfers so they are predictable, allowing for continuous service delivery at sub-national levels.

Support the development of systems and communication strategies for the reporting of planned and actual expenditures to women and communities to enable tracking of gender-responsive allocations and expenditures.

Support government partners to implement GRB trials initially at national level with a focus on specific sectors, then at a decentralized governance level, including through development of sectoral GRB indicators at national and sub-national levels of governance, and development of gender budget statements.

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Chapter 1: Introduction: Contextualizing the RETA

A. Gender-responsive decentralized governance

1. The long-term strategic framework for the Asian Development Bank (ADB) - ‘Strategy 2020’ - sets inclusive growth as one of three key agendas to reduce poverty and inequality in Asia and the Pacific and enable excluded groups to contribute to and benefit from economic growth.3 Women form the largest group of those who are disadvantaged by social and cultural prejudice. As a result, they are not always able to participate in decisions about planning, allocation, or management of public resources that directly affect their lives. 2. Decentralized governance is thought to be one way that women can participate more effectively in decisions that affect their economic well-being and livelihoods and the health and education of both themselves and their children. However, as argued by Mukhopadhyay and Meer, ‘expanding the scope of citizen participation in governance through decentralization of government [does not by] itself ensure that women and men [will] be represented on an equal basis’.4 They add, ‘while women’s rights-claiming expands democratic spaces and culture, a democratic environment is a resource for rights-claiming’.5 This RETA experience has demonstrated that the need for a democratic environment is an essential underlying resource for improving women’s participation in decentralized governance. In addition to improving women’s participation, decentralized governance needs to be gender responsive. This means that programs and projects must be designed based on an understanding of the different needs of women and men, girls and boys, and that these gender-different needs should be considered and acted on in program and project planning, budgeting, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation.

B. RETA 6337/6493: purpose and outputs

3. RETA 6337/6493 on Gender-Responsive Decentralized Governance in Asia aimed for ‘more transparent, gender-equitable and socially-inclusive governance at the decentralized level in participating countries’ through increased women’s participation and pilot gender-responsive budgeting (GRB). Countries participating in the RETA were Cambodia, Indonesia, and Nepal. The anticipated outcome was that ‘Developing Member Country (DMC) Officials and ADB staff would access lessons and good practices from the RETA experience to enhance support for improving the gender responsiveness of policy, planning, budgeting and project design’.6

4. Four Outputs contributed to the achievement of the above outcome and in time will contribute to impact identified in the Design and Monitoring Framework (DMF).

Output 1: Desk review of inconsistencies and gaps in policy, legal, and intergovernmental fiscal frameworks (Cambodia & Nepal)

Output 2: Pilot decentralized gender-responsive budgeting (GRB) initiatives (Cambodia, Indonesia, and Nepal).

Output 3: Capacity building of selected women representatives and groups to effectively participate in local government (Cambodia and Nepal).

Output 4: Production and dissemination of Technical assistance (TA) products (Cambodia, Indonesia and Nepal).

3 ADB. 2008. Strategy 2020: The Long-Term Strategic Framework of the Asian Development Bank 2008-2020.

Manila. 4 M. Mukhopadhyay and S. Meer. 2004. Creating Voice and Carving Space: Redefining Governance from a

Gender Perspective. Amsterdam. P17. 5 Ibid. P67.

6 ADB. 2008. RETA 6337/6493: Design and Monitoring Framework. October. Manila.

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5. The RETA focused on promoting good governance in the context of decentralization through increasing women’s participation in policy, planning, budgeting, and implementation; and equipping local government agencies with the gender-responsive skills, awareness, and knowledge to discharge their new duties in decentralized governance at the levels of professional competence expected of them. The aim of this was to strengthen the capacity of women, elected women representatives, and nongovernment organizations (NGOs) to engage with decision making, planning, and budgeting at local level. GRB was the gender mainstreaming tool used in capacity-building training in advocacy to achieve the above.

C. Objectives

6. The above outputs aimed to collectively contribute towards:

Increased women’s participation in planning, programming, and budgeting processes and in the design of programs and service delivery mechanisms and impact monitoring in order to ensure their needs are met and their conditions of access are understood and appropriately taken into account in sub-national governance.7

Better understanding of the needs and conditions of access for women to participate in decentralized governance among government budget and program staff and women and men in the pilot communities.

Better understanding of the processes and mechanisms involved in the development and implementation of gender-responsive government budgets and programs, and the delivery of services for women in the community and local women’s organizations.

D. Indicators and key results

7. Select performance indicators to measure the success of the RETA were identified in the original design and monitoring framework (DMF), and are summarized below.

8. The success of Output 1 in Cambodia and Nepal was measured by the completion of ‘high-level research reports that identified inconsistencies and gaps in gender and decentralization policy, legal, and intergovernmental fiscal frameworks’. These reports informed the local-level research and design of the GRB initiatives for Output 2. A key result from Output 1 is the ‘clear identification of policy gaps to achieve gender equality in both Cambodia and Nepal’. The reports and their findings and recommendations were endorsed by Technical Advisory Groups (TAGs) in each country.

9. A second indicator for Output 1 was the ‘incorporation of findings in ADB’s country gender assessment, County Partnership Strategies (CPSs), and relevant sector and thematic road maps’. This second indicator is beyond the control of the RETA consulting team and implementing partners, and can only be achieved only by ADB itself in partnership with DMCs. However, this report aims to make practical suggestions on how ADB might achieve this.

10. Output 2 indicators included the ‘design and implementation of GRB pilot initiatives in Cambodia, Indonesia, and Nepal and the documentation of learning from the pilots. This resulted in the development of Output 2 technical country reports which were endorsed by respective country TAGs, as well as implementation of GRB pilots as described in detail in Chapter 3.

7 In practice, this mean including men as those with decision-making power in local government as well as men

engaged with NGOs promoting women’s rights.

3

11. The second indicator for Output 2 was for results from GRB pilot initiatives to inform country budget processes and related documents’. This again was outside the control of the consulting and implementing partners, although reports and other learning from the RETA were shared with government officials in TAGs and at 3 Regional Workshops to encourage national uptake. A key result from Output 2 has been the development of contextually relevant approaches and models for implementing GRB in decentralized governance.

12. Output 3 indicators focused on the design and implementation of advocacy approaches to improve the capacity of women representatives and groups to participate effectively in local government, based on needs assessment in Cambodia and Nepal. Activities included capacity development of women, elected women representatives, NGOs, and members of self-help groups. The DMF stipulated a training target of 150 women. Male members of NGOs and other strategic groups were included in training; this was agreed as appropriate given the limited number of locally elected women representatives in each of the countries. However Output 3 training targets were exceeded with a total of 3900 participants, including 2,038 women (approximately 52% of training participants) and 1862 men trained in Nepal; and 50 people including 35 women trained in Cambodia. In addition, the advocacy approaches and models that were the focus of training activities resulted in improved capacity of women’s representatives and groups to participate effectively in local government. This was achieved through improved knowledge of gender-responsive policies, rights, and processes in local government.

13. Output 4 required the establishment of a Technical Advisory Group (TAG) in each country. One indicator for Output 4 was the approval of approaches and reports developed and implemented by local implementing partners by the TAG. Further indicators for Output 4 included a ‘technical review of ADB’s project portfolio and its potential for incorporating lessons learned on gender and decentralized local governance.

E. Methodological approaches

14. Output 1 entailed an analytical desk study conducted in Cambodia and Nepal and involved assessment of the gender responsiveness of the countries’ national policy, legal, and intergovernmental fiscal frameworks related to decentralized governance. This assessed the extent to which national commitments to gender equality had been translated into sector policies and decentralized government legislation. Implementing partners in each country in conjunction with the TAG and the relevant sector determined the relevant policies, regulations, and guidelines for assessment. It identified gender policy gaps in each country’s legislative, fiscal and policy (national and sub-national) frameworks and made recommendations to relevant government authorities on how to address these gaps and conflicts so gender commitments made at the national level could reach and be contextualized at the sub-national level.

15. Output 2 focused on supporting GRB initiatives in selected communes/districts in Cambodia (Moung Ruessei District, Battambang Province) and districts in Indonesia (West Bandung Regency) and Nepal (Chitwan District). It targeted local government officials, elected local officials, and community members through capacity-building training and collaborative work on GRB. A gender analysis of selected sector budgets and expenditures was conducted to establish whether decentralized budgets had been adopted and acted on an understanding of the core gender issues and priorities. This analysis examined appropriations and actual expenditures in the sector selected in conjunction with the national TAGs. Analysis was limited to the current (at time of RETA implementation) and past two fiscal years. Local government officials from one sector in one district were trained in GRB analysis (Education – Cambodia, Housing – Indonesia, Local Government Development – Nepal). The training focused on supporting government officials to understand their new roles in decentralized governance, with a focus on gender-responsive planning, budgeting,

4

implementation, and evaluation of development activities. Local implementing partners worked with government participants to develop a gender analysis of the expenditure side of the budget of one activity from the selected sector. In summary, Output 2 was about analysis and action. Participating government officers and community members working in one sector in each local government were trained in GRB analysis to enable them to implement a pilot GRB initiative.

16. Output 3 built the confidence and capacity of elected women, NGOs, and women community members in local governance processes and structures. This involved a number of steps. Local implementing partners conducted a needs analysis to identify the information and capacity needs of the target groups. Following this, capacity development on planning processes – including budget allocation decisions and monitoring and auditing expenditures, on local administrations and legislatures, and on other resource allocation decisions – was designed and implemented. Through the training, women’s self-help groups and grassroots networks were supported to engage with local sector agencies that implement local development programs. Women’s NGOs involved in increasing the interaction of rural women with decentralized governments and line agencies were engaged in advocacy training to increase their ability to take part in sector policy dialogue and inform legislation using advocacy approaches, including the development of networks and coalitions. In summary, Output 3 focused on advocacy and action. It was about building the capacity of

locally elected members8, female public servants, women’s self-help groups, and grassroots

organizations to participate more extensively and effectively in decentralized governance using tools such as GRB.

17. Output 4 focused on the development of knowledge products and sharing of RETA learning and implementation progress across participating countries through 3 Regional Workshops. A key part of Output 4 was the engagement with TAGs, which had a key role in guiding the approaches used in each country and approving the country technical reports. A further aspect to Output 4 was the review of the ADB project portfolio and identifying the potential to incorporate gender and decentralized governance lessons learned. A small workshop was held in each country involving local implementing partners and ADB staff, which focused on developing the scope of the analysis and portfolio review. In summary, Output 4 focused on quality assurance, the production of high-level knowledge products, and the application of RETA findings and lessons to ADB operations.

F. Implementation

18. The RETA was implemented in each country by national partners, national research institutes, and national women’s organizations, which had overall responsibility for conducting assessments, monitoring and evaluation, and direct interventions in terms of capacity building and pilot activities. All national partners have a track record in promoting a broad range of pro-poor, gender- and governance-related capacity development initiatives at the decentralized local level and have high-order capacity to engage strategically with women leaders, women’s groups, and decentralized institutions in government and communities.

8 The TA targets only women elected representatives, but it cannot be assumed that all women elected for office

are gender sensitive and that all elected men are not. The decision on whether to include elected men or focus solely on elected women is a local one and needs to be made taking into account the experience of local experts and implementing partners.

5

1) Cambodia

19. In Cambodia, the Economic Institute of Cambodia (EIC) 9 implemented Outputs 1 and 2 as the national research institute. The RETA also worked with Women for Prosperity

(WfP)10

as the national women’s organization. WfP implemented Output 3 of the RETA in

Cambodia and contributed to successful implementation of Output 2.

20. This Final Report draws on the following documents from Cambodia:

EIC. 2011. RETA 6337/6493: Gender-Responsive Decentralized Governance in Asia. First Country Technical Report (Output 1). Phnom Penh.

EIC. 2012. RETA 6337/6493: Gender-Responsive Decentralized Governance in Asia. Second Country Technical Report (Output 2). Phnom Penh.

WfP. 2011. RETA 6337/6493: Gender-Responsive Decentralized Governance in Asia. Output 3 Report. Phnom Penh.

21. Hereinafter, these are referred to as the Cambodia Outputs 1, 2, and 3 Reports. A summary of RETA implementation in Cambodia is given in Table 1.

Table 1. Summary of RETA implementation in Cambodia

Sector Education

District Nine communes in Moung Ruessei district, Battambang province

Output 1 Output 1: Actions to address inconsistencies and gaps in policy, legal, and intergovernmental fiscal frameworks submitted to relevant authorities. EIC was the lead partner on Output 1. A desk study identified gaps in policy, legal, and intergovernmental fiscal frameworks between national and district levels in the education sector. Gaps were reported at the Dissemination Workshop, TAG meetings, the Regional Workshops, and the Cambodia Output 1 Report.

Output 2 Output 2: Gender-responsive budgeting initiatives in decentralized governance piloted. EIC was the lead partner on Output 2. EIC delivered a series of three two-day workshops for a cohort of 27 district-level officials with responsibility for planning and budgeting. Officials included district governors and officials, Commune Chiefs, school Principals, teachers, and NGO staff. WfP was involved in the workshops as observers. 48% of workshop participants were women. Implementation of Output 2 was reported at the Dissemination Workshop, TAG meetings, the Regional Workshops, and the Cambodia Output 2 Report.

Output 3 Output 3: Capacity of selected women representatives and groups to effectively participate in local government enhanced. WfP was the lead partner on Output 3. WfP conducted three two-day trainings for two groups of 25 people (total of 50 participants each receiving six days of training). 70% (35) of training participants were women. Implementation of Output 3 was reported at the Dissemination Workshop, TAG meetings, and the Regional Workshops.

Output 4 Output 4: TA products endorsed by DMCs and ADB and disseminated. A TAG was established in Cambodia to provide advice to local implementing partners. This approved reports and presentations to the Regional Workshop. Nominated TAG members participated in Regional Workshops. A focused small workshop was held to provide direction to the ADB Portfolio Review. WfP implemented a Dissemination Workshop in February 2012.

9 EIC is an independent think-tank providing information and detailed insight into Cambodia’s socio-economic

development. EIC presents reliable, accurate, and research-based data and analysis of the country’s economic trends to input into the formulation of sustainable economic development policies and strategies. (www.eicambodia.org) 10

WfP is a local non-profit and non-political NGO based on voluntary services. It seeks to empower women and to enable them to support their families economically, to experience personal safety and security, and to maintain their values and identity. Since 2002, WfP has worked to promote the capacity of women to participate in politics. WfP recently implemented capacity building for women in commune councils with ADB support.

6

2) Indonesia

22. In Indonesia, the RETA worked with the Bandung Institute for Governance Studies (BIGS), a NGO with experience in budgeting and GRB.11 Indonesia’s engagement in the RETA was limited to Outputs 2 and 4; hence BIGS fulfilled the role of both national research institute and national women’s organization.

23. This Final Report draws on the following documents from Indonesia:

BIGS. 2011. RETA 6337/6493: Gender-Responsive Decentralized Governance in Asia. Second Country Technical Report (Output 2). Jakarta.

24. Hereinafter, this is referred to as the Indonesia Output 2 Report. A summary of RETA implementation in Indonesia is given in Table 2.

Table 2. Summary of RETA implementation in Indonesia

Sector Ministry of Public Works

District West Bandung

Program Housing Renovation Program

Output 2 Output 2: Gender-responsive budgeting initiatives in decentralized governance piloted. BIGS was the lead partner in Indonesia. BIGS conducted focus group discussions (FGDs) and interviews with selected government officials and this information provided the basis for planning Output 2 activities. A desk review of the implementation of relevant local government laws and policies informing activities was conducted, focused on the Housing Renovation Program. The two previous years’ budgets for the activity were examined. A series of workshops were implemented with local government officials involved in budgeting and planning at the district level. These were supplemented with intensive one-on-one support between workshops. Community members participated as observers in the workshops. 25% of participants in the training were women

12. Implementation of

Output 2 was reported in TAG meetings, the Regional Workshops, and the Output

Output 4 Output 4: TA products endorsed by DMCs and ADB and disseminated. A TAG was established in Indonesia to provide advice to local implementing partners. The TAG approved reports and presentations to the Regional Workshop. Nominated TAG members participated in Regional Workshops. A workshop for stakeholders was conducted in the office of ADB Indonesia in November 2010 to provide direction to the ADB portfolio review.

a) Nepal

25. In Nepal, the RETA engaged the Institute for Integrated Development Studies (IIDS)13

as the national research institute and SAHAVAGI14 as the national women’s organization. IIDS implemented Output 1 and research activities for Output 2. SAHAVAGI was engaged to implement the capacity development aspects of Outputs 2 and 3.

26. This Final Report draws on the following Nepal documents:

11

www.bigs.or.id 12

Output 2 did not have a requirement to train women, and because the staffing of planning and budgeting departments was male dominated, it was not possible to increase the numbers of women.

13 IIDS is a nongovernment, non-profit organization which contributes to informed public policy and action by conducting empirically based policy-oriented research on Nepal's economic and social development in national, regional, and international contexts. ( http://www.iids.org.np)

14 SAHAVAGI is a national action-oriented NGO with offices in Kathmandu and in Bharatphur, Chitwan district. It has worked a range of international agencies to implement projects and conduct training on a wide range of governance and women’s issues, including women’s leadership, women in politics, gender statistics, and GRB.

7

IIDS. 2011. RETA 6337/6493: Gender-Responsive Decentralized Governance in Asia. First Country Technical Report (Output 1). Kathmandu.

IIDS and SAHAVAGI 2012. RETA 6337/6493: Gender-Responsive Decentralized Governance in Asia. Second Country Technical Report (Output 2). Kathmandu.

SAHAVAGI. 2011. Baseline Research Results. Output 3 Presentation to Mid-Term Workshop. Phnom Penh, July.

27. Hereinafter, these are referred to as the Nepal Outputs 1, 2, and 3 Reports. A summary of RETA implementation in Nepal is given in Table 3.

Table 3. Summary of RETA implementation in Nepal

Sector Ministry of Local Development

District Chitwan and Okhaldunga (Output 2); Chitwan (fieldwork – Output 3)

Program Agricultural Rural Public Roads and Ministry of Local Development (MoLD)

Output 1 Output 1: Actions to address inconsistencies and gaps in policy, legal, and intergovernmental fiscal frameworks submitted to relevant authorities. IIDS was the lead partner on Output 1. Gaps in policy and its implementation between national and district levels in MoLD were identified. The desk study identified gaps in policy, legal, and intergovernmental fiscal frameworks between national and local levels of government. These were reported to relevant government ministries by the TAG and through reporting mechanisms including the Dissemination Workshop, the Regional Workshops, and the Nepal Output 1 Report.

Output 2 Output 2: Gender-responsive budgeting initiatives in decentralized governance piloted. IIDS and SAHAVAGI were joint implementers of Output 2. IIDS advanced the desk review from Output 1 and conducted interviews in Chitwan and Okhaldhunga districts with government officials and members of road User Committees. SAHAVAGI applied IIDS learning from Outputs 1 and 2 to plan workshops for Output 2. SAHAVAGI employed and trained Local Resource Persons in community participation; the project cycle, including monitoring and evaluation; gender and social inclusion; social accountability tools; and policies, including the Local Self-Government Act (LSGA) (1999). Local resource persons worked in selected villages in Chitwan district. SAHAVAGI studied service provision and fund flows from national to local levels of government. SAHAVAGI also provided training in GRB to local government officials. Gender analysis was undertaken for budgets of four Village Development Committees (VDCs) and one municipality. It conducted a series of workshops targeting district-level officials involved in planning and budgeting from VDCs, Integrated Planning Formulation Committees, and municipalities over a series of one-day training sessions. Implementation of Output 2 was reported in the Dissemination Workshop, TAG meetings, the Regional Workshops, and the Nepal Output 2 Report.

Output 3 Output 3: Capacity of selected women representatives and groups to effectively participate in local government enhanced. SAHAVAGI was the lead partner on Output 3 and trained project staff as Local Resource Persons. Project staff conducted institutional- and community-level baseline surveys. Policies were reviewed at VDC and municipality levels. SAHAVAGI supported the reformulation and strengthening of Integrated Planning Formulation Committees in six VDCs and one municipality. SAHAVAGI and Local Resource Persons delivered capacity-building initiatives in six VDCs and one municipality, targeting All-Party Mechanism (APM) members, VDC members, municipality officials, and District Coordination Committee members. Advocacy training included information on local government guidelines focusing on the Gender and Social Inclusion Guidelines (2008) and funding allocations to women and other disadvantaged groups. SAHAVAGI led the formation and capacity development of Ward Citizen Forums (WCFs) on local government provisions and participation. SAHAVAGI strengthened the capacity of selected local NGOs in gender, governance, GRB, and participation in local governance processes. Output 3

8

Sector Ministry of Local Development

activities provided training for 3900 participants, including 2,038 women (approximately 52% of training participants) and 1862 men

15. Implementation of

Output 3 was reported at the Dissemination Workshop, TAG meetings, and Regional Workshops.

Output 4 Output 4: TA products endorsed by DMCs and ADB and disseminated. A TAG was established in Nepal to provide advice to local implementing partners. This approved reports and presentations to the Regional Workshop. Nominated TAG members participated in the Regional Workshops. A focused small workshop was held to provide direction in the ADB Portfolio Review. IIDS implemented a Dissemination Workshop in January 2012.

G. Participating countries

28. The RETA worked closely with government agencies at national, sectoral, and sub-national levels in each of the target countries to produce outcomes that reflected local conditions and strategies, while ensuring overall policy consistency. Nevertheless, lessons derived from the RETA have implications for other DMCs currently considering or planning the introduction of gender-responsive decentralization policies.

29. During the past decade, the decentralization of policy development and service delivery has become more prominent in the Asia Pacific region. This has been motivated by a desire both to ensure greater transparency and accountability in the delivery of development services and to increase the responsiveness of government policies and programs to the priorities and aspirations of local communities. This process has important implications for social justice strategies, particularly with regard to the role of women and promotion of gender equality. Experience derived from the operations of ADB and other agencies indicates that budget processes represent a critical factor in the mainstreaming of gender policies. Budget structures (including the management and timing of financial transfers between levels of government) determine in large part what kinds of programs can be implemented and the extent of their effectiveness.

H. Decentralization and good governance

30. This report focuses on gender-responsive decentralized governance. Progressive decentralized governance is gender responsive. Women and girls make up around 50% of the population in developing countries and their empowerment is a major driver of social and economic development. ADB’s good governance policy identifies four elements of good governance to guide its operations in member countries: accountability, participation, predictability, and transparency. Gender-responsive good governance can occur only if governments and their officials are accountable to their international and national commitments to gender and social equality and translate these commitments into action at sub-national levels, including the delivery of acceptable public services for all (RETA Outputs 1 and 2). Citizens, both women and men, should participate in the development process and decision-making mechanisms. This contributes to ensuring that government programs and services are responsive to their identified and differentiated needs (RETA Outputs 2 and 3). Predictability refers to the application of laws as well as regulations, policies, and other mechanisms that ensure fair and equal treatment of both women and men before the law and government policies, including the allocation and provision of resources to support gender commitments (RETA Outputs 1 and 2).

31. Transparency refers to the right to information of women and men in relation to government plans, policies, and priorities, as well as their right to participate in decision making related to the provision of public services and the expenditure of resources to support

15

Training for Local Resource Persons is not included in the total training days.

9

the integrity of public administration. Decentralized governance provides a key opportunity for women and other citizens to claim their rights (RETA Outputs 2 and 3).

10

Chapter 2: Gender responsiveness of national policy, legal, and intergovernmental fiscal frameworks

A. Introduction

32. The focus of this chapter16 is the implementation of Output 1 and describes and analyzes the gender responsiveness of national policy, legal, and intergovernmental fiscal frameworks across two of the three countries participating in the RETA.17 It was found that failure to address women’s marginalization effectively has not arisen because of a lack of policy and legal frameworks and stated national government commitments to gender equality. In fact, Cambodia and Nepal have sufficient policy and legal frameworks at both national and decentralized level that are, in the most part, gender responsive. The key lesson is the need to support partner governments to adequately resource and implement existing women’s machineries and mainstreamed gender policies at all levels of government. The shortcoming in addressing women’s marginalization lies in the implementation of policy and legal frameworks at all levels of government. It is weakest at sub-national levels, where successful implementation is related to three interlinked factors which serve as the conceptual framework for this chapter: (i) policies, laws, and regulations, (ii) capacity; and (iii) resources.

33. This chapter describes how Cambodia and Nepal are currently addressing gender equality and identifies gaps that need to be filled in order to improve attention to policy, legal, and fiscal aspects of gender equality, from national to sub-national levels of government. The description and comparison of the approaches adopted in Cambodia and Nepal provide sound examples of effective strategies that can be used by other DMCs.

B. Conceptual framework

34. Political will is a term whose meaning and use has changed over time to reflect changes in political science theory. Political will is considered a prerequisite for any kind of social change led by government. Without it, commitments made in policies, laws, regulations, decrees, and other government statements are meaningless. Political will is the commitment of actors to undertake actions to achieve a set of objectives, and to sustain the costs of those actions over time. Political will includes intent as evidenced in government statements (including policies and laws) as well as intent as action as measured through capacity and demonstrated by action (capacity and resources). As such, political will is inseparable from capacity and resources. For the purposes of the RETA, the following definition of political will was adopted:

Political will is a government’s commitment and ability to act through intent (capacity) and demonstrated by intent as action (capacity and resources) to achieve a particular objective18.

35. In the above definition, commitment to act is demonstrated by laws, policies, decrees, regulations, and guidelines. The term ‘capacity’ is understood as demonstrating intent, and means that relevant people are trained, understand, and have the skills to implement policies, laws, regulations, decrees, and guidelines at national, sectoral, and local level. The term ‘resources’, used above, also demonstrates intent, and refers to the availability and allocation of adequate resources, including the time of senior government officials,

16

Unless otherwise indicated, this chapter draws mainly on the Cambodia Output 1 Report and the Nepal Output 1 Report.

17 Indonesia did not participate in Output 1. Therefore, the analysis in this chapter does not make reference to Indonesia.

16 See I. Amundsen and H. Mathiesen. n.d. Corruption, Lack of Political Will and the Role of Donors (in Uganda). Bergen.

11

equipment, materials, and other resources to support policy implementation. Policy implementation includes both administrative and political accountability. Adequate resources need to be allocated to support both the development of capacity as well as the availability of trained people to implement gender equality policies.19

36. Applied to gender equality, political will therefore means the government enacts appropriate policies, legislation, and other measures as an expression of its commitment to stated gender equality goals. Political will is thus not determined by the number of policies, laws, and other instruments of government. Rather, it is determined by the combination of policies, laws, and the like – together with the capacity required by implementers to implement them adequately – and the resources with which to do so. The ability of a government to act to further a particular objective, in this case gender equality, is determined by the relationship between the three factors, as Figure 1 shows.

Figure 1: Conceptual model of political will

Source: Adapted from J. Edwards. 2011. Output 1 Presentation at the RETA Mid-Term Workshop, 26-27 July. Phnom Penh.

C. Comparison of each country’s approach to gender equality

37. As stated above, failure to address women’s marginalization effectively does not result from a lack of policy and legal frameworks and stated national government commitments to gender equality. As the sections that follow illustrate, Cambodia and Nepal address gender equality, women’s participation in decision making, and GRB in different ways. For example, as part of its decentralization process, Nepal is strong on reserving places for women in decision making at all levels of government through establishing membership quotas of a minimum of 33%20. In addition, Nepal is one of the most advanced developing countries in the world in terms of its intergovernmental fiscal framework to address gender equality through its implementation of GRB. Rhonda Sharp notes that the goal is the institutionalization of GRB in a country’s fiscal framework21. In this regard, Nepal can be considered quite advanced. According to Sharp’s model, to institutionalize GRB, Nepal needs a return to democratic elections and women’s participation to be real, not just numerical. This means the focus needs to be on the quality of women’s participation. For this

19

Ibid. 20

An exception is the APM, which does not have a quota for women’s participation. 21

Personal communication with Jan Edwards, 1 October 2011.

12

to become a reality, women need training and other capacity development such as mentoring so they can understand government processes and participate effectively at decentralized government level. 38. Nepal has specific budgetary allocations for women’s programs down to sub-national level. What particularly distinguishes Nepal’s approach from approaches used in other countries is that it has both incentives for compliance and consequences for non-compliance. The Minimum Conditions and Performance Measures (MCPM) (2008) is a specific strategy to hold government accountable; this is discussed in greater detail below, together with the new Gender Budget Audit Guidelines (2011). Although considered by some to be insufficiently gender responsive,22 the MCPM (2008) demonstrates that accountability mechanisms can be gender responsive and that monitoring local governments on improved gender equality outcomes can work. 39. Nepal has a strongly developed system for monitoring GRB expenditures, which forms a key part of the country’s intergovernmental fiscal framework. Although the respondents in this study considered the system ‘too complex’, the indicators, together with specific funding allocations to women and other disadvantaged groups and consequences for non-compliance, means that Nepal is in a stronger position than most other countries in the region in terms of addressing gender equality through resource allocation. 40. A further key point is that, while policy frameworks for supporting women’s participation in decision making are adequate, the main failure lies in implementation by sub-national levels of government. The failure is not in sub-national governments but in how responsibility for implementation is transferred to them without the requisite resources and skills development, that is, intent as action. Resource and capacity limitations hamper the effectiveness of program implementation at sub-national levels. 41. Cambodia does not have participation quotas23, but it does have monitoring indicators and affirmative action strategies, such as a reservation of 30% of places at village level for women. There is also provision for women’s representation at various levels of decision making, in particular a requirement that women must be appointed as Deputy Provincial Governors. This affirmative action strategy has resulted in the appointment of 24 women to this post and of a further 196 female District/Khan Deputy Governors throughout the country. The existence of such strategies and targets means it is possible to measure women’s participation in decision making over time.

42. Table 4 illustrates the key comparative points that emerged from the desk study in Cambodia and Nepal. Only key documents are mentioned: this is not intended to be an exhaustive list of all policies, regulations, and legal and intergovernmental fiscal frameworks24.

22

Concerns were raised at the RETA Final Workshop in Kathmandu, Nepal, on 8 and 9 December 2011 that the indicators were not yet sufficiently gender responsive.

23 Cambodia prefers the terms ‘reserved places’ and ‘affirmative action’ to ‘quotas’.

24 The RETA focused on one sector in one district and analyzed policies relevant to that sector in detail. Where necessary, policies from other sectors were examined, but only as relevant to the selected sector.

13

Table 4. Key comparative points in international commitments, national-level policies, legal frameworks, and intergovernmental fiscal frameworks in Cambodia and Nepal

Point of comparison Cambodia Nepal

International commitments to gender equality

Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) (ratified 1992) Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Beijing Platform for Action (1995) United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1325 and 1820

CEDAW (ratified 1991) MDGs Beijing Platform for Action (1995) International Conference on Population and Development (1994) and CPD+10 United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1325 and 1820.

National commitments: constitution and policy and legal frameworks

Article 36 of the Constitution of the Kingdom of Cambodia Rectangular Strategy (2009-2013) National Strategic Development Plan Update (2009-2013) National Program for Sub-National Democratic Development (NP-SNDD) (2010-2019)

Interim Constitution (2007) Ninth Five-Year Plan (1997-2002) Tenth Plan (2002-2007). Three-Year Interim Plan (2010-2013)

Current decentralization plans include gender equality

Law on Administrative Management of Capital, Provinces, Municipalities, Districts and Khans (2008) NP-SNDD (2010-2019)

LSGA (1999) Gender Equality and Social Inclusion (GESI) Policy (2008) Social Mobilization Guidelines (2009)

% of gross domestic product (GDP) allocated to the women’s machinery

0.06% (2009) 0.03% (2010/11)a

National women’s machinery at national level

Ministry of Women’s Affairs (MoWA) (established 1996)

b

Cambodian National Council for Women Five-Year Strategic Plan Neary Rattanak III (2009-2013) Technical Working Group – Gender. Gender Mainstreaming Action Groups

Ministry of Women, Children, and Social Welfare (MoWCSW) (established 1995) National Women’s Commission (NWC) (established 2002 – granted independent status 2007)

Women’s participation in decision making at national and sub-national levels

Indicators and affirmative action for some decision-making positions established

33% mandated representation of women at all levels (except the APM)

Gender responsiveness of sectoral policies and legal frameworks

All 27 ministries have Gender Mainstreaming Action Groups. 22 of 27 have Gender Mainstreaming Action Plans

c

6 of 26 ministries have sectoral gender policies

d

Gender responsiveness of intergovernmental fiscal frameworks

Performance-based budgetinge GRB: specified budget allocations

to women, children, and other disadvantaged groups (10% women, 10% children, and 15% other groups)

Incentives, consequence monitoring and for policy compliance

Provision for the Development of Gender Equality Indicators in NP-SNDD (2010-2019)

f

MCPM (2008) GESI Audit Guidelines (2011)

g

Notes:

a. Nepal analyzes the whole budget through the public financial management (PFM) system, and the budgets of each of the 26 ministries are analyzed together with those of the six legislative bodies. Allocation to the Ministry of Women, Children, and Social Welfare (MoWCSW) for fiscal year 2011/12 was NRS1,213 billion (approximately US$15 million), while NRS73,333 billion (approximately US$186 million) was assessed as being the gender-responsive budget out of a total budget of NRS384,900 billion (approximately US$12.9 billion) in 2011/12. The role of MoWCSW is advocacy, lobbying, and coordination of gender integration in other sectoral programs. The

14

budget for Women, Children, and Social Welfare through MoLD is NRS9,495 billion as grants. Given that GRB measures what is ‘assessed’ as gender responsive, and there is no mechanism to determine what has actually been spent, the figure in Table 4 shows only the % of GDP allocated to the national women's machinery. If the funds allocated to GRB are included, the % rises to approximately 0.19%. Personal communication between Jan Edwards and Nigma Tamrakar, 4 January 2012 and 28th February 2012.

b. Women and gender activities have existed since 1979, after the end of the Pol Pot Regime, when the national mechanism for gender equality was the Women’s Association of Cambodia (1979-1993). After the 1993 general elections, the Secretariat of Women’s Affairs was established to work for gender equality and women’s empowerment. This was elevated to ministry status in 1996. Personal communication between H.E. Kheng Samvada and Jan Edwards, 17 December 2011. c. The Office of Council of Ministers is in the process of completing its plan; those developing them are the Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts; the Ministry of Defense; the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation; and the Ministry of Cult and Religious Affairs. Personal communication between Chhuon Thavrith and Jan Edwards, 19 December 2011. d. At the time of writing, the relevant ministries with sectoral gender policies were Education, Agriculture, Forestry, Health and Population, and Local Development. e. Commenced through the PFM program. See C. Urashima. 2007. Public Financial Management Reform in Cambodia from a Gender Perspective. Phnom Penh. f. See NP-SNDD (2010-2019), Annexes 2 and 3. g. Note that these were in draft at the end of 2011 and were expected to be published in December 2011. Sources: Adapted from Cambodia and Nepal Output 1 Reports.

1. International commitments to gender equality

43. Cambodia and Nepal have both ratified CEDAW (Cambodia 1992; Nepal 1991), as well as committed to the Beijing Platform for Action for the advancement of women (1995); and the MDGs (2000). To fulfill these commitments and to respond to rising internal pressure from the women's movement in each country, significant changes in policies, plans, and programs for gender equality and the empowerment of women have been made. These changes are reflected in the countries’ constitutions, the gender responsiveness of national plans, and the establishment of national women’s machineries. As the sub-sections below show, these policy and legal frameworks are adequate as an illustration of government commitment.

44. As the conceptual framework for this chapter shows, what is missing is intent as action as evidenced by capacity and resources. As a result, the gap is most often in implementation, which is hampered by inadequate resources for program implementation and capacity development. The key lesson for ADB and development partners is the ongoing need to strengthen the capacity of existing women’s machineries and related line ministries to implement these commitments, both through the provision of resources and effective capacity development at central and decentralized levels of governance.

2. National commitments: constitution and policy frameworks

45. The Constitution of the Kingdom of Cambodia addresses the issue of human rights for all citizens, as stipulated under the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Additionally, the country’s foremost development plans, including the Rectangular Strategy Phase II (2009-2013) and the National Strategic Development Plan Update (2009-2013) mandate that gender equality be taken into consideration when laws and sub-decrees are drafted and finalized. Consequently, a number of sectoral policies that have been drafted and implemented by various ministries have mainstreamed gender in order to protect women and promote gender equality throughout all spheres of life: economic, social, political, and cultural. The national policy for implementing gender equality is Neary Rattanak III (2009-2013). Affirmative action strategies are in place for women’s representation in some decision-making roles, as mentioned above.

46. The Interim Constitution of Nepal (2007) makes provision for the specific rights of women. These include no discrimination on the basis of gender; mandatory provision of 33% female candidates in elections to the current Constitutional Assembly/Parliament; rights to

15

reproductive health and reproduction; no violence against women; equal rights to daughters in parental inheritance; prohibition of wage discrimination; and provisions on certain social security measures. The National Code (1963) was amended in 2002 and again in 2006 by the Gender Equality Act. Following the 2007 Interim Constitution, the Civil Service Act (1992) was amended to reserve positions for women and other disadvantaged groups and Parliament passed the Domestic Violence Act (2009). The above commitments in both Cambodia and Nepal have been transferred into national development action plans.

3. Gender responsiveness of current national plans

47. Cambodia and Nepal have national development plans that seek to promote gender equality. Cambodian women earn less than their male counterparts and are underrepresented in civil service employment, and rural women are the poorest of the poor. Nepal has a caste system, and women within particular ethnic groups experience differing levels of disadvantage as gender and social class intersect to produce different levels of discrimination.

48. Cambodia’s national laws, the Rectangular Strategy Phase II (2009-2013), and the National Strategic Development Plan Update (2009-2013) mandate inclusion of gender equality in the drafting and finalization of laws and sub-decrees. As a result, a number of sector policies drafted and implemented by national ministries have mainstreamed gender in order to protect the rights of women and promote gender equality, as mentioned above.

49. The Nepal Ninth National Development Plan (1997-2002) adopted gender mainstreaming and women’s empowerment as main strategies for gender equality. The Tenth Plan (2002-2009) aimed to reduce poverty, with the emphasis shifting from gender mainstreaming to gender and social inclusion. The Three-Year Plan (2007-2010) continued the objective and policies of the Tenth Plan, with more emphasis on rights-based approaches to development. The approach paper to this plan emphasizes a rights-based approach, with more intensive resource mobilization/allocation25.

4. National women’s machinery

50. Cambodia and Nepal national women’s machineries face common challenges, including low resourcing, low status, low capacity, lack of adequate sex-disaggregated data to inform decision making, limited technical knowledge, and limited skills in financial management and budgeting. Both countries have implemented Gender Focal Point systems but, as shown in this report and elsewhere26, the effectiveness of Gender Focal Points as a strategy for gender mainstreaming is questionable27. Table 5 shows resource allocations to relevant national women’s machineries as a percentage of GDP.

Table 5. Funding allocations to national women’s machineries (% of GDP)

Year % of GDP

Cambodia 2009 0.06a

Nepal 2011/12 0.03b

Sources: a Cambodia Output 1 Report.

b Personal communication between Jan Edwards and Nigma Tamrakar, 4 January 2012 and 28 February 2012.

25

National Planning Commission. 2010. Approach Paper of the Three-Year Interim Plan (B.S. 2069/68–2069/70). Kathmandu.

26 See R Mehra and G.R. Gupta. 2006. Gender Mainstreaming: Making it Happen. New Delhi.

27 The issue of the effectiveness of Gender Focal Points as a mechanism and strategy to address gender inequality from national to sub-national levels of government is a topic that is outside of the scope of this RETA.

16

Cambodia

51. Commitments to gender equality in Cambodia have been coupled with complementary national and sub-national organizational mechanisms, including the Cambodian National Council for Women, which is responsible for overseeing, coordinating, and reporting on implementation of CEDAW; and MoWA, which has been implementing its third Five-Year Strategic Plan (Neary Rattanak III, 2009-2013), focusing on mainstreaming gender across all national and sectoral policies, including formulation and monitoring of Gender Mainstreaming Action Plans. The Law on Administrative Management of Capital, Provinces, Municipalities, Districts and Khans (2008), known as the Organic Law, mandated the establishment of Women’s and Children’s Consultative Committees (WCCCs), headed by female Councilors and representatives at all sub-national administrative levels, including at the commune level.

52. MoWA cooperates with the Ministry of Economy and Finance (MEF) to assist ministry-level Gender Mainstreaming Action Groups to prepare work plans, budgets, and policies. At sub-national level, there are established Provincial DoWAs and District Offices of Women’s Affairs. In addition, there are Gender Focal Points in provincial line departments. WCCCs are to be established as outlined in the Organic Law (2008). These committees have a role in gathering and disseminating information on women and children’s needs and building relationships between communities and sub-national administrations. The sub-national level also participates in the drafting of sub-national development plans such as Five-Year Development Plans and Three-Year Rolling Investment Plans to ensure the inclusion of gender equality. In addition, the Technical Working Group – Gender has been established to support the implementation of the National Strategic Development Plan. This includes government officials and development partners, who work together to formulate action plans and results-oriented indicators to measure gender policies in all sectors. At commune level, following the guidelines of the National Committee for the Management of Decentralization and De-Concentration Reform (August 2007), Commune Women and Children’s Committees have been established. The aim of these is to bring women’s and children’s issues to the attention of Commune Council planning.

53. The aforementioned policy commitments and organizational mechanisms have not adequately led to a corresponding allocation of limited financial resources to most institutions promoting gender equality initiatives. Without adequate resourcing for capacity development and program implementation, it is not possible to see how the above strategies will succeed.

54. None of the Cambodian DOWAs have had funds for the past two years. District Councils have no budgets and the WCCCs have a few hundred dollars per year at most. Informants in this study felt that financial resource allocation was insufficient, resulting in inadequate capacity-building activities for officials (especially at the sub-national level), lack of equipment, and limited funds for travel and staff per diems to conduct fieldwork activities. Thus, while policy commitments exist and officials are aware of them, insufficient financial resources negatively affect staff performance at all levels, and lead to a gap between gender policy and program implementation. Given the low level of funds allocated to the national women’s machinery, it is not surprising that progress towards gender equality remains slow. Table 6 illustrates this situation over 2006-2010.

17

Table 6. Resource allocations to women’s machineries in Cambodia

2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

Ministry of Women’s Affairs (US$) 3,360,500 4,100,000 5,216,000 6,398,750 6,977,250

% of GDP 0.05% 0.05% 0.05% 0.06% N/A

Cambodian National Council for Women (US$)

50,000 100,000 100,000 100,000 100,000

Legal Assistance for Women28

- - - - 25,000 Source: Adapted from budget information provided by the Royal Government of Cambodia in Cambodia Output 1 Report. Note: Exchange rate US$1=KHR4000.

Nepal

55. In Nepal, the NWC and MoWCSW are the main agencies overseeing the policy planning and monitoring of the government’s women-focused activities. MoWCSW has a role in advocacy, lobbying, and coordination for gender integration across sectoral ministries, whereas the role of the NWC is to:

1. Protect and promote the rights of women; 2. Effectively mainstream women in national development efforts; and 3. Establish gender justice.

56. The NWC has provided inputs into the development of the new Constitution and provided analysis of gaps in draft proposals from the Constituent Assembly’s sub-committees and proposals and statutes from the six major political parties, as well as providing public awareness-raising through various media.

57. Gender Equality/Equity Divisions or Sections have been established in the line ministries of Education, Health, Agriculture, and Local Development. Gender Focal Points have been appointed in other ministries/departments. Most programs are implemented through the Department of Women’s Development and Women’s Development Officers (WDOs) appointed in field offices. Sub-national Offices for Women’s Development have been established in all 75 districts to assist and monitor gender mainstreaming efforts. WDOs at district level are designated sub-national Gender Focal Points. The focus of MoWCSW since 2000 has been on gender equality, gender mainstreaming, and women’s empowerment. However, implementation has been weak and monitoring almost non-existent29. It should be noted however that grants for Women, Children, and Social Welfare through MoLD were NRS9,495 billion in fiscal year 2010/1130.

58. In summary, each of the national women’s machineries is under-resourced with low capacity. As a result, policy implementation has not progressed to the degree it should have, given the time span of interventions. The existence of national women’s machineries and mechanisms at sub-national levels of government is positive. However, resourcing allocated to the task of gender equality, gender mainstreaming, and women’s empowerment is inadequate to enable these machineries at national and sub-national levels to fulfill their mandates.

5. Gender responsiveness of decentralization policies

59. Each country commenced decentralization within a few years of each other, but each process has emerged from a different recent history. Nepal has yet to resolve its

28

For poor women who are victims of domestic violence and cannot afford a lawyer. 29

M. Acharya. 2003. Effort at Promotion of Women in Nepal. Kathmandu; M. Acharya, with P. Acharya. 1997. Gender Equality and Empowerment of Women, A Status Report. Kathmandu.

30 Personal communication between Jan Edwards and Nigma Tamrakar, 4 January 2012 and 28 February 2012.

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constitutional crisis after emerging from monarchal rule in 2008, whereas Cambodia has its own history of war and genocide and remains a constitutional monarchy.

60. Desk studies conducted conclude that decentralization policies in Cambodia and Nepal have paid sufficient attention to gender. As illustrated below, the strongest are in Nepal, which mandates quotas for women’s participation in decision making at all levels. The one exception to the strong quota system for women’s representation in Nepal is the APM that has been put in place at national and sub-national levels of government to ensure representation of all political parties in the absence of democratic elections, which has no mandated provision for women’s representation. As mentioned above, Cambodia does not implement quotas, but does have a system of affirmative action indicators used to measure women’s participation.

61. Analysis of decentralized government policies in Cambodia and Nepal shows that Nepal is very strong and Cambodia is less so, because it started the decentralization process relatively recently. The main gap identified is that low capacity and resources, or intent as action, mean that dissemination of policies and legal frameworks promoting gender in decentralized governance has not taken place effectively in either country. Hence a key lesson for ADB and other development partners is the need to support the development of indicators for women’s participation at all levels of governance in the decentralization process. While some countries appear to be resistant to the idea of quotas, the benefit of numerical targets for stimulating rapid progress, coupled with effective monitoring and evaluation may contribute to some governments rethinking this issue.

Cambodia and decentralization policies

62. In Cambodia, to address gaps in development between the national and sub-national levels, the government established the Organic Law (2008) and a number of legislative frameworks and guidelines outlining the devolution of responsibilities to decentralized levels. Decentralization in Cambodia focuses on the lowest levels of government administration, the communes and sangkats (urban communes). Decentralization and de-concentration began in Cambodia in 2001 with the passing of the Law on Administration and Management of Communes and Sangkats (2001) and the Commune Election Law (2002). Decentralization and de-concentration form key elements of reforms to promote democracy, increase development opportunities, reduce poverty, and ensure sustainable development by widening and strengthening the roles of provincial and municipal governments and Commune Councils. The first elections of semi-autonomous Commune Councils were held in February 2002. A range of functions, spending authorities, and resources have been devolved to sub-national governments. Provincial Governors have been given the responsibility of supporting and supervising Commune and Sangkat Councils.

63. The process of decentralization in Cambodia is usually considered to have three elements: (i) the devolution of political authority, (ii) administrative decentralization (described as de-concentration in Cambodia), and (iii) fiscal decentralization. Decentralization comprises the devolution of executive and legislative authority and the de-concentration of some administrative functions to the commune level of governance through democratically elected Commune Councils. In general, de-concentration is associated with the provincial and district levels of government31.

64. A strong commitment to gender equality in the process of decentralization is evident in Article 9 of the Sub-Decree on Decentralization of Powers, Roles and Duties to Commune/Sangkat Councils (2002), which stipulates that every Council must appoint a

31

R.B. Oberndorf. 2004. Law Harmonisation in Relation to the Decentralisation Process in Cambodia. Cambodian Development Resource Institute Working Paper 31. Phnom Penh.

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women Councilor in charge of women’s and children’s affairs. If a Council does not have a female elected member, it must appoint a woman from the commune to fill this role. In the first Commune and Sangkat Council elections in February 2002, only 8.5% of the 11,261 elected Councilors were women32. As a result, most women Councilors found themselves an isolated minority among the five to 11 councilors (depending on the size of the commune). Some found it difficult to combine their responsibilities as Councilors with their domestic roles, particularly where support from their families was lacking. The result was sometimes frequent non-attendance at Council meetings or resignation.

65. The Organic Law (2008) mandated the establishment of WCCCs, to be headed by female Councilors and representatives, at all sub-national administrative levels. However, these units still face a number of challenges. This is due to limited technical knowledge, a lack of reliable sex-disaggregated data to inform decisions or monitor progress towards gender equality, and limited skills in financial resource management and budgeting. Although the Government of Cambodia has attempted to address the administration and management of gender mainstreaming at sub-national levels, capacity-building programs are much needed, as well as allocation of sufficient resources to assure that progress made to date is not lost. Capacity-building programs on gender are conducted in a chain-like fashion (using the cascade model), with higher administrative levels training those directly below. This may not be the best strategy, particularly as it is evident that the gap lies at this level of knowledge management and sharing. Given insufficient financial resources, there is cause for concern that capacity-building activities have not been implemented fully and effectively within Provincial Departments and District Offices.

66. The current lack of capacity of women to participate in sub-national administrations is noted in the NP-SNDD (2010-2019). This describes how gender equality and equity will be mainstreamed through sub-national administrations to increase their effectiveness and to increase the inclusiveness of internal sub-national administration processes. It also describes the strategies that will be used to improve the capacity of staff in sub-national administrations to challenge gender inequities in communities and improve women’s rights. However, it appears that this is not yet resourced, as the relevant section concludes that sub-national administrations will ‘identify resources, both financial and human, to formulate and implement gender-sensitive policies and to challenge the unequal distribution of assets and resources that prevents women from engaging in sub-national governance processes (e.g. education health, political participation)’33. It can be argued that, at present, Cambodia has an adequate regulatory framework to implement gender mainstreaming at all levels of government. However, the main gaps are related to capacity and resourcing, that is, intent as action.

Nepal and decentralization policies

67. Nepal was a monarchy until 28 May 2008. The Interim Constitution was promulgated in 2007 and elections for the Constitutional Assembly took place in 2008. At the time of the completion of RETA implementation, the Constitutional Assembly had not yet delivered the new Constitution as originally specified and the timeline had been extended repeatedly. Despite this, decentralization is progressing, with the process largely led by MoLD. This occurs through the LSGA (1999), which is the national policy and legal framework on decentralization and aims to involve people in planning and decision-making processes at the local level. Local authorities or Local Self-Governing Bodies are the institutional framework through which people are involved in the process. It should be noted that political party interference has been sidetracking the successful implementation of decentralized governance in Nepal. In many instances, political parties are controlling and influencing the

32

www.adb.org/gender/practices/law/cam001.asp. 33

NCDD. 2010. National Program for Sub-National Democratic Development (2010-2019). p90.

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implementation of policy, and some are reported to be acting together to take control of development assets and programs.

68. MoLD has formulated the Gender and Social Inclusion (GESI) Policy and Social Mobilization Guidelines together with a number of other operational guidelines to ensure 33% participation of women in local planning and programming processes and that a certain proportion of centrally allocated grants to District Development Committees (DDCs) and Village Development Committees (VDCs) are spent on gender equality programs. The policy seeks to make the whole local governance system, structure, process, and mechanisms responsive to gender and social inclusion. It proposes a pyramid of institutions from the grassroots to the district level: nine Ward Citizen Forums (WCFs) in each VDC, Integrated Planning Formulation Committees at VDC and DDC levels and a Social Development Committee (SDC) at the district level (with 33% representation of women in WCFs and ‘meaningful’ participation in other committees).

69. As mentioned above, as well as at national level in Nepal, the LSGA (1999) mandates 33% representation of women in all decision-making groups, with the one exception of the All Party Mechanism (APM), established in the absence of local elections, which has no mandate for women’s representation. This is a significant oversight, given the role of the APM34 in local decision making in the absence of local elections. One of the key issues in Nepal at sub-national level is implementation of the LSGA (1999) and the GESI guidelines and mechanisms at sub-national level, including the development of WCFs, Village Citizen Forums (VCFs), and other consultative mechanisms mandated in the LSGA (1999).

70. The RETA found that relevant guidelines had not been disseminated effectively in sub-national governments and informants considered them too complex, too long, and too frequently replaced. Coupled with this, is a lack of effective capacity development of local government officials and information for citizens about their right to participate in decentralized government and other rights. The multi-donor Local Government Capacity Development Program (LGCDP) is currently being implemented, but political alliances mean that the processes are often sidetracked and dominated by already powerful groups.

71. In summary, Nepal has a strong regulatory framework to mainstream gender across all levels of government and, as shown above, there are sufficient policies, regulations, laws, and guidelines to improve women’s participation in decision making and address gender inequality in both Cambodia and Nepal. The gap lies in the transfer of policies to sub-national levels and their and implementation. At national level, adequate resources do not appear to be available to successfully implement policy down through the levels of government. As a result, there is low capacity in sub-national levels of government because investments in developing the capacity of officials in sub-national administrations have not been made.

6. Women’s participation in decision making at national and sub-national levels

72. Women are still underrepresented in decision-making roles at all levels of national and sub-national governance in Cambodia and Nepal. The key difference between the countries lies in the use of quotas to promote women’s participation in decentralized governance. Data on women’s participation in decision making in all countries is often difficult to find, and may not be accurate. Given the above caveat, the section that follows draws on a range of data sources to illustrate the ways in which women participate in decision making.

34

Some districts have instituted All Party Women’s Mechanisms to bridge the gap.

21

Cambodia

73. Cambodia has affirmative action strategies and indicators for women within sub-national administrations, such as Deputy Governors, village administrations, WCCCs, CWCCs, and Commune Women and Children’s Focal Points. In April 2007, the second Cambodian Commune Council elections were held, and in May 2008 the Organic Law was promulgated. The latter clarifies the respective roles, responsibilities, and accountability mechanisms for national, provincial, district, and local government and provides the basis for further development of decentralization in Cambodia35. At the time of the RETA implementation, women made up 30% of Village Chiefs, 10.1% of Municipal and Provincial Governors, and 12% of District and Khan Councilors36. As a result of affirmative action policies, the numbers of women in civil servant positions increased from 32% in 2007 to 34% in mid-2009. There are currently no female Provincial Governors but the Cambodia MDGs set a target of 10% for the year 2015. Table 7 presents the relevant data.

74. The NP-SNDD (2010-2019) makes specific reference to ‘developing gender-responsive policy making processes at sub-national level through ensuring and enabling participation of men and women in development planning processes of the sub-national administration 5-year development plans and 3-year rolling investment plans37. In addition, the document proposes special measures including ‘quota and reservation systems, incentives, financial resources, capacity building’ that favor promotion of women into key decision-making positions38. The First Three-Year Implementation Plan of the NP-SNDD does not establish a clear timeline over the period 2010-2013 for the implementation of these commitments.

75. Given commitments made in the NP-SNDD (2010-2019) to improve the capacity of sub-national administrations to address gender inequality, the two remaining issues that need to be addressed are (i) the allocation of adequate financial resources to ensure that intent as action for capacity development is present and (ii) the establishment of clear timelines.

Table 7. Numbers of elected women at national and sub-national levels of governance (% of number of seats available)

Country Women at sub-national level Women at national level % of women in Parliament

Cambodia 202 (District, Municipality, and Khan Deputy Governors)

a

24 (Capital and Provincial Deputy Governors)

a

19%b

Nepal N/A N/A 33.2%b

Sources: a E. Agustiana. 2011.

b UNDP. 2011. Human Development Report 2011. New York.

35

Ministry of Interior. 2008. Situational Analysis of Provincial/Municipal and District/Khan Administration in Cambodia. Phnom Penh.

36 E. Agustiana. 2011. Pathways to Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment in Sub-national Democratic Development: Progress, Challenges and Strategies. Phnom Penh.

37 NCDD. 2009. P88

38 Ibid. PP88-89.

22

Female Commune Councilor explaining the Commune Development Plan (CDP), Moung Ruessei, Cambodia. Photo credit: Jan Edwards, 2011.

Nepal

76. In Nepal, elections for the Constituent Assembly, which is responsible for the new framework on decentralization and local authorities in the Constitution, were held in May 2008. Until the finalization of the new frameworks, the Government of Nepal has given continuity to the organizational structure of Local Self-Governing Bodies as designed and implemented under the LSGA (1999). This mandates the representation of women and other disadvantaged sections of society in both deliberative and executive bodies: the Village Council, the District Council, the VDC, the DDC, and the Municipal Council. The last election for these bodies occurred in 1998 and their terms expired in July 2002. Since then, there has been no local-level election and therefore no elected representatives. Responsibility for running the affairs of the respective bodies has been entrusted to government employees, that is, VDC Secretaries; Municipality Executive Officers; and DDC LDOs.

77. According to the LSGA (1999), the VDCs are to comprise locally elected Chairs, with each committee having five elected members. In municipalities, the number of wards varies according to the population, but the Municipal Council comprises elected Ward Chairs. But since there have been no elections in recent years, these mechanisms have not been functioning.

78. In July 2009, the government constituted the APM at each level in order to assist and advise government employees in managing their functions in sub-national decentralized government. The APM is supposed to provide input into local development and planning in the absence of elected officials. However, there is no provision for the representation of women and other marginalized groups in these units. Despite this, local authorities and women's groups have found informal ways to intervene in local programming and budgeting processes. Table 7 above shows the numbers of elected women in national and sub-national levels of governance as a percentage of the number of seats available.

79. In summary, Cambodia has the potential to make good progress through affirmative action strategies and commitments made in the NP-SNDD (2010-2019). There is scope for

23

women to be involved in formal decision-making structures. Nepal’s quota system has resulted in greater numerical representation of women at all levels of governance with the exception of the APM, an oversight that needs to be addressed. While women’s participation is not always at 33% in all decision-making bodies in Nepal, the quota system provides a useful way to monitor women’s participation and to argue for the greater involvement of women.

80. ADB and other development partners need to support governments to shift the focus to improve the quality of women’s participation in governance. This can occur once women’s representation has been achieved, pointing to the necessity of quotas and other affirmative action strategies to ensure there are women to be trained. The quality of women’s participation in both formal and informal decision making was the focus of the RETA and is discussed in greater detail in Chapter 4.

7. Gender responsiveness of sectoral policies and legal frameworks

81. Implementing gender mainstreaming across government sectors is challenging in both Cambodia and Nepal. Some sectors appear to struggle to identify the relevance of gender to their sector. This is especially true in sectors such as infrastructure and others considered ‘hard’ sectors; but is less of a problem in sectors such as health, education, and social welfare. The focus of the section below is on how the sectors in Cambodia and Nepal with which the RETA engaged have implemented gender mainstreaming in sectoral policies and legal frameworks. In Cambodia, the RETA focused on the education sector, and in Nepal the focus was on an agricultural roads implemented through MoLD, as shown in Tables 1 and 3 in Chapter 1.

Cambodia

82. The key gender policies in the education sector in Cambodia are the Gender Mainstreaming in Education Strategic Plan (2006-2010) and the Gender Policy in Education (2010). Other key policies and programs where gender is mainstreamed are Education for All (2002) and Child-Friendly Schools (2007) as well as the Education Sector Support Program (2006-2010) and the Education Strategic Plan (2006-2010). Gender Mainstreaming Committees at national and sub-national level, a Gender Secretariat at national level, and a Gender Working Group are in place.

83. Policy frameworks are handed down to provinces, districts, and then schools for implementation, resulting in a number of actions at school level, including scholarships and improved sanitation facilities. The main issue lies in implementation at the sub-national levels of government. In interviews, many officials responsible for the implementation of gender mainstreaming revealed that they had not had sufficient training. Many officials at sub-national level had been elected only in 2009 and were still struggling to understand their roles and responsibilities. A number of other issues were identified: these are taken up in Chapters 3 and 4. It is important to note that, once again, government officials at sub-national level do not have adequate resources, including for capacity development, with which to perform their roles effectively.

Nepal

84. Nepal, meanwhile, has the strongest policy and legal framework in terms of gender responsiveness in sectoral policies through MoLD. However, at the time of completion of RETA implementation, only six of the 27 ministries had developed sectoral gender policies. The number of policies, laws, and guidelines in Nepal does not translate into better governance, simply because intent as action, as measured by capacity and resources, is not present. In Nepal, government officials and female and male community members as

24

well as NGOs interviewed, complained there were too many policies, frameworks, and guidelines, and that the guidelines kept changing. Guidelines are inaccessible to many women and other community members because of their length and complexity. In addition, the guidelines were found not to have been disseminated broadly. Many NGOs were not aware of current relevant policies and legal frameworks.

85. The Gender and Social Inclusion Section within MoLD was found not to have adequate resources to implement its coordinating role, and there is a lack of coordination between this section and Local Self-Governing Bodies. Problems identified at sub-national level included gaps in policy and legal framework implementation. In particular, the establishment of mechanisms for the participation of women and other community members in decision making (WCFs and VCFs) has not occurred, and the requirement of 33% women’s representation has not always been implemented. Again, the issue is with the resources required for effective policy and legal framework implementation. An additional problem is political interference at all levels of governance and within many politically aligned NGOs39.

86. A key lesson for ADB and other development partners is the need to support governments to disseminate existing policies effectively through the allocation of adequate resources, including for capacity development. Effective models of capacity development include a range of activities, such as training, mentoring, action learning, and coaching and need to be a key part of effective dissemination strategies40.

8. Gender responsiveness of intergovernmental fiscal frameworks

87. This section analyzes issues with the gender responsiveness of intergovernmental fiscal frameworks. It is clear that Nepal has the most developed system of intergovernmental fiscal frameworks because of its longer history and greater success in implementing gender equality and in developing and implementing GRB frameworks. This does not mean the system in Nepal is free from problems. The GRB system is considered overly complex, and many are now struggling with the development of sector-specific indicators for GRB41.

Cambodia

88. Cambodia has recently implemented a performance-based budgeting system through PFM reforms42. Funding allocations to the national women’s machinery are shown in Table 6 above. Funds are allocated to other ministries and institutes for gender-related activities, such as scholarships for girls. These allocations can be seen within ministries’ budgets. At sub-national level, the Provincial DoWAs and District Offices of Women’s Affairs manage with limited financial resources and implement programs related to, domestic violence, human trafficking, drugs, and prostitution, amongst others. Given their limited resources, Provincial DoWAs have developed relationships with local NGOs, as Box 1 shows.

39

In Chitwan district, there are over 400 NGOs. Most are politically aligned. 40

Effective capacity development strategies include macro- and micro-level approaches. See, for example, http://mirror.undp.org/magnet/cdrb/CDPRIN1.htm (access date 28 February 2012).

41 For example, M. Acharya and S, Prasai. 2010. Exploration of Sub-Indicators for Gender Responsive Budget and Analysis of Budget of the District Government Agencies from GRB Perspective. Lalitpur.

42 At national level the budget is formulated by the Ministry of Economy and Finance in a three-step process as stipulated under the Budget law (2007). The national Budget is approved by the National Assembly and Senate and implemented in the following financial year. Following the development of national plans public institutions prepare detailed budgets and submit their drafts. Funds are disbursed by the Ministry of Economy and Finance Department of Budget and Finance. Review and audit processes are in place. Budget priorities are determined by policy priorities. At sectoral level, gender is to be mainstreamed across all ministries and embedded within policies and work plans.

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Box 1: Partnership between a local NGO and a Provincial Department in Cambodia

Banteay Srei is a local NGO based in Battambang, which branched off from the International Women’s Development Agency. Its mission is to empower vulnerable women and to improve their political and socioeconomic status through community development programs, advocacy, and encouraging men to participate in solving social problems that affect women negatively. One of its programs, which started in 2005, aims to eliminate gender-based violence. Since the start of this program, Banteay Srei has provided safe shelter, consultation, food, life skills training, health care, and legal assistance and consultation to women victimized by domestic violence, human trafficking, prostitution, and rape. In performing its duties, Banteay Srei works in close cooperation with a wide range of local government agencies, such as the Provincial DoWA, NGOs, the police, and the Commune/Sangkat Council administration. The Provincial DoWA, much like Banteay Srei, has a program to reduce domestic violence, human trafficking, drugs, and prostitution; however, because of budget constraints, it is now cooperating with Banteay Srei to implement programs with similar themes and target groups. Using this cooperation, Banteay Srei is able to secure funds, provide services to its target groups, and secure cooperation from other NGOs that work in related fields. The Provincial DoWA, on the other hand, is able to cooperate with local authorities at all levels, including Provincial Departments of various ministries and commune/sangkat authorities, as well as the police. The duties of the Provincial DoWA in Battambang include the implementation of Neary Rattanak III at the provincial level, building the capacity of Gender Focal Points within other Provincial DoWAs and District Offices of Women’s Affairs, and assisting them with gender mainstreaming. It also participates in activities with the Provincial Rural Development Committee to ensure gender issues are considered in provincial activities and development plans. By conducting their daily responsibilities, each organization is able to build the capacity of others and provide public services; meanwhile, this cooperation has also allowed each to attain better partnerships with other institutions. Although financial resources are scarce at the sub-national level, for both public and non-state actors, the Battambang Provincial DoWA and Banteay Srei have been able to develop a sustainable partnership uniting common programs in order to serve a greater population of vulnerable groups.

Source: Cambodia Output 1 Report.

89. The situation of women’s programs being funded by NGOs as described in Box 1 is hopefully temporary until the system of fund transfers to sub-national governments is implemented and funding is increased. As shown in the NP-SNDD (2010-2019), the plan for implementing gender mainstreaming in sub-national administrations includes provision for gender analysis of the impacts of financial, budget, and asset management system performance and promotion of budget scrutiny by citizens.

90. In addition, there are commitments to developing and implementing gender-responsive fiscal policies; resourcing gender equality teams and groups to carry out their roles; providing funds to women-specific programs and gender mainstreaming; and developing and implementing gender-responsive fiscal policies. The first Three-Year Implementation Plan of the NP-SNDD (2010-2019) includes a plan to develop monitoring, evaluation, and reporting systems to collect sex-disaggregated data to inform policies and resource allocation43.

91. As has been argued throughout this chapter, the negative impacts of insufficient financial resources include an inability to disseminate and implement policies and laws effectively to support gender equality and stated government commitments. Staff currently do not have the capacity to perform their roles because of low capacity, resulting from inadequate resource allocations to support program implementation and capacity development. As Chapter 3 shows, other government departments at sub-national level,

43

The timeline for this was unclear at the time of writing.

26

including Commune Councils, are unable to assist because they have limited funding of their own. The NP-SNDD (2010-2019) provides some positive indication that there is a commitment to addressing these resource and capacity shortfalls.

Nepal

92. Nepal has a stronger intergovernmental fiscal framework to implement gender equality because of its adoption of GRB. This section aims to summarize the gender responsiveness of this intergovernmental fiscal framework. Determining if the intergovernmental fiscal framework is gender responsive means analyzing political will and the government’s commitment to act through intent (capacity) and demonstrated by intent as action (capacity and resources) to achieve the stated gender equality objectives.

93. There are two areas where the gender responsiveness of intergovernmental fiscal frameworks can be measured. The first is process and the second is the gender responsiveness of budgets. The Nepali government's budgetary processes are guided by Constitutional provisions, the Financial Procedural Act, and the Financial Procedural Regulations (2007). The PFM system process is reasonably transparent and accountable.

94. Since fiscal year 2006/07, a Gender-Responsive Budget Committee has been constituted. This Committee invites women’s interest groups, the NWC Chair and members, parliamentarians, party representatives, NGO representatives working on women's issues, gender advocates, line ministry representatives, and others for pre-budget discussions. On the basis of these discussions, proposals for gender-related women-specific programs are integrated into the budget. Finally, the Ministry of Finance (MoF) prepares the final budget document, which is passed by the Cabinet and then presented to the Parliament for discussion and approval.

95. What sets Nepal apart from other countries engaged in the RETA is that it has specific allocations for women and other disadvantaged groups through the GESI Policy (2008) at sub-national levels. Women are allocated 10%, children 10%, and other disadvantaged groups 15%. This amounts to 35% of resources allocated to address equality issues for women and other disadvantaged groups.

96. Budget processes and intergovernmental fiscal frameworks exist at national level to support fund transfers to sub-national level via relevant sectors. At national level, budget priorities are based on policy priorities and, given that national plans including decentralization plans are gender responsive, it follows that the issue at sub-national level is that there are inadequate funds to implement programs effectively. Again, Nepal is a country that backs its policy and legal commitments with sound fiscal allocations. However, limited capacity remains at local government level to identify gender issues and apply the funds allocated to address them. As Chapters 3 and 4 show, small resource investments to improve the capacity of local government officials and engage women and other community members in advocacy actions to ensure funds are disbursed as intended can yield positive results.

9. Incentives, consequences, and monitoring for policy compliance

97. As mentioned above, the Cambodian NP-SNDD (2010-2019) raises the potential to develop a number of different compliance mechanisms during the plan’s implementation period. These include guidelines to conduct regular gender audits in sub-national administrations to monitor internal policies and practices, external service delivery, and performance in promoting gender equality and equity. A system of incentives is also discussed, including awards for individuals who promote gender equality. The timeline for the development and implementation of such strategies is not yet clear.

27

98. Nepal has implemented a system of incentives and monitoring for policy compliance. It also has in place a set of consequences, such as reductions in grants to local bodies, if compliance does not occur over time, as shown in the MCPM (2008). The aim of the MCPM is to determine how well DDCs follow policies and legal frameworks and maintain financial discipline. Together with the Gender and Social Inclusion Budget Audit Guidelines (2011), Nepal is well positioned to be increasingly able to monitor performance for policy compliance.

99. The objectives of the performance-based system are:

To improve local governance/bodies’ performance through a penalty and incentives mechanism;

To adapt the size of grants to expenditure and performance capacity in key functional areas; and

To identify capacity gaps in different functional areas.

100. The indicators for gender and disadvantaged groups as shown in the MCPM (2008) are:

Participation of women, Dalits, Janajatis, children, the disabled, civil society, NGOs, and the differently capacitated in annual planning processes as well as in subject committee meetings;

Allocations for women, Dalits, Janajatis, children, the disabled, Adibashi, aged people, and other disadvantaged groups from DDC resources;

A public hearing and social audit of the program/project every four months; and

Strengthened general monitoring and evaluation through annual assessment.44

101. The size of the base development grant is determined by the performance of the local body. Minimum conditions must be met for local bodies to receive the unconditional capital grant.

102. The performance-based grant allocation system was introduced to put pressure on local bodies to comply with rules and regulations, to improve service delivery, and to improve accountability, transparency, and good governance. The system provides incentives for the improvement of institutional performance, changes in functions, systems, and procedures and enhanced accountability to citizens. Performance of local bodies is assessed on the basis of MCPM indicators. Box 2 shows issues identified in the December 2009 assessment.

Box 2: Issues related to the performance of local bodies in Nepal

Capacity issues

Inadequate capacity in the implementation process;

Lack of sufficient capacity-building programs of local bodies for those which do not comply with the MCPM and remain failures; and

Inadequate orientation about the MCPM manuals for local bodies.

Administrative/management issues

Lack of effective implementation of reward/punishment system for responsible staff;

Vacant VDC Secretary positions;

Frequent transfers of staff; and

Delayed budget releases/authorizations.

Political/security issues

Absence of elected representatives;

44

MoLD. 2009. A Brief Overview of Minimum Conditions and Performance Measures of Local Bodies of Nepal. Local Governance and Community Development Program. Kathmandu.

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Threats from unidentified groups, especially in the Terai and eastern hill districts; and

Political rivalry among political parties.

Monitoring/evaluation issues

Inadequate monitoring from central authority;

Poor quality assurance/control; and

Inadequate dissemination of results.

Source: MoLD. 2009.

10. Summary and conclusion

103. Nepal is clearly in a stronger position than Cambodia to address gender equality effectively through its policy, legal, and intergovernmental fiscal frameworks. This is because of its longer experience of implementing GRB and its more advanced stage of decentralization. This does not mean that there is nothing to be done in Nepal, however. Table 8 presents country recommendations on how to fill the gaps been identified through RETA learning under key headings.

Table 8. Recommendations to improve gender equality commitments through political will

Cambodia Nepal

Current national plans include gender equality

Intent as action: resourcing and capacity need to be addressed.

National women’s machinery Intent as action: resourcing and capacity need to be addressed.

Gender responsiveness of decentralization policies

Monitoring of implementation of gender aspects of decentralization including capacity and resourcing is required.

Women’s participation in decision making at national and sub-national levels

Indicators for women’s participation at all levels of governance are needed.

Quotas for women’s representation on the APM are required. Monitoring of women’s participation in decision making is needed (qualitative and quantitative).

Gender responsiveness of sectoral policies and legal frameworks

All sectors to have appropriate gender equality mechanisms, plans, and strategies in place.

Gender responsiveness of intergovernmental fiscal frameworks

Implement a GRB trial in selected ministries.

Simplify across government GRB indicators. Continue to develop indicators for GRB for sectors.

Incentives, consequence monitoring and for policy compliance

Develop incentives, consequences, and monitoring for gender-responsive policy compliance.

Strengthen gender responsiveness of monitoring and evaluation of compliance mechanisms.

104. As Table 8 shows, improvements to gender equality in Cambodia and Nepal can be made only when all aspects of political will are addressed together. This means that policies, laws, and regulations as indications of government intent need to be supported by intent as measured through capacity and intent as action through capacity and resources.

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Community members listening to a presentation on the CDP, Moung Ruessei, Cambodia. Photo credit: Jan Edwards, 2011.

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Chapter 3: Comparative analysis of GRB as a tool for decentralized governance in Cambodia, Indonesia, and Nepal

A. Introduction

105. This chapter45 argues that GRB is an effective tool to promote decentralized governance as a process for better responding to gender issues and priorities. Output 2 of the RETA focused on the design and implementation of pilot GRB initiatives in decentralized governance. One performance target was documentation of the learning from each of the pilots. The second performance indicator - ‘results from GRB initiatives inform country budget processes and related documents’ - was not measurable within the period of RETA implementation as it is dependent upon future budget cycles in each of the countries.

106. This RETA has contributed to the body of evidence showing that GRB is an effective tool to reduce women’s time and labor burdens in a concrete manner, to address gender-specific poverty issues in middle and low-income countries, and to reduce the gender equity gaps that prevent sustainable progress in poverty reduction across the globe46. GRB is an effective response to gender needs. The caveat here is that certain enabling conditions must be present for GRB, including gender-responsive national policy and mainstreaming machinery. Most of these conditions, with some variation in their design and application, were seen in Cambodia, Indonesia and Nepal47.

107. A key aim of the RETA was to pilot GRB in one sector in one district at decentralized level in each of the three countries to test its efficacy as a tool for better investment in gender priorities at sub-national levels. Together with the advocacy approaches described in Chapter 3, GRB was shown to be effective in increasing women’s participation in decision making, with a focus on planning, budgeting, implementation, and monitoring of gender-related expenditures. In this sense, it is both a lens and a mechanism through which gender-responsive decentralized governance has been piloted in the three countries. One central aspect considered in the GRB pilots was the quality and results of women’s participation in decentralized governance in the three countries48. A limitation of the RETA was its short implementation time frame, spanning just less than two years after start-up delays, and the lack of a monitoring and evaluation component.

108. This chapter compares the pilot gender-responsive program and budget initiatives across Cambodia, Indonesia and Nepal using a conceptual framework for the purposes of high-level learning and its application to other developing member countries (DMCs) where ADB is working. This can be used to inform future gender-responsive governance programs.

45

Unless otherwise indicated, this chapter draws mainly on the Cambodia, Indonesia, and Nepal Output 2 Reports.

46 There is substantive literature on the merits of GRB and many descriptions of the various tools that can be applied (D. Budlender and G. Hewitt. 2003. Engendering Budgets: A Practitioner’s Guide to Understanding and Implementing Gender-responsive Budgets. London. Commonwealth Secretariat. 1999. Gender Budget Initiative: A Commonwealth Initiative to Integrate Gender into National Budgetary Processes. London. D. Elson. 2002. Gender Responsive Budget Initiatives: Key Dimensions and Practical Examples. In K. Judd (ed.). Gender Budget Initiatives: Strategies, Concepts and Experiences. New York. R. Sharp. 2003. Budgeting for Equity: Gender Budget Initiatives within a Framework of Performance Oriented Budgeting. New York). There is rather less on how the application of these have changed women’s and men’s lives measurably in positive ways. Longitudinal studies with panel data and qualitative analysis of these are required to fill this gap.

47 Section 3.5 of this chapter presents a checklist of minimum start-up requirements for GRB pilots.

48 Meaningful and result-based participation of women within decentralized program development and through the Gender Responsive Budget initiatives is covered more comprehensively in Chapter 3 and will therefore not be addressed here in great detail.

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1. Summary of GRB initiatives in Cambodia, Indonesia and Nepal

109. For the RETA’s purposes, GRB initiatives were defined as a systematic set of interventions that recognize women’s and men’s differences in terms of situations, sex and gender roles, needs, capacities, and resources. There were three key steps in the RETA's approach to GRB initiatives: 1) design, based on a situation analysis and field research of gender issues in the respective sectors/sites; 2) supply, through a series of targeted trainings and workshops conducted by the RETA's implementing partners with government officials, women’s groups, and other stakeholders in decentralized governance; and 3) demand, when sub-national planning and budgeting officers took up the initiative with actions in their own development plans49.

110. The situation analyses of education (Cambodia), housing renovation (Indonesia), and agricultural roads (Nepal) used individuals as the unit of analysis rather than the family or a larger unit. This is because differential needs, access, perspectives, and gendered identities are obscured if the unit of analysis is family rather than females and males within the family. The Cambodia initiative focused on the education sector. Closing the gender gap in upper primary and lower secondary enrolments, reducing dropouts, and non-registered girls and boys were identified as core gender issues in Moung Ruessei district. This district was selected in consultation with the TAG because it was already part of a government decentralization pilot and officials were enthusiastic to pilot the GRB initiative in education. The Cambodia GRB pilot initiative is summarized in Table 9.

Table 9. Cambodia basic education GRB initiative summary

Core gender issues identified

Status of sub-national planning

and budgeting

Methodology and approach to address core gender issues

GRB initiative(s)

Girls at primary school level are less likely to repeat grades than boys (43% female repeaters compared with 57% male repeaters), boys repeat more than girls.

District budget heavy on infrastructure (80% of total budget).

District Council budget analysis for gender responsiveness; planning priorities in relation to education.

Assessment of district-level sex-disaggregated education statistics on enrolments, repeaters, dropouts, unregistered students.

Girls’ transition from upper primary to lower secondary is less than boys (47% for girls compared with 52% for boys). In spite of lower repeat rates at primary level, girls do not transition to lower secondary at the same rate as boys.

Girls from very poor families are withdrawn from school at ages 8-12 to contribute to reproductive labor; girls from middle-income families are withdrawn from school to prepare for marriage.

District budget more than doubled from US$21,380 in 2008 to US$45,280 in 2010. However, funding allocations for activities that district budget planners identified as gender related or gender focused decreased by half, amounting to some US$500 in 2010.

Review of district and commune and school planning and budgeting practices, guidelines, and challenges. Creation of Commune Investment Plan (CIP) (2011) with Gender-Responsive Basic Education Program with budget allocations to address gender gaps for girls and boys.

Note: Statistics are directly drawn from Cambodia Output 1 Report, and are derived from the Moung Ruessei District Council budgets for 2008, 2009 and 2010. Sources: Adapted from Cambodia Outputs 2 and 3 Reports.

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These phases were summarized succinctly by Dr. Meena Acharya, Executive Director, IIDS, Nepal, during the RETA Final Workshop on 9 December 2011 in Kathmandu. However, she noted the need for a follow-up phase in the future to measure the impact of the RETA.

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111. Indonesia focused on infrastructure for poor households with emphasis on gender needs in relation to household space in a housing renovation program in West Bandung. This program was selected by the regency government because it was considered a non-traditional sector to pilot GRB and sub-national officials wanted to learn how to mainstream

gender into the program. The Indonesia GRB pilot initiative is summarized in Table 10.

Table 10. Indonesia housing renovation GRB initiative summary

Core gender issues identified

Implications for sub-national planning and

budgeting

Methodology and approach to identify core

gender issues

GRB initiative(s)

Female and male household members use household space differently, but this issue was not considered by the musrembang (development planning deliberation mechanism).

Budget estimates for household renovations need to consider gendered needs.

Baseline data collection on household beneficiaries showed no gender-responsive indicators in renovations; family unit, not the individual, was the basis for selection.

Analysis of regency budget by category and expenditures responsive to women in infrastructure; budget planning cycle assessed for when to best have input from beneficiaries.

Women need/want sanitation and utility privacy in hygiene/washing areas.

Kitchens, bathrooms, private toilets, store-rooms, secure doors, and windows need budgeting allocations.

Private sector gender awareness assessed with results showing general gender blindness.

Sub-national government and private sector applying GRB guidelines to housing renovation budget for 2012.

Cooking areas need ventilation; women do most reproductive labor in the household.

Budget line items required for gender-responsive housing needs.

Budget analysis for 2009, 2010 and 2011 allocations assessed against expenditures.

Monitoring and evaluation of 2012 budget plan to assess results and changes.

Source: Adapted from Indonesia Output 2 Report.

House for renovation, West Bandung, Indonesia. Photo credit: Dadang Harisuddin, Division Head of Economic Planning, West Bandung, 2011.

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Renovated house, West Bandung, Indonesia. Photo credit: Jan Edwards, 2011.

112. The Nepal initiative concentrated on gendered priorities in agricultural road projects in Chitwan district with a comparative angle in Okhaldhunga district. The choice of sector was purposeful, in that there is a direct connection between poverty reduction for rural women and the construction of agricultural roads. This is because most women are engaged in agriculture and live in remote areas unconnected by sealed roads. The choice of sector was approved by the TAG and MoLD. MoLD administers the LGSA and GESI guidelines in the allocation of funds to women and other disadvantaged groups and their application. The selection of MoLD was important because of the government’s aim to translate lessons into concrete actions at the sub-national level in the coming years50. The Nepal GRB pilot initiative is summarized in Table 11.

Table 11. Nepal agricultural roads GRB summary

Core gender issues identified

Implications for sub-national planning

and budgeting

Methodology and approach to identify core

gender issues

GRB initiative(s)

Labor component (participation) in road construction onerous for women.

Livelihoods component needed for very poor women: opportunity cost of their participation too high for those living day-to-day.

Situation analysis of female–male use and benefit of agricultural roads (livelihoods).

SAHAVAGI piloting program of 2009/10 GESI Policy requiring VDCs and DDCs to spend 10% on women, 10% on children, and 15% disadvantaged populations.

Female participation dependent on male support.

VDC plans with user groups’ input accepted

Assessment of road projects in relation to gender-responsive social service provision.

Gender responsiveness of Chitwan district budget (MoLD) via training and workshops with WCFs; User Committees (women).

50

Mr. Lok Darshan Regmi, Joint Secretary of MoF, Coordinator of Nepal’s Gender-Responsive Budget Committee, Opening Address at the Final Workshop of the RETA on Gender-Responsive Decentralized Governance in Asia, Kathmandu, 8 December 2011.

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Core gender issues identified

Implications for sub-national planning

and budgeting

Methodology and approach to identify core

gender issues

GRB initiative(s)

Access to education; security; health; markets; and female livelihoods and poverty.

Monitoring and transparency of VDC plan challenging.

Training of local resource persons to work with WCFs, VDCs, and DDCs.

Pressure from grassroots WCFs expected to increase budget allocations to gender-responsive and socially inclusive agricultural road programs in 2012.

Source: Adapted from Nepal Output 2 Report.

2. RETA training programs

113. The supply phase of the intervention took place over two years through a series of trainings and workshops conducted by the RETA's implementing partners. Approaches and topics in each country varied in order to respond to the findings of the situation analysis in relation to gender gaps in sector contexts, and according to the specified needs identified by implementing partners. Consultations with decentralized government officials, women’s groups and representatives, civic groups, and other sector-specific decentralized governance stakeholders informed the design of the GRB initiatives.

114. Cambodia’s training program targeted district and commune planning and budgeting technical staff, education officials, teachers, school committee members, and NGOs active in education. Indonesia’s training program focused more intently on local officials than those in Cambodia or Nepal, because Indonesia did not implement Output 3 advocacy approaches. BIGS carried out a series of intensive seminars and meetings with West Bandung regency officials at government offices, built relationships and networks over a period of six to nine months, and delivered training programs. Nepal’s training program focused on the formation and strengthening of Integrated Planning Formulation Committees, DDC and VDC members, including Secretaries, municipality officials involved in planning and budgeting, WCF executive members, LDOs, and WDOs. An overview of RETA training under Output 3 is provided in Table 12.

Table 12. Overview of RETA’s training programs

Location Who was trained No. of workshops

Abridged training subjects

Cambodia, 9 communes in Moung Ruessei district, Battambang province

District and Commune Chiefs; Commune Council CWCCs; NGOs; school Principals and teachers; village women representatives; district education technical staff (13 women and 14 men).

Three workshops by EIC.

What are budgets?; Gender concepts and gender analysis tools; GRB; gender equity; Education for All; monitoring and evaluation; CEDAW; MDGs; Decentralized governance and gender; social accountability (planning and decision making at commune and district level).

Indonesia, 3 villages in West Bandung regency

20 (5 women; 15 men) in 3 workshops. Local government participants in public works, public housing and decentralization agencies responsible for planning and budgeting across sectors, including agency for women’s empowerment at district level; university and civil society resource persons.

Three workshops preceded and followed by mentoring meetings at West Bandung government offices.

Fair budgeting; Budget transparency and good governance; Gendered needs of women and men in housing renovation program; Action planning to implement fair budgeting decentralization and fiscal balance; Introduction to gender concepts, analysis, and tools; Monitoring and evaluation.

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Location Who was trained No. of workshops

Abridged training subjects

Nepal, 48 WCFs and 6 VCFs formed by SAHAVAGI in Chitwan district

DDC members (coordination meetings) (2 women; 12 men); Quarterly meeting with DDC members (11 women; 60 men); Orientation to VDC and municipal officials (8 women; 37 men); Training for VDC Secretaries, municipal officials, and Focal Persons (152 women; 258 men); Integrated Planning Formulation Committee members (42 women; 136 men); Monthly meeting with VDC Secretaries and municipal officials (52 men); Training to VDC assistant staff (9 women; 10 men); Orientation to municipal officials and Ward Secretaries (4 women; 17 men); APM officials (11 women; 18 men); Municipal officials, Secretaries, Municipal Coordinating Committees (34 women; 153 men).

A series of workshops based on the needs of different audiences focused on roles and responsibilities in relation to government grant guidelines including gender-responsive and socially inclusive planning, programming and budgeting, and other relevant guidelines.

Capacity development in planning, budgeting, designing indicators, GRB; participation in planning, programming, budgeting, and monitoring and evaluation; Programming and budgeting provision for gender equality; Social services and benefit provisions (social security, scholarships, free health care); Women’s rights (citizenship, property rights, rebate on property acquisition, etc.).

115. The training was then used by stakeholders to design GRB initiatives in the three countries by triangulating policy context and national equity plans with local needs based on the situation analysis and inputs from the local community51.

3. Definition and use of GRB terms for the RETA

116. There are different approaches and corresponding tools for GRB depending on needs and objectives, whether these relate to macroeconomic policy, taxation and benefits, sector-specific approaches, or analyses of social service reach for women and men, among others.

Box 3: Definition of GRB

At its heart, GRB involves two broad interrelated types of activities, both technical and political in nature: A systematic examination of budget programs and policies for their different impacts on women and men, girls and boys– gender budget analysis; Decision making that changes budgets and policies so gender equality is promoted – informed actions that change financing process and gender equality outcomes.

Source: R. Sharp. 2007. Gender-Responsive Budgets Have a Place in Financing Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment. Expert Group Meeting on Financing Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. Oslo, 4-7 September.

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This chapter goes on to describe the GRB initiatives to demonstrate in concrete terms how workshop knowledge was utilized in the different country contexts.

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117. For the purposes of this RETA, GRB was defined as a process that:

Recognizes that women and men have unequal access to social services and income; Provides an analysis of the government budget in terms of reach to women and men, girls and boys, to illuminate what gaps exist in differential (and discriminatory) access to social service provision in the relevant sector; and Allocates government resources in ways that respond to national and sub-national commitments to achieve greater gender equity.

118. In terms of the analysis steps, each RETA country team employed an adaptation of the five-step approach illustrated in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Budget cycle five-step analysis

Source: Adapted from Cambodia, Indonesia, and Nepal Output 2 Reports.

119. The results of the analysis together with the fieldwork situation analysis formed the basis for the design of the GRB initiatives. The initiatives included training modules on how to design and plan a gender-responsive intervention at sub-national level. The evaluation step was not covered in the RETA due to time limitations of the implementation period, although it is a critical stage for inclusion in any GRB initiative.

B. GRB initiatives at decentralized level in Asia

120. GRB initiatives at decentralized level can be effective in achieving development objectives for gender equitable and inclusive growth – a challenge that most Asian countries have not been able to meet successfully52. In Cambodia, Indonesia and Nepal, women in rural areas experience poverty differently from men because of their disadvantaged position in society, which renders them more vulnerable to deep poverty, physical insecurity including

52

UNDP. 2011. Gender Equality Index and Human Development Report. New York.

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gender-based violence, malnutrition, health risks, illiteracy, and unequal representation in government53.

121. GRB can help achieve a country’s development goals through:

Contributing to faster rates of economic growth by fully involving women and maximizing their contribution to all parts of the economic development process; More efficient allocation of resources because a sub-national government budget targets populations more accurately; and Greater equity for women who have traditionally been left out of the development process or not mainstreamed into all policy and program development.

122. Poverty among women in many parts of Asia, including Cambodia, Indonesia, and Nepal, has been linked to unequal opportunities in the paid labor market, higher rates of illiteracy and lower access to formal and informal education, and lack of awareness of rights and how to protect them, among other factors. Women's time burden in the home constrains decentralized and national growth and development. The benefits of reducing this constraint through GRB initiatives can be seen in increasing cash incomes and the labor productivity of women if they are freed to work outside the home.

123. The RETA GRB pilots at decentralized level aimed to be:

A process for better responding to prevailing gender issues and priorities;

A tool through which to better invest in gender priorities and issues; and

A lens and mechanism for field testing gender-responsive decentralized governance in one sector in one specific regional site in Cambodia, Indonesia, and Nepal.

124. To operationalize the RETA, participating government officials and community members working in one sector in each local government were trained in GRB analysis so they could implement a pilot GRB initiative.

C. Gender-responsive sector budget allocations and expenditures

125. This section presents a summary analysis of GRB initiative results. It stems from GRB processes in sector budget allocations and expenditures; and training workshops that opened space for collaborative intersections among sub-national government planners and budgeting technical staff, civil society stakeholders including women and socially marginalized community members, and development practitioners, including NGOs, all of whom participated in the RETA trainings on GRB in Cambodia, Indonesia, and Nepal.

126. Sources of data are the field research reports of local implementing partners. This includes baseline data and field surveys conducted using qualitative research methods, and the intersection of these data with RETA reports on sector budgets at decentralized level.

127. Figure 3 depicts the gender analysis model of sector budget allocations and expenditures reflecting the RETA’s approach and rationale.

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Acharya. 2003. M. Acharya. 2010. Changing Discourse on Women’s Movement: A Critical Lookback. In Dev Raj Dahal and C.D. Bhatta (eds.) Multi Verse of Nepal’s Democracy: Contents and Discontents. Kathmandu. MoWA. 2008. A Fair Share for Women: Cambodia Gender Assessment. Phnom Penh. USAID. 2009. Stock Taking on Indonesia’s Recent Decentralization Reforms – Main Report 2009. Democratic Reform Support Program. Jakarta.

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Figure 3: Gender analysis model of sector budget allocations and expenditures

Source: K.G. Frieson and J. Edwards. Gender Analysis Model of Sector Budget Allocations and Expenditures Concept Note. Battambang.

128. This model captures the design phase of the RETA, in which implementing partners analyzed sector/national budget allocations and expenditures to assess the extent to which these responded to core gender issues. Analysis included examining if gender issues were in fact identified as well as any monitoring tools in place, such as audits and evaluation actions to measure how well service provision reached intended beneficiaries.

1. Sector budget allocations

129. Sector budget allocations refer to national-level budgets that make some allocation to program budgeting. In Cambodia, Indonesia, and Nepal, sector budgets are determined at national level by ministries of finance in consultation with sector ministries; in Cambodia, this happens with development partner inputs. Budget allocations are important in assessing GRB in order to track governments’ gender commitments in moving from policy development to implementation.

130. National budget allocations to sectors are determined through national budget laws and negotiation processes. As a result, sub-national governments typically have ineffective bargaining power to increase budget allocations to sectors within their local jurisdiction, and even less when it comes to the allocation of gender-responsive funds to sector programs. Moreover, most sector spending is decided at national level, with ministries reluctant to

allocate large proportions to sub-national budgets54

.

131. Budgeting strategies in Cambodia, Indonesia, and Nepal are similar in that allocations are determined from the annual national budget to line ministries/sectors and then dispersed further down to sub-national level. As shown in Chapter 2, Nepal stands out as having specific gender budgeting guidelines that are administered through MoLD, which in theory are to reach sub-national levels through DDCs and VDCs.

54

RETA. 2011. Report on Gender-Responsive Decentralized Governance in Asia. Mid-Term Workshop, Phnom Penh, July.

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2. Gender responsiveness of sector budgets

132. The gender responsiveness of sector budgets was found to vary between countries. In Cambodia, there is no legal budget framework for GRB. Program budgeting is at an evolutionary stage, although it does by its nature allow for gender responsiveness in program budget design and the allocation of funds. In Cambodia, annual budget allocations to the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports (MoEYS) were found to be gender responsive in that they do refer to the gender equity commitments of the ministry’s Education for All policy and funds are allocated to girls’ scholarships. At the district level, 80% of the budget is dedicated to infrastructure programs, and any allocations to specific gender equity activities were hard to track given the program budgeting collapse of budget line items. More specifically, assessing the gender inputs of the budget lines for infrastructure in the Moung

Ruessei district budget was hard as costs are aggregated into contracting, administration,

and contract management line items. The gender responsiveness of other line items, such as campaigns, law dissemination, and capacity building, was evident but not well measured, given a lack of baseline data, but some could be said to be gender related55.

133. In Indonesia, the infrastructure sector budget allocations were not gender responsive due to the fact that the national GRB guidelines had not been taken down to sub-national levels nor the housing sector56. According to the director of the Bandung Institute for

Governance Studies (BIGS), “Government officials do not do anything without regulations”57

.

134. For Indonesia, a lack of clear guidelines at the sub-national level on gender-responsive funding allocations meant that the housing sector had no program budget plan or allocation for gender issues. West Bandung regency planning and budgeting staff did not comply with the 2003 General Guidelines for the Implementation of Gender Mainstreaming Decree No. 132, as they lacked the capacity to understand and apply the required technical knowledge. This was reported by West Bandung regency budgeting staff during RETA workshops and interviews with BIGS staff during the fieldwork portion of the project.

135. As a result of RETA interventions, West Bandung regency government committed itself to the following actions: 1) inviting the BIGS Program Team and Housing Renovation Program consultants to be involved in a district budgeting forum; 2) asking the Housing Sector Chief to provide sex-segregated data in the Housing Renovation Program report; and, most critically, 3) including a gender aspect in the implementation guide and technical guide for Housing Renovation Program implementation.

136. The case of Nepal is somewhat different because, as Chapter 2 showed, the country is more advanced and has a gender-responsive fiscal framework at sub-national levels and allocates specific funds to women, children, and marginalized groups. In addition, the LSGA (1999) grants revenue collection authority to VDCs and DDCs. These committees serve as the main social service providers at sub-national level in Nepal and receive lump sum transfers from central government to meet recurrent expenditures and implement development projects. The DDC is the main implementing agency for central level programs and budgets, especially those allocated by MoLD.

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For example, dissemination by district officials to the communes and general population on the national Law on Marriage and Family; the Law on the Prevention of Domestic Violence; the Land Law; and the Fisheries Law; and campaigns to encourage parents to send their children to school. It is not known how much of the total budget allocated to campaigns has been expended on campaigns to encourage parents to send their children to school and what portion of these funds have been dedicated to gender-responsive messaging.

56 BIGS, Output 2 report, September 2011

57 Siti Fatimah, Final Workshop of the RETA on Gender-Responsive Decentralized Governance in Asia, Kathmandu, 8 December 2011.

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137. Lump sum transfers from MoLD to sub-national levels can be allocated to activities deemed necessary in the area of jurisdiction, whether this be at village or at district level. However, grants must be spent according to MoLD’s GESI guidelines and gender mainstreaming directives. The 2009-2010 guidelines specify 10% allocation to women's programs, 10% to children's programs, and 15% to Dalits and other disadvantaged groups. ‘These policies and guidelines also require the involvement of women and other disadvantaged groups in planning, implementation and monitoring of the overall programs besides giving priority to women such other groups in planning of the overall development programs of District Development Committees and Village Development Committees’.

Sector budget expenditures

138. Analysis of the expenditure side of the budget is both important and relevant for GRB because it provides an insight into how allocated funds are expended and the extent to which expenditures reach intended beneficiaries. Analysis of sector budget expenditures across the three countries revealed similar challenges and some variation in harmonization between intended disbursements and actual spending in gender-responsive programs.

Box 4: Expenditure and gender issues in Cambodia

Before this RETA, the District Office of Education had never really listened to what parents wanted and never had any real dialogue with community members or parents about educational issues; when it did, it found out it should do something about it.

Source: Cambodia Output 3 Report.

139. Challenges common to the three countries included difficulty tracking expenditures by line item and program area with respect to gender-related activities. This was because of limited availability and access to audit reporting and data for RETA implementing partners from government budget departments, and because the design of the budgets themselves consisted in the main of recurrent expenditures and single line items.

140. Sub-national government officials reported inefficient and ineffective fund disbursements from central to local levels across the board. In some cases, entire allocations are not dispatched. Cambodia and Indonesia reported delays in fund transfers to sub-national levels, with education and housing sector monies arriving at the end of the year. In some instances, these delays have meant expenditures have had to be made prior to the end of the financial year, meaning spending the funds or losing them. Gender-responsive programs in education such as scholarships for girls require regular and predictable payments to be effective.

141. In the Cambodian district of Moung Ruessei, the District Education Chief noted that the budget for schools ‘came down in bits and pieces from the province to the district and District Education Office and we spent more time and money getting the funds than the value of the funds’. At the ministry level, budget allocations for gender equity are mainstreamed into Education for All programs, making it hard to backtrack to see what funds are allocated specifically to gender equality. District-level funds come down from the province but cover only salaries, with little available for materials. In addition, the District Education Office has no discretionary spending to target local needs.

142. In Indonesia, the Housing Renovation Program does not have gender-responsive line items since the sector itself does not consider the different needs of beneficiaries, either by sex or by other criteria. In BIGS’ first workshop, it was discovered that for expenditure on housing, ‘a self-management mechanism was preferred to the tender mechanism as self-management allows more of a contribution from the local community, while tender

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mechanisms make the community reluctant to contribute because of its “business-oriented” nature’.

143. In Nepal’s agricultural roads sector, funds are expended by DDCs and VDCs. The key challenge is that unelected and powerful political patronage systems at times interfere with DDC and VDC decisions after they have been taken. This presented a source of frustration to local community members.

Core gender issues

144. It is important to identify core gender issues to cost in order for GRB to be effective and practical. The RETA found that core gender priorities had not been tied sufficiently to sector programs in the selected districts at the start of the pilot projects. A weak link was discovered between gender equity as a policy commitment and practical applications through spending commitments in gender-responsive programs. Budgeting commitments were not taken down from the national to decentralized level adequately in Cambodia and Indonesia. There were allocations to DDCs and VDCs in Nepal, which had the most advanced decentralized fiscal operations of all the three countries.

Gender and education issues in Cambodia

145. Through a series of community-led surveys in villages, women trained by the RETA’s implementing partner Women for Prosperity (WfP) for Output 3 found previously under-recognized gender issues. In particular, they were concerned with student dropouts in the nine communes of the district. Girls from very poor families were withdrawn from school at ages 8-12 years (lower secondary grades) by parents/carers to contribute to household labor (child care; housework, including water and fuel collection; marketing; care for the elderly). In addition, some livelihood chores were assigned to girls in rice-based and (limited) cash crop agriculture so they could earn cash to contribute to the family’s daily subsistence needs. Some parents agonized over this withdrawal of their daughters from school but lamented that their poverty was too great to overcome the problem without assistance.

146. The community also learned that boys were withdrawn from school for agricultural labor (cash for labor on a daily basis) to assist in the daily subsistence needs of the family. Boys left school earlier than girls in upper primary or repeated more often than girls, indicating that their gendered issues were related to their farm labor, particularly in busy agricultural times (during rice planting and harvesting.)

147. A third gender issue was observed among some middle-income female students, whose parents had withdrawn them from school in order to prepare them for marriage. Cultural values in the community mean that young unmarried girls aged 14 and above stay within the confines of the home and away from the public spotlight in order to protect their reputation and learn the ways of married life from their elders. There were enough reports of

this for the issue to become a third priority58

. Parents and teachers viewed this practice as

discriminatory towards girls and against the MoEYS Education for All, which provides for education for all children regardless of sex, social class, and ethnic background from Grade 1 (primary) through to Grade 9 (lower secondary).

58

The exact figures and statistics for dropouts by sex and grade are available in the Cambodia Output 2 Report.

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Box 5: Grassroots gender situation analysis of equity in education – some challenging findings from Cambodia

‘We are grateful for the opportunity to learn from teachers and parents about their concerns about school dropouts, especially young girls who have to work in the home caring for their young brothers and sisters and cooking and cleaning because their parents are too poor and must go outside to earn a daily wage. We also learned from the RETA community dialogues that it is also middle-class girls who are taken out of school by their parents so as to prepare them for marriage. Some parents still think that girls should marry and not go to school. But from this learning together, we can see that, as a Commune Council, we must do more to educate parents about the importance of school for all children and that, with a good education, they can be productive members of society. We are especially concerned about unregistered school-aged children, especially from families in extremely difficult circumstances, because we have a lot of very poor people in this commune without any assets and they must ask their children to labor to meet daily subsistence needs. Before the RETA, we never knew how we could make a plan for the community to meet its needs and have a GRB with funds allocated to activities to address concerns about school dropouts and unregistered students. Now we know how to do this and put it in our CIP for 2012. This plan was accepted by the District Council and we will implement it with funding support from local NGOs’ (Commune Council Chief).

Source: J. Edwards and K.G. Frieson. 2011. Cambodia Monitoring and Evaluation Mission Field Notes. October. Battambang.

Gender issues in the Housing Renovation Program in Indonesia

148. The local government unit responsible for the Housing Renovation Program did not take into account the needs of beneficiaries beyond the basics of house repair and family poverty status. This meant core gender issues were not identified. Moreover, community participation in identifying core gender issues in planning and budget processes for the program was limited because community members did not perceive that they had a right or the necessary knowledge to engage in discussion.

Box 6: Gendered needs of beneficiaries in Indonesia

‘Regarding the household use of space and needs among family members, we never thought about this before as important. Now we realize that within a family the beneficiaries are not the same’ (government stakeholder in BIGS Gender-Responsive Training, Indonesia).

Source: Indonesia Output 2 Report.

149. Another core gender issue for the Housing Renovation Program in West Bandung was that the official program specifically addressed renovation of only three key elements of a house – the roof, floor, and wall – making it difficult to accommodate gendered needs, such as in relation to sanitation, hygiene, washing, and cooking, where women are active and need privacy. Further, the program targeted the house only, rather than thinking beyond to the needs of the people living in the house and how their gendered lives and roles affected their use of the home and hence their needs in renovation. As BIGS reported, ‘up to now, delegations of citizens participating in the musrembang have not come up with, or identified

aspirations that address the different [gendered] needs of beneficiaries’59

.

150. The advantage of having a nexus between local authorities and communities/civic groups to achieve common development goals that alleviate poverty and inspire greater equity is that it stimulates mutual understanding of the gendered realities of women’s and men’s lives. With the right support, this can lead to a shared commitment between sub-national governments and the communities they serve to achieve gender-responsive results with limited resources. As the sub-national government representative of West Bandung

59

BIGS. 2011. Final Workshop, 9 December 2011, Kathmandu. Summary of Indonesia Output 2: Lessons from Decentralized Government.

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explained in relation to commitments to further engender the Housing Renovation Program

alongside the RETA's partner BIGS and community members, ‘we are of one heart’60

.

House for renovation, West Bandung, Indonesia. Photo credit: Dadang Harisuddin, Division Head of Economic Planning, West Bandung, 2011.

Women’s time burden and agricultural roads projects in Nepal

151. The core gender issues identified in the Nepal agricultural roads projects are related to wage gaps that still persist between women and men in construction and infrastructure projects. In addition, the time burden facing women whose labor is a requirement of the project compounds their daily burden of carrying water, caring for children, and collecting wood for cooking fuel. Women carry 40kg sacks of earth and stones on their back as part of their participation in agricultural roads projects.

152. Policies for promoting women’s participation in local planning for agricultural roads exist, and funds are provided through VDCs and DDCs for women- and child-only development projects. Nepal’s implementing partners IIDS and SAHAVAGI found that women themselves were not aware of these policies on funding allocations and that the policies had not been disseminated effectively.

153. Men predominate in village and district planning committees and, as a result of their unwillingness to take women’s concerns into account, IIDS and SAHAVAGI designed a series of trainings with decision makers at local levels and those with key roles in planning, budgeting, program implementation, and monitoring for poor and disadvantaged women. In addition, IIDS and SAHAVAGI reformulated and strengthened Integrated Planning Formulation Committees and other mechanisms, and formed them where they did not exist, as stipulated in the LSGA (1999).

154. With the right capacity and resources, authorities at decentralized government level demonstrated commitment to gender equity and social inclusion programs, because this was real to them. These issues are close to their own lived experience as members of villages and districts, compared with officials in distant capitals.

D. The RETA’s markers of progress across the three country pilots

155. Three markers of progress stood out among the GRB pilots. These were not planned as a troika of actions, but they did happen sequentially and led to a creative process of local decision makers and local community representatives coming together to agree jointly on an

60

Roundtable communication to Kate Frieson, RETA Final Workshop, 9 December 2011.

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intervention for greater gender equity. The first step was planned, the second step was not well articulated until in situ, and the third step was the hoped-for culmination of the project.

Successfully undertaking a gender-responsive budget cycle analysis based on results, designing training materials and conducting workshops to match the learning needs of stakeholders; Successfully gathering together key decision makers with local communities to assess gender gaps and find suitable local solutions for fiscal year 2012; and Successfully creating a GRB initiative with the participation of local stakeholders, including women beneficiaries, with budget allocations linked to monitoring indicators.

156. Among the three progress markers, it was the second that was ‘make or break’ for the RETA’s progress and ultimate success. This is because buy-in from local government officials was strategic and underpinned the project, leading to a commitment to trial a GRB initiative. Only the government can do this, not the community on its own.

157. Each country approached generating buy-in in different ways. In Cambodia, this meant selecting a district already piloting decentralization so district and commune officials were enthusiastic to learn and could apply their learning in their constituency following training. In Indonesia, where the decentralization process has proceeded more swiftly, buy-in required many meetings and planning sessions with local government stakeholders. BIGS took time to learn the needs and perspectives of local government officials and how the RETA could benefit their communities and policy practice. Nepal’s case was the most challenging, as democratic practices were not in place and local political parties were vying to control local development initiatives. However, this political transition – while a challenge – did not prevent the active participation of women and men in engagement with local government officials pressing for gender-responsive development projects. There is a strong sense that local communities wish to prevail in pressing the local government for accountability of expenditures and for planning projects that are socially inclusive as stated in government policy. Box 7 summarizes the key achievements of the RETA in Indonesia.

Box 7: West Bandung government perspective on the RETA

‘On the process, after the workshop and before the first coordination meetings, we, especially local government, realize that some programs have actually been gender responsive, but some haven’t been as responsive. On the Housing Renovation Program, the participants of the workshop agreed that there are some different needs among beneficiaries, so we have to consider how to address those in implementation. The program successfully gathered key decision makers (heads of local agencies who have overlapping authority on the program) to participate in a coordination meeting (the third workshop). The meeting itself also successfully produced key recommendations concerning the program:

1. The Local Development Planning Agency must ensure local government programs address the different needs of beneficiaries. The Local Public Work Office, responsible for reaching the program target, is required to:

Verify the beneficiaries who will be the target of the program;

Revise the guideline of the Housing Renovation Program so as to sharpen it in addressing the different needs of beneficiaries;

Make sure the consultant, hired by and assisting the Public Work Office, is aware of the different needs of the beneficiaries and assist recipient communities to make proposals that put a great emphasis on these different needs; and

Use monitoring and evaluation as a tool to ensure consistency between planning and implementation. The results of monitoring and evaluation are the basis for the next annual planning.

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2. RETA learning has also been reported to the Regent, who responded by issuing 3 important orders:

Gender mainstreaming (understood as addressing the different needs of beneficiaries) should be integrated into the implementation of the Housing Renovation Program. This we called GRB in the housing sector.

GRB – which emphasizes implementation – should also be the basis for other sectors in the regency.

The Executive Budget Team of the local government which negotiates regularly with the team from the local Parliament and has authority to secure budgeted programs and activities must ensure gender mainstreaming in the budget process (planning, budgeting, and implementation).

Source: Dadang Harisuddin, Division Head of Economic Planning, West Bandung regency. Notes presented at RETA Final Workshop, Kathmandu, 8-9 December 2011.

E. The RETA's contribution to better gender-responsive decentralized governance

158. The RETA has made contributions to better gender-responsive decentralized governance in Cambodia, Indonesia, and Nepal by deepening conceptual knowledge on how to approach gender issues within broader development paradigms and in application to sector approaches. It has provided concrete ways to apply this conceptual knowledge to strategic planning processes with community participation, through workshops on GRB and hands-on approaches for writing simple plans with gender-responsive development targets. Communities agreed on actions to address gender gaps and target beneficiaries in the sub-national context.

159. Next steps include moving the plan into implementation, followed by monitoring and evaluation to ensure that intended beneficiaries have been reached resulting in positive gains with measurable results. This last aspect is yet to be achieved and awaits implementation by sub-national governments of their indicated actions in these RETA GRB

pilot initiatives.61

Table 13 shows the achievements of the RETA GRB pilot initiatives.

Table 13. The achievements of RETA’s GRB pilots

Country Sector New learning Achievements

Cambodia Education: upper primary and lower secondary

Commune Councils can play a role with teachers, principals, parents, school committees, and NGOs by collaborating on a gender-responsive situation analysis and responding to its results on how to address female and male dropouts and repeaters by writing an action plan.

GRB for the CIP allocated and designed collaboratively by local Council, teachers, and citizens, including women’s representatives and NGOs, for implementation in 2012.

Indonesia

Housing renovation

Home renovation is considered the physical object and not the needs of family members who reside in the homes. The gendered spatial use of homes and the differentiated needs of women, men, girls and boys regarding sanitation, privacy, and security are better recognized and understood by both decentralized government program implementers and female and male beneficiaries.

Budget amendments to be planned to reflect gender needs within housing sector in 2012; use of sex-disaggregated data of beneficiaries, including family profiles (single, divorced, widowed with children, etc.) is to be utilized for better service delivery (see Box 7).

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The Final Workshop concluded with sub-national government statements of commitments as to how they foresee taking the learning of the RETA forward. The matrix of each country commitment is available in the Final Workshop Report annexes.

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Nepal Agricultural roads

VDCs and DDCs are not optimally effective because they are not elected, they lack female representatives, they are subject to pressure from politicized NGOs, and the transition political structure of the APM that dominates decision making lacks female representation. Women, including those from ethnic minorities and very poor backgrounds, enthusiastically took up the call to have their voices heard and to be active in WCFs which are legally recognized as having the right to inform development planning choices at village and district levels. Direct and indirect benefits on female and male beneficiaries of agricultural roads projects are hard to measure because of a need for quantitative and qualitative research to establish baseline data.

Where women’s capacity needs are met they are able to make effective and informed demands on government. 33% of women active in User Committees and development planning committees in WCFs. VDCs and DDCs need to ensure the APM has female representatives. Better commitment to activating mechanisms to implement the 33% provision for women’s representation (based on the Interim Constitution) at the village and district level is needed in the upcoming sub-national elections (December 2012).

160. The RETA has made further contributions by identifying improved approaches to

implement GRB and gender-responsive decentralized governance, summarized in the sections below.

1. Minimum conditions for GRB initiatives

161. The RETA produced preliminary evidence to show that GRB is an effective tool. However, the GRB initiatives are in various stages of implementation, and monitoring and evaluation needs to be carried out to measure impact following the next budget cycle. Box 8 presents minimum conditions for GRB.

Box 8: Minimum conditions for GRB initiatives

1. Gender equity or gender equality a stated national goal; 2. Public statements of support for gender equality by President or Prime Minister; 3. Gender Mainstreaming Action Groups established and given decision-making authority in

line ministries; 4. Ministry of Finance program budgeting guidelines incorporate GRB; 5. Gender equity initiatives mainstreamed in sectors and down-streamed from central to

decentralized level. 6. Democratic institutions in place for gender-responsive decentralized governance

accountability mechanisms.

162. The above minimum conditions should be present in order for GRB initiatives to be successful. The sixth condition is present in Cambodia and Indonesia but absent in Nepal. Democratic institutions are necessary for effective gender-responsive decentralized governance because of the participatory nature of decentralized governance and the need for accountability in regular and predictable elections to choose local representatives. Increasing women’s participation in local development initiatives has taken place in Nepal, demonstrating the courage and commitment of women to take action to make their lives better, even during times of sustained political crisis as observed in Nepal. Measures for a

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peaceful political transition and elections are taking root in Nepal, and these are hopeful signs that the sixth condition will prevail there in the near future.

2. Start-up requirements for GRB at decentralized level

163. There are 6 minimum start-up requirements for GRB, reflecting national policy commitments to gender equality, budgeting guidelines for program budgets, capacity requirements, and elected political systems. These requirements reflect the RETA’s experience and can be used for comparison with other countries where GRB programs are underway or planned.

164. Having the full commitment of the country’s leadership to gender equality is necessary to give the green light to GRB initiatives. Without commitment at the highest level, it is very difficult to advance and gather support for a GRB initiative. The Ministry of Finance is the most important ministry in that it works on national budgets and can put in place guidelines for program budgeting that are gender responsive. Line ministries and their decentralized counterparts are guided in their financial planning by the Ministry of Finance; hence, GRB guidelines in step with overall public financial policies, reforms, and programs should have their home there.

Table 14. Checklist of start-up requirements for GRB

Commitment to gender equity at the highest level of government (Prime Minister/President). Ministry of Finance is key architect and works in collaboration with line ministries and gender

mainstreaming machineries (e.g. Ministries of Gender Equality, Women’s Affairs, Social Inclusion, etc.).

Sex-disaggregated data available and used for baseline on gender inequities in priority sectors. Guidelines for formulating GRB in place, aligned with Ministry of Finance budget operational

guidelines to line ministries and distributed from national to decentralized levels. Capacity building for Finance/Budget/Planning Officers can be readily financed and monitored

for application over a minimum three-year period. Democratically elected representatives are in place at sub-national level with accountability to

local populations down to village level. Source: K.G. Frieson. 2011. A Comparative Analysis of Gender-Responsive Budgeting as a Tool for Decentralized Governance in Asia: Results in Cambodia, Indonesia and Nepal. RETA Final Workshop PowerPoint Presentation. Kathmandu, 8-9 December 2011.

3. Gender equity programs tied to national policy poverty reduction goals need equivalent indicators at sub-national levels

165. GRB requires programs tied to policy goals, with baseline date available, targets defined and tied to the MDGs, and indicators of measurement and progress in place at decentralized level. There is yet to be a very developed program response at the decentralized level to national policies, in Cambodia partly because decentralization is recent (since 2002); it is more developed in Indonesia but still evolving, and it is most developed in Nepal, but in a holding pattern given the political transition to a stable regime with democratic features.

4. Decentralized governance programs require three to five years of development for hard results to be collated, monitored, and evaluated

166. As this RETA involved only one year of field work and there were some initial delays, there has been some frustration among stakeholders. RETA GRB pilots were just taking hold as the RETA was to end, which meant a lack of a monitoring and evaluating phase. However, it is anticipated that the learning will continue and that the decentralized governments that have committed to the RETA will continue their work. There may also be some opportunities to have this work monitored by RETA partners or others.

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5. Fiscal reforms and program budgeting systems required at decentralized levels

167. The necessary framework for comprehensive budget and fiscal reform has been developed in Cambodia through MEF and the PFM reform program supported by the World Bank and other donors, including ADB. The PFM’s time-sequenced platforms and stages pave the way for the Cambodian government to move away from line-based budgets that are difficult to monitor and do not provide adequate complexity for government programs. The gradual replacement of line budgeting by program- and results-based budgeting is a necessary precondition for gender budgeting initiatives. Program budgets at district and commune levels will be phased in over the next three years; this is a suitable period for Cambodia to continue GRB initiatives at the decentralized level.

168. In Indonesia, there are clear guidelines on GRB at national level, but their delivery and comprehension at decentralized levels is at a preliminary stage. This owes partly to the pacing of decentralization and the capacity building needed for guidelines to be implemented effectively. Moreover, local-level government offices in public works and housing do not incorporate gender issues into their planning procedures, largely because they do not know how. As for fiscal issues related to the housing program undertaken by the RETA more specifically, the budget allocation per house was based on standard improvement costs amounting to some US$400, but real costs were up to three times as much (US$570-1,700). Corporate social responsibility schemes, along with increased allocations by the provincial government, were raised as solutions by stakeholders to filling the fiscal gap. Beneficiary contributions were not an option, as most beneficiaries are impoverished.

169. In Nepal, the necessary fiscal and gender-responsive program budgeting guidelines exist and are administered through MoLD and in accordance with MoF circulars and policy support. However, GRB is still considered a specific allocation to women’s programs at national and sub-national levels rather than a mechanism to mainstream gender issues responding to women’s and men’s needs in development programs as well as to address specific issues such as wage parity for women, for example. The GRB guidelines are not yet fully implemented at decentralized levels because of a lack of knowledge and knowhow at VDC and DDC levels, where capacity is still in need of development.

6. RETA contributions to improving GRB implementation

170. The RETA made the following contributions to improved understanding on the

process of implementing GRB pilots.

Conceptual level

171. The RETA strengthened conceptual understanding of sub-national government technical staff in Cambodia, Indonesia, and Nepal through trainings and workshops about

gender and fiscal frameworks; gender analysis in sectors; and policy and planning.

Participants from sub-national governments reported improved capacity to monitor and measure results as an outcome of RETA’s training programs. GRB must begin at the conceptual level in order to reorient thinking among stakeholders involved in decentralized governance.

Strategic planning level

172. Moving from conceptual understanding to strategic planning, in all three countries the RETA created conditions for effective coalition building. Coalitions leading to concrete actions were carefully facilitated by implementing partners among local government bodies and local communities, including indigenous, marginalized, and women. Mutual trust and

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shared understanding of commonly understood gender gaps in basic education, housing renovation, and agricultural roads led to strategic action plans to address gender and social inclusion issues.

Action level

173. The GRB pilots stimulated new thinking among government planners and implementers through a series of workshops and trainings, which brought together mixed groups of stakeholders who had not previously worked collectively to focus on common problems. This resulted in innovative synergies and commitments that were not envisioned in the original design of the RETA. New coalitions emerged in Cambodia, Indonesia, and Nepal as a result of the RETA GRB workshops and trainings staged over several months. Trainings brought the same people together to report on actions between sessions.

174. Coalitions comprised sub-national authorities, female and male members of civil society from rural poor backgrounds in Cambodia and Indonesia, ethnic minorities and marginalized groups in Nepal, RETA-affiliated research institutes, and NGO representatives. Together, stakeholders decided on actions for local empowerment and improved inclusion of women and girls in planning to achieve commonly agreed on GRB pilots (see Tables 9, 10, and 11).

175. Further to these specific achievements documented by RETA implementing partners with inputs from national and sub-national stakeholders, the RETA’s Final Workshop presented an opportunity for government representatives to state commitments to how these achievements would be further supported and elaborated in the coming year(s). All government partners agreed to take some aspects of the RETA forward in order to make concrete the lessons learned during the design and implementation of the RETA GRB pilot initiatives. This commitment is further testament to the efficacy of GRB for decentralized

governance62

.

Community consultation meeting, Chitwan, Nepal. Photo credit: Jan Edwards, 2011.

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A summary table of the three countries’ commitments was being finalized as this chapter was written.

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F. Summary and conclusion

176. This chapter has provided evidence to show that GRB is an effective tool at decentralized level that can be used as a process for better responding to and investing in gender issues and priorities. The different and unequal access of women and men in Cambodian, Indonesian, and Nepalese societies to social service provision were not reflected adequately in sub-national budgets prior to RETA interventions. Government stakeholders and community members who participated in RETA trainings reported that they now recognized that, unless budget policies were based on gender-responsive planning to achieve greater equity, the allocation of resources would likely continue to be unequal and inefficient.

177. Economic growth is a development goal, but growth itself does not change the lower status and position of women in society – and can even create greater gender disparities. Budget resources are used more efficiently if they are based on policies and programs that are gender aware and results based, but there must also be guidelines for planners at sub-national level to use in formulating budgets to be gender responsive.

178. Sex-disaggregated data are used to assess sector programs and results and as a basis for identifying gaps in service provision to women, men, girls and boys. If these data are not in place, typically through national surveys and statistical reporting offices, then they must be generated, adding a substantial cost to any GRB initiative. Sex-disaggregated data are typically generated in any GRB initiative through qualitative research techniques, simple

surveys at village or local level, and FGDs, and triangulated with data compiled by

decentralized authorities and also through national statistical systems.

179. Guidelines for GRB are necessary so technical staff at decentralized level are able to engage in a process that not only commits funds to programs that achieve greater equity between sexes but also has indicators and benchmarks that can be monitored and evaluated over time. Finally, the need for democratically elected representatives was vital to this RETA. It is possible to have all other requirements in place, but there still needs to be an accountability mechanism for local representatives to comply with agreed local plans, or to report back to the community on how budgets are spent and what has been achieved to demonstrate greater equity between women and men. Mechanisms such as participatory local community planning forums, local elections, and town hall meetings are typical features of democratic systems. Within such a system that supports freedom of expression and association and equal representation, women and men at decentralized levels have a better chance to advocate for gender equity than they do under non-democratic systems.

180. Having all of these requirements in place at the start of the project is the ideal scenario, but this was not the experience in this RETA. Cambodia had all but two of the requirements. The first relates to the need to have guidelines in place for formulating GRB aligned with MEF operations and distributed to decentralized levels. In the next five years, these guidelines will likely be developed as reforms in financing to decentralized levels take shape. Capacity building for Finance/Budget/Planning Officers is the second requirement that was absent in Cambodia, but again this will be addressed over the next five years according to the country’s PFM reform program. Indonesia exhibited all the requirements but was weak in its distribution of gender-responsive guidelines at decentralized level and its capacity development for Finance/Budget/Planning Officers. Nepal was the most advanced in terms of its policy commitments and guidelines, but critically lacked democratically elected representatives – a requirement for participatory development practices and the engagement of women in decentralized governance structures.

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Chapter 4: Enhancing women’s participation in local government

A. Introduction

181. This chapter63 focuses on the implementation and achievements of Output 3. As stated in the DMF, Output 3 aimed to enhance the ‘capacity of selected women representatives and groups to effectively participate in local government enhanced (Cambodia and Nepal)’. Specifically, Output 3 aimed to support elected female representatives in Cambodia and Nepal to perform their roles and responsibilities at the local

level, reflecting the priority needs of women64

and other disadvantaged groups in the

planning processes of local government bodies, in budget allocation decisions in local administrations and legislatures, and in other resource allocation decisions.

182. In addition, Output 3 aimed to assist women’s self-help groups and grassroots networks to (i) engage with local sector agencies responsible for implementing development programs; and (ii) participate in decentralized governance structures supported by ADB loans and where women can access loan-related basic social services, opportunities, and benefits. Output 3 also targeted women’s advocacy NGOs involved in increasing the interaction of rural and poor women with decentralized governments and line agencies and building their ability to take part in sector policy dialogue and informing legislation.

183. Performance targets for Output 3 were (i) to design capacity development activities based on a needs assessment; and (ii) to document an impact on capacity of up to 150

participants and three groups65

. Output 3 was implemented by WfP in Cambodia and

SAHAVAGI in Nepal. Each country identified one service and its delivery within one sector as the focus for Output 3-related activities. Basic education provided through MoEYS was the focus of Outputs 2 and 3 in Cambodia; in Nepal, Output 3 focused on gender mainstreaming in decentralized government under MoLD.

1. Geographical coverage

184. Geographical areas for the implementation of Output 3 were selected by implementing partners in consultation with respective TAG and local governments based on criteria developed in consultation with the consulting team, and ADB. The aim was to select districts combining urban, rural, and remote areas, with ethnic and geographical diversity and different socioeconomic groups, including the poor. Areas with the presence of NGO/community-based organizations (CBOs) and development partners and sound representation of women in local bodies and women’s networks were also guiding criteria. It was also essential to have endorsement by local authorities and government officials in the specific selected sector at sub-national level to ensure an enabling environment to facilitate the interplay between women community members and local authorities.

185. Based on the above criteria, in Cambodia RETA project activities were implemented

in nine communes of Moung Ruessei district66

. In Nepal, Chitwan district and Ratnanagar

municipality were selected and activities focused on six VDCs67

.

B. Action research approach

186. The methodological approach68

for the implementation of Output 3 was based on action research, comprising a research component followed by an intervention component.

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Unless otherwise indicated, this chapter draws mainly on the Cambodia and Nepal Output 3 Reports. 64

Priority needs were determined in the research phase of Output 3, including the needs assessment. 65

NGOs, elected women, and community members, etc. Men were included in training but not in training targets. 66

Kar Koh, Chrey, Russei Krang, Prey Svay, Kea, Robus Mong Koul, Maung, Prey Touch, and Talah. 67

Hills districts: Dahakhani, Chandibhanjyang, Kaule, and Shaktikhor; plains districts: Meghauli and Jagatpur.

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Intervention approaches chosen were to include the possibility of replication at sub-national level in other contexts/countries. Although the RETA DMF emphasized that beneficiaries of the capacity-building component were to be women, it was realized in the early stages that the proportion of elected women/women representatives at local levels was very low in the two countries, for different reasons. In Nepal, this was because of the suspension of democratic elections since 1998. In both countries, there was also an awareness of the need to involve men as gender champions in order to achieve change. A target of 60% women beneficiaries was therefore established and achieved.

C. Research component

187. Decentralized governments are those closest to the citizens, and it is at this level that the different public policies, programs, and projects have an impact on the lives of citizens. Engagement with local governments enabled implementing partners in each country to determine the extent of women’s participation in decentralized governance. This sought to identify processes being used to encourage women’s participation, as well as the quality of their participation and whether they were able to influence decision making at the different stages of public policy development and execution (consultation, planning, programming, budgeting, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation).

188. The research component examined the extent to which national commitments on gender equality and social inclusion were translated into action at sub-national levels through decentralized governance mechanisms. Output 3 also examined the extent to which public services were responsive to the different needs of women and men, girls and boys in the respective communities. The research component also sought to explore the knowledge and understanding of citizens and government officials of existing gender equality guidelines and the gender sensitivity and responsiveness of decentralized governance. Two perspectives were explored:

Perspectives of community members, particularly women, as end users of government services and beneficiaries of public policy (demand side); and Perspectives of government officials and elected leaders in decision-making positions with a mandate to put in practice and implement public policies and the development and delivery of basic services (supply/provider side).

189. This inquiry was narrowed to the basic education sector in Cambodia and decentralized local governance in Nepal. The main topics of inquiry with target groups in the two countries were:

Knowledge, awareness, and understanding of, and participation in, local governance processes such as planning, budgeting, implementation, and monitoring and evaluation of programs, projects, and services;

Knowledge of public policies on gender equality and social inclusion and roles and responsibilities of local government;

Knowledge and awareness of services and benefits offered by local government and how to access them (eligibility, processes involved – registration, payment of fees);

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‘Action research is known by many other names, including participatory research, collaborative inquiry, emancipatory research, action learning, and contextual action research […] Put simply, action research is “learning by doing” […] One succinct definition is: “Action research [...] aims to contribute both to the practical concerns of people in an immediate problematic situation and to further the goals of social science simultaneously. Thus, there is a dual commitment in action research to study a system and concurrently to collaborate with members of the system in changing it in what is together regarded as a desirable direction’ (R. O'Brien. 2001. An Overview of the Methodological Approach of Action Research. In R. Richardson (ed.) Theory and Practice of Action Research. www.web.ca/~robrien/papers/arfinal.html (accessed 10 January 2012).

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Knowledge and understanding by local government officials on their roles and responsibilities, particularly in relation to gender equality and social inclusion;

Awareness of citizens (end users) of their rights to participation and engagement in government consultations and identification of priority needs; and

Opportunities and barriers to participation in decentralized governance mechanisms.

1. Baseline research methods: needs assessment under local realities in Cambodia and Nepal

190. Implementing partners in both Cambodia and Nepal used similar methods to conduct a needs assessment in their targeted districts. The baseline research encompassed both qualitative and quantitative methodologies.

191. In Moung Ruessei district in Cambodia, WfP developed and implemented a mapping exercise in 9 targeted communes to identify all potential stakeholders to be involved in the project. Based on this exercise, different targeted groups were identified and invited to participate in the research component. In addition, individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with members of 11 different identified groups in the 9 communes. The groups interviewed included women’s representatives, both elected and non-elected, female and male government officials, CBO and NGO representatives, women’s self-help groups and networks, parents, school committee members, and students, including students who had dropped out. In total, 95 persons were interviewed, 69% of them women.

192. In Nepal, the baseline research conducted by SAHAVAGI used a structured questionnaire that was administered to community members (especially women and excluded and marginalized groups) in the six VDCs and Ratnanagar municipality. In total, 552 households were surveyed. A total of 50% of respondents were women. In addition, a mapping of NGOs/CBOs active in the area was undertaken. To supplement the above data, SAHAVAGI project staff conducted interviews with NGOs/CBOs and local government officials. These surveys provided SAHAVAGI with an overview of the knowledge gaps in each of the NGOs and identified topics for inclusion in the training programs.

2. Key findings and main issues identified in the needs assessment

Cambodia

193. Findings from the research in Moung Ruessei district showed that in general there was good participation of women in local governance mechanisms. All female Commune Councilors (elected leaders) interviewed said they participated in the CIP/CDP mechanisms. However, out of 89 Commune Councilors in the nine communes participating in the RETA, only 15 (16.8%) were female.

194. It was reported that between 40% and 60% of women villagers attended CIP/CDP activities. Women villagers participating were reported to be appointed by the local government under a 30% reservation system. Even though there was good participation of women in this consultation mechanism, the quality of their participation varied. It was found that only Commune Councilors, members of the Planning and Budgeting Committee, and some NGOs were familiar with and understood the five-step process of the CIP/CDP and the district integration of the different commune inputs. Despite women’s participation, only the Commune Chief attended district integration activities where all issues and priorities from the communes are discussed and integrated into the District Development Plan.

195. Interview respondents stated that, even though gender-related issues may have been included in the CIP/CDP, little or no budget was allocated to support these activities on the ground. One of the most important findings reported from local government members was

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that district officials have no experience talking to community members; the experience was so new to one official that he said hearing issues from community members was ‘like a slap in the face69.

196. The research found that Commune Councilors (including women) were aware that basic education should be free and that there were policies concerning equality of access. Most community members were not, however. It is common for teachers to offer private classes to students for payment and to ask students to pay for extra tuition, lesson notes, handouts, and exam papers. Indirect fees and charges levied on students by individual teachers can be as much as US$1 per day. Female and male student dropouts reported that financial demands were a key reason why they had dropped out of school: their families could not afford to have them at school, because of these indirect charges also because of opportunity costs. In addition, girls often drop out to assist with household chores or to prepare for marriage. Distance to school and lack of adequate sanitation facilities for girls70 are other key factors in girls dropping out. There is also a gender issue for boys, who often drop out to contribute to household income during harvesting or through paid labor. Box 9 presents issues identified by specific groups in terms of basic education in Cambodia.

Box 9: Issues identified by selected respondents in education in Cambodia

School Support Community members were aware of school budgets through school annual meetings and had attended meetings called by the school Director. All those interviewed said they had raised the need for a budget to address the issues of adequate latrines, breakfast programs, and other poverty alleviation measures, such as provision of school supplies to poor children. They also reported having consulted with other parents before participating in school development planning. However, their level of knowledge of the education system and policies on Child-Friendly Schools and gender in education was low.

Members of the commune Planning and Budgeting Committee reported that they had raised issues separate latrines for girls and boys, construction of primary and secondary schools, and wells on school grounds in planning meetings. Issues raised at school meetings by others included scholarships for poor students, latrines, and community preschools.

The issue of poverty is well known, with members of the commune Planning and Budgeting Committee suggesting that education could be improved through the following actions: (i) reduce the infrastructure budget by 20% every year to support teachers at the community preschool; (ii) budget cooperation with NGOs that work in the communes; (iii) separate budget to support parents of poor children.

Students interviewed had some knowledge of children’s rights, and identified academic issues, shortage of latrines, distances to school, and poverty as key problems.

School dropouts said they had no knowledge of children’s rights; the majority, especially girls, said they dropped out of school because of poverty.

Members of self-help groups had some awareness of education policies such as Education for All and cited main issues as poverty, construction of roads so children, especially girls, can go to school in the wet season, and government support to poor families in job creation.

Staff from NGOs, some government officials, and some members of self-help groups had received some gender awareness training. NGO staff were aware of the education policy on gender and had been promoting gender equality through their projects.

There was low awareness of school development planning among staff of NGOs.

None of the parents interviewed had participated in the CDP and none had participated in any meetings at the school.

Source: Cambodia Output 3 Report.

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Cambodia Output 3 Report. 70

The study found that there is a need for 70 latrines to serve about 200 classrooms in the district.

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Nepal

197. Findings from the research undertaken by SAHAVAGI in the 6 VDCs and Ratnanagar municipality provided evidence that the key GESI Policy (2008) issued by MoLD is still far from being implemented properly. In relation to women’s participation in self-governing bodies, the provision for 33% women’s representation mandated in the LSGA (1999) is not always implemented in practice. The research found some resistance by the APM and local government officials to implementing the GESI Policy, which mandates 33% women’s participation in WCFs. The guidelines for VCFs state only that participation should be meaningful. In the case of the APM, women’s representation is not mandated.

198. The research also found that GESI Policy had not been communicated effectively to citizens at village and ward levels and is hard to understand. This means the majority were unaware about special provisions for women and disadvantaged groups. Most respondents lacked knowledge of government policies, processes, and services, as Table 15 shows.

Table 15. Proportion of respondents with no knowledge of government policies and process

Policies & Processes Women Men

Education 63% 64%

Health 59% 64%

Infrastructure 90% 86%

Women’s inheritance rights 58% 64%

Women’s citizenship rights 25% 27%

Land purchase rebate scheme 79% 78%

VDC planning process 94% 87%

VDC budget allocation 87% 82%

Source: Nepal Output 3 Report.

199. The data show that women and men were quite well informed about the rights of women; however, fewer women reported knowing about VDC planning and budget processes. Women were slightly better informed about education, health, women’s inheritance rights, and the land purchase rebate scheme (which provides discounts on land that is registered in the names of both the wife and the husband).

200. Women’s lack of information, combined with their low bargaining power, limits their access to services and undermines their participation in decentralized government. Access and participation are also made difficult by the attitudes of service providers and decision makers, who often uphold prevailing patriarchal values. As a consequence, women’s needs and concerns are not well considered in VDC planning and budgeting processes. In addition, as the WCFs and VCFs have not yet been implemented in all wards and villages, therefore women still lack a space where they can voice their concerns.

201. NGOs and CBOs also proved to be uninformed about policies and provisions concerning women in relation to access to services and other benefits and their right to participate in decentralized government. They were also unaware of the mandated specific 35% budget allocations for women, children, and disadvantaged groups as specified in the GESI Policy.

202. Finally, the research found there were too many guidelines to apply at local level, and often these are not well understood by local officials, let alone community members, and this lack of clarity resulted in confusion. As well as an excessive number of committees set up by

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local government, there are also too many committees at local level set up by NGOs, all of them competing for the scarce time of women and poor community members. The participation of women in these local committees is weak because of their limited capacity to articulate their needs and their lack of information on the topics raised. Other deterrents to their participation are poverty (including, for example, lack of money to pay for transport) and the effects of gender inequality (including restrictions on mobility and lack of time for meetings because of unequal distribution of household and other work tasks).

203. The ongoing constitutional crisis in Nepal means that progress in decentralized governance has stalled and implementation of some aspects of decentralized governance, such as WCFs and VCFs has just commenced. Local elections are expected to occur by the end of 2012 if agreement can be reached on the draft of the new Constitution. Political stability will create an enabling environment for the implementation of the GESI Policy and the enforcement of the 33% provision for women’s representation in the political arena.

3. Issues common to both countries

204. The results of the research component undertaken in Cambodia and Nepal show some commonalities and differences in relation to women’s participation in local governance, levels of awareness on rights to participation, and efforts undertaken by local government to empower women to participate in public policy setting and use of services.

205. In both countries, community members, particularly women, have little knowledge about their rights, including access to services, and government policies on equality. This is a result of ineffective policy dissemination. Women’s and girls’ needs and concerns are not well considered in planning and budgeting processes given their limited or ineffective participation in decentralized governance and/or a lack of ability (or will) of local officials to incorporate them in the different stages of the decision-making process in public policy. As discussed in Chapter 2, political will implies the commitment of governments to translate existing gender frameworks into action through the provision of adequate resources and capacity.

206. Government quotas (reserved seats or affirmative action) for women’s representation in local bodies (30% in Cambodia at village level; 33% in Nepal) are not yet fully implemented and the quality of women’s participation varies. A prevailing barrier hampering women’s participation in local governance mechanisms in both countries, particularly among the poorest, is the opportunity costs associated with their participation. This includes transportation costs, time constraints arising from the need to carry out household and child care chores, and lack of knowledge and education, among others.

207. Nepalese government officials consulted at sub-national level showed a greater knowledge of their roles and responsibilities than those in Cambodia, reflecting their longer involvement and greater experience in decentralization.

D. Intervention component: capacity strengthening and advocacy for change

208. The RETA Output 3 intervention phase aimed to build the capacity of women representatives and networks, local elected members, government officials, and CBOs and NGOs to contribute to improved gender-responsive programming and budgeting at local level. The training aimed to address the gender gaps identified during the research component in terms of lack of knowledge, awareness, and understanding of gender equality and decentralized governance policies.

209. The intervention design focused on different constituencies at the lowest level of government, that is, communes in Cambodia and VDCs, WCFs, and VCFs in Nepal. In

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addition to building knowledge on women’s and citizens’ rights to participation, the design of these workshops drew from the findings emanating from participatory research with local communities and government officials. It also facilitated dialogue between both groups to enable an understanding of problems faced by government in providing services and the bottlenecks faced by community members in accessing specific services.

210. The views of villagers and, more importantly, the generation of a collective reflection on a course of action for positive change were among the main outputs of these workshops. Key questions guiding the workshop process were:

How can citizens, and women in particular, act to exercise their political rights within the context of participatory democracy? How can villagers lobby their elected representatives (Commune Councilors, VDC and DDC members) to put pressure on the executive for greater accountability and adequate budget allocations for better and more gender-responsive services?

211. Answers to the above questions are shown below by illustrating the different capacity-building training workshops and other approaches developed and implemented by partners in Cambodia and Nepal.

1. Approaches developed in Cambodia and Nepal

212. Issues identified during the research component guided the strategy for strengthening the capacity of targeted groups in the intervention phase. Workshops focused on increasing awareness of national government commitments to gender equality and rights, as well as how these could be implemented at decentralized levels of governance. The rights of citizens to participate in decision making in sub-national government and their rights to services were identified as key features of the capacity-strengthening activity.

213. In Cambodia, key national gender commitments such as CEDAW, the Constitution, the MDGs, the Organic Law and Education for All guided the capacity-building strategy. The strategic approach of WfP followed included three key elements:

Working with the Provincial Local Administration Unit and the female Deputy Chief of District; Planning and implementing a series of interactive workshops based on baseline survey data to enhance the capacity of local leaders to participate effectively in local governance; and Forming coalitions and strengthening female and male local leaders and disadvantaged groups to become advocates on gender-related issues.

214. In Nepal, the LSGA (1999) and the rights of citizens to services as stipulated within this were the focus of capacity strengthening for both community members and those with representative roles at local level. The LSGA identifies governance structures, their composition, and representation of women and disadvantaged groups. Along with the GESI Policy and directives from MoLD, this was the key reference document used in capacity development. For this, SAHAVAGI reviewed all sector policies and conducted 10-month fieldwork in an effort to institutionalize the LSGA, GESI, and GRB to strengthen gender mainstreaming in local government. A strategic alliance was sought with the LDO and with central and local members of MoLD.

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2. Intervention initiatives

Cambodia: capacity strengthening and advocacy for change in basic education

215. WfP in Cambodia conducted a series of 3 2-day workshops during January-September 2011 attended by 50 participants, 70% (35) of whom were women. Each participant received 6 days of training. In addition to providing information about legislative and policy frameworks mentioned above, the following content was covered progressively during workshops:

Gender concepts and gender analysis tools;

GRB and the budget cycle;

Decentralized governance and the Organic Law (2008) focusing on gender aspects;

Social accountability (planning and decision making at commune and district levels);

Women in decision making at local level and leadership;

Steps in an advocacy strategy;

Forming networks/coalitions and

Preparing and implementing action plans to address identified issues in basic education.

216. Two main objectives framed the initiative:

Strengthening women’s participation in political processes and governance structures at the district and commune level by improving their ability to engage in local governance and with their constituencies; and

Supporting local officials to engage more effectively with the community to improve public service delivery based on consultation with, and needs identification of, local communities in planning, programming, and budgeting processes.

217. An interesting feature of the WfP capacity-building approach was that each workshop incorporated a practical assignment in which each participant could apply the skills and knowledge acquired during each of the two-day sessions between the workshops. Homework assignments were completed by all training participants, and the final workshop involved trainees reporting on implementation of their assignments. The assignment of the first workshop, for example, was to put in practice basic research strategies. Participants were asked to conduct interviews with different target groups in their own communities to collect their views and data related to education. This exercise itself allowed deeper appreciation of the issues and the identification of other education-related issues beyond those initially identified by the research component of the project. It also provided the trainee advocates with an opportunity to discuss the advocacy action in a non-threatening manner and to practice their speaking and listening skills on an issue, thereby gaining confidence. A total of 260 (165 women and 95 men) were interviewed, including parents/guardians, enrolled students, and school dropouts. This assignment put the training beyond the classroom to benefit other community members.

218. During the second workshop, participants shared and analyzed the data collected in their communities and further discussed education issues. One of the topics of the second workshop was developing an advocacy strategy. The Moung Ruessei District Director of Education was invited to this training to share views, data, and other information from the perspective of the District Education Office.

219. One of the key issues identified again by trainee advocates during this research practice was the indirect fees levied on families for education, which meant that the free education mandated in national policy is not being implemented. Practices at grassroots level in the district involved in the pilot activity were very different to those envisaged by

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policymakers. The assignment of the second workshop was to develop an advocacy plan to address identified issues in education with government officials, elected leaders, and CBOs/NGOs. Participants were also requested by the District Education Officer to collect data about children aged from three to 15 years old and to ascertain the number of dropouts. In addition, participants were encouraged to use the commune accountability box, located at the Commune Council office, to raise the issue with decision makers.

Participants in the WfP second workshop completing a matrix for their advocacy strategy, Moung Ruessei, Cambodia. Photo credit: WfP, 2011.

220. During the third workshop, participants reported back on their community advocacy activity and data collected on dropouts. The workshop emphasized coalition building and advocacy planning for action.

221. An important part of the advocacy for change process was development of local ownership and commitment, not only among participants in the capacity-strengthening advocacy activity, but also among local decision makers and other stakeholders. In the research component, a number of change agents and champions critical to alliance building were identified. Commune Council members were able to explain local planning, budgeting, and decision-making processes. The District Education Officer was effective because he took time to meet with the trainee advocates and took their concerns seriously and acted on them immediately. Synergies generated by the learning-by-doing approach allowed stakeholders to integrate identified issues into an action plan for better education for all.

Nepal: strengthening gender mainstreaming in local government

222. In Nepal, the intervention component undertaken by SAHAVAGI aimed to institutionalize the MoLD GESI Policy to strengthen gender mainstreaming in local government in Chitwan district. The LDO was instrumental in supporting the RETA project in this endeavor. He established a local TAG and demonstrated commitment to improving decentralized governance. The focus of the intervention was to strengthen the capacity of self-governing bodies and other key local stakeholders in Chitwan district. The beneficiaries of the capacity building were drawn from WCFs and VCFs. Training included members of the All Party Women’s Mechanism, some district-level Integrated Planning Formulation Committees, local government officials in charge of implementation of the GESI, and NGOs.

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223. Capacity development training was provided to 429 WCF and VCF executive members (210 women and 219 men) and 1,134 ordinary members (594 women and 540 men). In addition, general orientation was provided to 2,224 WCF members and other citizens (1,144 women and 1,080 men). Four advocacy training sessions were provided to 113 people from 46 CBOs/NGOs in Chitwan (90 women and 23 men). SAHAVAGI project staff drawn from local communities also benefited from these trainings. The duration of these initiatives varied according to the different audience, from a series of 2-day workshops for executive members of the citizen forums to 2-hour orientation sessions for general members.

224. The capacity strengthening covered the following areas:

VDC planning and budgeting processes;

GRB at the VDC level;

Social security and the provision of health and education services;

Effective participation in planning and programming;

Budgeting and following up on budget implementation; and

Advocacy tools and techniques.

225. The advocacy training aimed to support trainees to develop skills to advocate for the effective implementation of government policies and guidelines with a gender focus, using skills obtained in the previous capacity-building activities. This included actual participation in planning, programming, budgeting, and monitoring and evaluation activities with practical exercises to look at special budget provisions for gender equality and programming.

226. Participants learned to advocate for women’s access to social security benefits, education scholarships, free health care, and other basic services that should be provided by local government institutions. They also learned about advocating for other women’s rights, such as citizenship and property rights (including, for example, the importance of putting a land title in both names to reduce tax).

227. Citizens Charters were developed and placed within VDC offices. These provide a list of services available to community members and their cost, supporting accountability and transparency of service provision.

3. Key achievements of the intervention component in Cambodia and Nepal

Cambodia

228. Participants in the capacity-building training significantly increased their understanding of and involvement in local decision making, including through attendance at Commune Council or CWCC meetings. Participants also became more aware of government education policies and barriers to the achievement of basic education for all, and improved their ability to voice their concerns to the relevant authorities. Government education officials improved their understanding of gender issues and their skills in research, development planning, and interaction with stakeholders (for example parents, other community members, and the Commune Council). As a result of the efforts at coalition building, a budgeted plan was developed to improve access to, and quality of, education and was approved by the district authorities for implementation in 201271.

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This plan to strengthen basic education and to reduce the gender gap in accessing basic education was endorsed by district education authorities and is a concrete result of the advocacy strategy and coalition-building exercise facilitated by RETA implementing partners. As the RETA has ended, it is up to local authorities and the community involved in the RETA to ensure this will happen. The impact of this activity in

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Box 10: Pre- and post-test data from Cambodia

WfP conducted pre- and post-tests to measure the effectiveness of training. Some highlights are shown below:

Prior to the training, only 34% of trainees had attended CWCC meetings. Following training, 86% of participants attended.

Prior to training, only 20% of participants reported raising education issues at CCWC meetings. Following training, 80% had done so.

Following the training, 92% of participants reported that education issues were included in the CDP.

Participants reported improved activities following the training, such as dissemination of information on children’s rights (88%); dissemination of gender equality concepts (86%); and increased participation in preparing the monthly family budget (86%).

Participants improved their knowledge of GRB, including increased awareness that GRB serves women and men (100%), and improved awareness that budget preparation is important to education to implement Education for All.

Women’s participation in decision making was seen by participants following the training as (i) a matter of right (100%); (ii) an opportunity for women to develop in the community like men (100%); and (iii) an opportunity for women to intervene on behalf of women’s rights (90%).

Source: Cambodia Output 3 Report.

229. The intervention resulted in a concerted effort by community members, teachers, and Commune Councilors to bring dropouts back to school. Although it is too early to assess the impact of this action for change, education officials are keen to ensure more girls remain in school and reported that their numbers had increased during the few months of the project. The return of dropouts to school was a result of the community working together with the school and Commune Councilors. In this, the community actively sought out dropouts and visited them to encourage them to return to school.

Nepal

230. The RETA intervention improved the capacity and confidence of women members of WCFs and VCFs to advocate for the inclusion of gender issues in planning, programming, and budgeting processes at VDC and DDC levels. There is an increased understanding that WCFs and VCFs are platforms to use to voice concerns – places where public interest should be put above political interest – and that collective interest is fundamental to achieve equity and better results for people on the ground.

231. The capacity-building initiative also achieved greater awareness among poor women and other disadvantaged groups on their rights, including to access to services, and the gender provisions of government, such as access to a budget to finance specific projects aimed at addressing disadvantage (Box 13 provides quotes from local women). Participants in the RETA Final Workshop in Kathmandu heard the testimony of Juna, a young woman from an impoverished village, who shared her life experience and told of the empowerment and assertiveness she had gained through the RETA process (see Box 11).

Box 11: Juna tells a beneficiary’s story

‘My name is Juna. I am 24 years old and from Chepang community in Chitwan district. I am from the Chepang minority tribe. I live in a mud hut with my two children. My son is three years old and my daughter is eight years old. My father died when I was six. My mother remarried and left. I could not afford to stay in school. I worked in the jungle cutting grass for animals and looked after goats and cows in the field.

terms of reducing the rate of girls dropping out from school is to be measured in 2013 and may reveal the impact of the RETA.

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I was married at 14 years old to a man from a different caste so we were a mixed couple. He was from an upper caste and I am from a lower caste. My husband went to the gulf to work and earn money. He did not send anything back for me or the children. He took a second wife. My husband did not approve of me going to meetings and learning how to organize with other community members to advocate for women's rights. I work hard every day to find food to feed my two children. Some days we do not have enough food to eat, but I continue to work as hard as I can to find food to eat. My life is very hard. I am very poor. When it rains the water comes in the hut and we get wet. I have no land, I have no animals, I have no chickens or other animals to raise. So now I am a single mother. But I cannot give up hope that I can manage my life and look after my children. SAHAVAGI has changed my life for the better because now I know about my rights and can speak for what I think women like me need in our community. I am now Secretary of the WCF. From the training, I now know what we are entitled to receive from government. I know how to ask for the services that should be provided to us. Programs like the RETA are very important to women like me. I work very hard, and even though I am very poor I do not want to give up because we must struggle to change our lives for the better.’

Source: J. Edwards and S. Ospina. 2011. Notes from the RETA Final Workshop. Kathmandu, 8-9 December.

Monitoring and evaluation FGD, Chepang community, Chitwan, Nepal. Photo credit: Sofi Ospina, 2011.

232. NGOs and CBOs increased their knowledge of government policies, provisions, and services to address gender inequality and social exclusion and are now better equipped to support women effectively to claim their rights, including the right to services, as Box 12 shows.

Box 12: Nepali NGO’s perspectives on the RETA

Meeting with women’s NGO, Chitwan district The NGO provides information to women about health issues such as reproductive health with a focus on reproductive diseases such as cervical cancer. The women were able to provide two clear examples of how they had applied the skills and knowledge gained in advocacy training to hold the

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VDC accountable for resource allocations for women, children, and other disadvantaged groups. HIV and AIDS Following the advocacy training, one member of the NGO found that NRS25,000 of the NRS40,000 allocated to HIV and AIDS-related programming had not been spent accordingly. After persistent questioning, she was informed that the NRS25,000 had been allocated to other groups on a ‘first come, first served’ basis, irrespective of the planned budget or the relationship of the expenditure to HIV and AIDS. While her questioning has not yet resulted in changes to the subsequent year’s budget plan, this woman has demonstrated that the advocacy training was empowering and provided her with the skills and knowledge to challenge the decisions of local government and to demand accountability from government in service provision to disadvantaged groups. Ethnic groups Following gender analysis of the budget in the advocacy training, a female member of the Tharu ethnic group found that resources allocated to this group were not being spent according to the funding guidelines. She was able to challenge the relevant administrators and these resources have since been reallocated to skills development for local ethnic women. Local women have been provided with skills development in the traditional craft of puppet making. The above examples highlight that, when provided with appropriate information about government policies and procedures, as well as the skills and confidence to challenge government authorities, women can and will advocate effectively for improved service delivery. The women indicated that they planned to be active participants in future budget and planning discussions to ensure that resources are allocated and spent according to their intended purpose.

Source: J. Edwards. 2011. Nepal Monitoring and Evaluation Field Notes. November. Chitwan.

233. A concrete achievement of the SAHAVAGI intervention was the formation of 48 WCFs and six VCFs in the six targeted VDCs where the RETA was implemented. Another concrete achievement was support to the All Party Women’s Mechanism in Chitwan to fill the gap in women’s representation on the VDCs, as the APM does not apply a quota for 33% women’s representation at local levels. This network is functional at district level and has a mandate to work on women’s issues. It has already helped to identify projects that will benefit women.

Monitoring and evaluation FGD, Jagatpur village, Chitwan, Nepal. Photo credit: Sofi Ospina, 2011.

Box 13: Snapshots from the field in Chitwan district, Nepal

‘We were informed about the budget and how much arrives in the village. Before we didn’t know. We didn’t know where to go to have access to information and things [resources, services from government] […] now we know’ (young woman, FGD, VDC, Chepang community). ‘We know that 10% is allocated for women, 10% for children, and 15% for ethnic minorities […]

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There have been many projects in this village and we have the right to know […] we should monitor what has been done with this money. We learned this from this project’ (elderly woman, FGD, VDC, Chepang community). ‘This program helped us to come out of our households. We learned to speak, to hear our voices, and to share them with the WCF […] We women learned how to organize ourselves and how to deliver our voices and ideas to the WCF’ (woman, FGD, Jagatpur village). ‘What is the WCF? Even this phrase we did not know before the SAHAVAGI training […] Now as a community have come to a consensus of what is a WCF. Before the excluded people [marginalized or Dalit] were ignored but now we know more about inclusion and how to get previously excluded people involved’ (elderly man, FGD, Jagatpur village).

Source: S. Ospina. 2011. Nepal Monitoring and Evaluation Field Notes. November. Chitwan.

Monitoring and evaluation FGD, Chepang community, Chitwan, Nepal. Photo credit: Sofi Ospina, 2011.

Young girl, Shaktikhor, Nepal. Photo credit: Jan Edwards, 2011.

E. Summary and conclusions

234. This chapter has presented the research and intervention component of the action research approach undertaken under Output 3 of the RETA to build the capacity of selected women’s representatives and key stakeholders at the lowest level of governance in Cambodia and Nepal. The approach followed shows that action research and its iterative learning process between government (service providers) and citizens (community members and end users of services) enhance women’s participation and its quality in local governance mechanisms and decision-making processes. The approach was also crucial to improve the understanding and gender awareness of government officials to deliver gender-responsive services and, through this, to fulfill their roles and mandates to improve decentralized governance and inclusion.

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Chapter 5: Lessons Learned & Recommendations from the RETA

A. Technical Advisory Groups (TAGs)

235. The design of the RETA called for the establishment of TAGs in each country. In Cambodia, the TAG was chaired by a senior official from MEF; in Indonesia by a senior official from the national planning agency, the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas); and in Nepal by a senior official from MoF. A number of government officials from relevant sectors were included in each TAG, such as those from the national women’s machinery and sectors relevant to RETA operations. Donor partners were included, especially those with interest and experience in GRB and women’s rights. The design did not include representatives from local government in the TAGs, but these were added to the Indonesia and Nepal TAGs. This improved linkages between national and local levels, especially in Indonesia.

236. TAGs met four times each over the duration of the RETA and their key task was to provide advice and guidance to implementing partners and to approve reports and presentations for each of the three Regional Workshops. Representatives from the TAGs attended and participated in the Regional Workshops, which improved regional cooperation and sharing of experiences and learning. The TAG approach undoubtedly benefitted RETA implementation by facilitating government ownership and advice to ensure coherence with national policies.

237. However the TAGs were not without difficulty. Stronger local management by a country-based team member of the consulting team might have provided greater communication between TAG members, implementing partners, and International Team members on a more regular basis. It needs to be acknowledged that local civil society implementing partners may not be in a position to liaise in this way with national government officials. Hence any replication of the RETA approach needs to ensure adequate allocation is made for TAG management and the inclusion of local government representatives.

B. Application of RETA findings and lessons to ADB Portfolio

238. Good decentralized governance is gender responsive. Women and girls make up around 50% of the population in developing countries and their empowerment is a major driver of social and economic development. ADB’s Good Governance policy identifies four elements that guide its operations in DMCs: accountability, participation, predictability, and transparency. ADB’s long-term strategic framework (Strategy 2020) establishes poverty reduction as an overarching goal and identifies three distinct but complementary agendas, consistent with gender-responsive decentralized governance: inclusive economic growth, environmentally sustainable growth, and regional integration. ADB has identified gender equity as one of five drivers of change for the region under Strategy 2020. Investment in gender equality and the empowerment of women are fundamental to economic growth because the exclusion of women means denial of the economic potential of half a country’s population. Many poor citizens, including women in Asia and the Pacific, are reliant on natural resources for economic and income-earning activities, hence must be involved in decisions concerning the use and management of local natural resources and be able to access economic opportunities through policies that ensure environmentally sustainable growth. Regional integration projects provides opportunities for cross-border development, including workforce capacity development, regulated labor migration, outsourcing, remittances, and risks of human trafficking, among others, all of which have significant gender dimensions. Women’s organizations and CBOs/NGOs are key partners in ensuring outreach to women and many have the skills and experience to promote the participation of women in governance, which can be drawn from by ADB and development partners.

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239. Country Partnership Strategies (CPS) and Country Operations Plans from Cambodia 2011-2013 (June 2011) and Nepal 2010-2012 (October 2009) and the Indonesia Country Operations Business Plan (COBP) 2012 (December 2011) were examined to identify key focus areas for the application of RETA lessons72. The documents were reviewed in order to identify opportunities to incorporate findings into the forward-looking example portfolios for the three participating countries. All three countries’ portfolio pipelines share a focus on Education and training, Public sector management, Finance, Agriculture and Natural Resource Management, and Water supply and other municipal services sectors73. The consulting team also considered how gender-responsive decentralized governance lessons could be appropriately applied to selected core and non-core sectors of ADB operations74, such as infrastructure, education, public sector management, agriculture, and water supply.

240. This RETA on gender and decentralized governance provides concrete examples of three participating countries (Cambodia, Indonesia, and Nepal) sharing knowledge and know-how to address gender issues in planning, programming, and budgeting processes. It has identified learning and good practices and approaches to remove bottlenecks to implementing gender in decentralized governance. Enhanced cross-regional learning on gender and good governance through greater knowledge exchange and virtual platforms of communities of practice can contribute to improving the gender responsiveness of decentralized governance in DMCs.

241. Lessons from implementation of Outputs 2 and 3 have been well described in preceding Chapters 2 and 3. More specifically however, the RETA also offers the following concluding suggestions on how to support more transparent, gender-equitable, and socially inclusive decentralized governance, which are applicable across a wide range of ADB operations:

Support the effective dissemination of existing government policies and legislation on gender equality and social inclusion to local governments, civil society and communities, with particular sector focus where applicable.

Support and encourage the development of performance mechanisms for gender policy compliance at local government level.

Promote quotas or allocated representation and participation of women in decision making; consultation; employment; capacity development; and public sector employment in decision-making roles at local levels, within the scope of any project design; and require data reporting on women’s participation in all project activities.

Design and plan for forums so local government officials and other decision makers listen to citizens and ensure that the voices of women are heard. Existing groups can be used, but may need to be strengthened.

Design and implement locally–delivered advocacy training for women and other marginalized groups to improve their ability to demand better service delivery and establish community-based accountability mechanisms for local authorities with roles in project and program administration and implementation.

Consider training community members in small-scale community-based research to develop baseline data where these currently do not exist.

72

The new Indonesia Country Operations Plan was not available at the time of writing. The County Operations Business Plan 2012 was therefore used as the key reference document for this section.

73 Other sectors included in the Cambodia and Nepal portfolio pipelines not directly relevant to the RETA are energy and transport. One other sector included in the Indonesia portfolio that is not directly relevant to RETA is energy.

74 Focus sectors were determined jointly between relevant ADB staff and the International Team in Cambodia on 18 July 2011.

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Design, implement and allocate sufficient resources for capacity development for government officials to understand gender analysis, GRB and their roles in gender-responsive decentralization. Involve women and other diverse groups of community members to develop shared understanding, networking, and coalition building.

Support the development of effective systems of intergovernmental fiscal transfers so they are predictable, allowing for continuous service delivery at sub-national levels.

Support the development of systems and communication strategies for the reporting of planned and actual expenditures to women and communities to enable tracking of gender-responsive allocations and expenditures.

Support government partners to implement GRB trials initially at national level with a focus on specific sectors, then at a decentralized governance level, including through development of sectoral GRB indicators at national and sub-national levels of governance, and development of gender budget statements.

Woman selling vegetables, Kathmandu, Nepal.

Photo credit: Jan Edwards, 2011.

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