Summary of publication
The pandemic has seen a resurgence of budget support as a key modality for Australian assistance to the Pacific and Timor-Leste, increasing from A$109 million in 2019 to A$362 million in 2021. Budget support will likely continue to be an important element of Australia's engagement with the Pacific and Timor-Leste to support economic recovery from COVID, global inflationary shocks, and natural disasters.
A new paper by consultant Bob Warner for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) considers how budget support has been used to progress gender equality objectives and identifies issues and opportunities around embedding gender in budget support operations. This paper is timely as the members of the Pacific Islands Forum recently undertook to revitalise its 2012 Gender Equality Declaration at the Forums' Leaders Meeting (11-14 July).
This paper considers how budget support might be used to further the pursuit of gender equality in the Pacific, and to make progress on the Sustainable Development Goal relating to gender (SDG 5), including to 'adopt and strengthen sound policies and enforceable legislation for the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls at all levels'. It looks at how general budget support operations have included gender-relevant actions in their policy action matrices and how they have drawn upon the work of other initiatives.
As Pacific budget support operations have a strong focus on public financial management (PFM), the study examines efforts to embed a gender perspective in PFM systems and processes, and some of the opportunities and constraints associated with trying to increase the gender sensitivity of Pacific PFM systems. Among other things, the paper seeks to understand the progress made on gender-mainstreaming in the Pacific, and the capacity for PFM reform programs to take on a gender dimension. Case studies on gender-responsive budgeting in Fiji and Timor-Leste help to inform the analysis and recommendations.