Gender Responsive Budgeting as a Tool for Advancing Gender Equality: Capacity Building of Provincial Employees in Afghanistan

This proposed project aims to increase capacity and accountability of provincial staff to integrate gender in planning, budgeting, and human resource development. This will be done through assisting and conducting a gender responsive budgeting training program for provincial managers. The training program, with its follow up measures, aims to 1) reduce gender bias during planning, budgeting, and recruitment of human resources in provinces, and 2) institutionalize and mainstream gender in provincial government organization. Currently, provincial staff are unfamiliar with the concept and importance of GRB, and there is an overall absence of local citizens’ participation, especially women’s participation in development projects, rendering transparent and participatory budgeting processes weak. Government of Afghanistan usually concentrates on central government institutions which are responsible for implementing GRB in provinces but are not technically equipped with GRB know-how. The project will provide the provincial staff with skills and competence to analyse and address gender issues and differential impact in budget, development projects and departments, and deal with them to advance gender equality in provinces. The project intends to pilot the staff of six provincial departments located in Bamyan, Daykondi, Wardak, Samangan, Helmad and Ghazni province during the period 2021-2023.