Consultant: Engendering the Budget Process in Liberia

Background:

The budget has been referred to as the most important economic policy instrument. It reflects a government's social and economic policy priorities and translates policies, political commitments and goals into decisions where and how funds should be spent. Budgets are usually an indicator of commitment to government's stated policies. National budgets reflect how governments aim to meet the social and economic needs of its people.

The importance of this instrument pre supposes that its development should be participatory and gender responsive.
Liberia in her post conflict development phase has hitherto developed cash based budgets meaning planning has been based on cash at hand. As such sectoral budgets have been devoid of developmental programmatic activities and have been limited to salaries and little other recurrent expenditure. Liberia plans to gravitate towards the medium term expenditure framework and with the HIPIC relief package would be in a position to borrow and overcome certain restrictions it has faced.

Usually, budgets are presented in formats that are difficult to understand and therefore viewed as the concern of government officials alone. For this reason, civil society groups including women and some elected members of parliament shy away from engaging in budgetary processes and debates. Studies of national budgets across Africa reveal that budget processes usually do not take into account assessments or evaluations necessary to achieve long term strategic goals, resulting in gender insensitive or gender blind budgets. There is a lack of capacity in many countries to mainstream gender into policies and there are no mechanisms, guidelines or sex disaggregated data or indicators to enable gender equality advocates track progress or show how gender insensitive budgets impact on women.

Women's contributions to the economy is rarely acknowledged due to the pervasive inequalities and a failure to acknowledge these contributions perpetuates and reinforces barriers to their equal rights to access economic goods and services. Gender sensitive budgeting can make a critical contribution to addressing discrimination and inequalities and can promote more effective use of resources.

At the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, 1991, and in the Beijing Platform for Action, governments were called upon to target the allocation of public expenditures to promote women's economic opportunities and equal access to productive resources. Governments were also called upon to facilitate more open and transparent budget processes so as to promote women's integration in the economy. To do this requires the integration of a gender perspective in budgetary decisions on policies and programmes as well as adequate financing of specific programmes for securing equality between men and women. The United Nations in 1996 also called on governments to make efforts to systematically review how women benefit from public sector expenditures and to adjust budgets to ensure equality of access to these public sector expenditures. One of the most powerful tools for mainstreaming gender is the disaggregation of government expenditure to determine the extent to which it is furthering or detracting from the achievement of gender equality.

Engendering the budget process is central to the ideals of good governance and accountability and crucial if government is to meet the yearnings and aspirations of all segments of society, particularly those marginalized and vulnerable populations. Participation of men and women in decision making is central to democracy and development. The principles of Liberia's PRS are geared towards closing the gender inequality gap and unleashing the potential of women. This can only happen for example when resources are allocated to maternal care to enable women access free health services and prevent death due to lack of medical care while giving birth. Pumping money into the health care system however will only be useful if an assessment of how the budget impacts men and women differentially.

The rationale for gender responsive budgeting arises from the fact that national budgets impact various sections of the society differently through the pattern of resource allocation and priority accorded to competing sectors. Measuring the extent to which gender commitments are translated into budgetary commitments facilitates accountability, transparency and participation of the community.

With the transition from yearly budgets to medium term expenditure framework, Liberia is expected to develop recurrent and development programme budgets. Budget analysis and tracking will now be necessary to advocate for gender mainstreaming and equality.

Grand Bassa County has developed her County Development plans to be operationalized through the County Development Fund and the County Social Development Fund which is a grant from a private sector company, Arcelor Mittal.

UNIFEM seeks the collaboration of skilled experts to work with selected and committed government sectors, the legislature and one county decentralized government organ as a pilot to train and sensitize on a gender responsive budgeting process.

Duties and Responsibilities:

Activities

• Sensitization seminar for top level government officials(including LISGIS, Ministries of Finance, Planning and Economic Affairs, Gender, Education) at national and decentralized level in Grand Bassa
• Sensitization seminar for civil society organizations working in the area of governance
• Training for core team in and Analysis of sectoral budgets of the Ministries of Gender and Education and County Development Plans of the Grand Bassa County
• Advocacy and sensitization for the budget and gender committees of the lower and upper houses
• Production of IEC materials on gender budgeting

UNIFEM seeks a group of skilled and experienced consultants to provide support for the above mentioned activities over a period of 3 months. Under the supervision of the UNIFEM Liberia Country Representative, the consultants will be expected to provide the following deliverables:

• A schedule and plan for the consultancy including with methodology, activities and time frame
• A literature review of the budgeting process in Liberia at national and within Grand Bassa County
• A training plan for training of government officials and the legislature
• A legislative policy statement
• Agreed upon IEC materials on gender responsive budgeting targeting the legislature
• Analysis of sector budgets for Ministry of Education and Grand Bassa County Development Plan
• Guidelines for Grand Bassa County on developing a gender responsive budget for the CDP

Expected Outcomes

• Improved knowledge and expertise of select legislative committees in budget analysis and gender mainstreaming
• Improved knowledge and expertise of civil society groups in budget tracking for gender responsiveness
• Improved knowledge and expertise of identified staff in Ministries of gender, finance and education and staff of budget and planning bureaus of the Grand Bassa county in gender responsive budgeting
• Legislative gender policy statement on the 2010/2011 budget
• Legislative plan of action on sustaining the gender budgeting initiative

Strategies

• Capacity Building
• Advocacy and Lobbying
• Documentation and knowledge sharing
• Materials development

Competencies:

• Analytical, research and report writing skills
• Use of participatory tools in facilitation processes (meetings, peer discussions, gender mainstreaming, etc.)
• Conflict resolution and peace building
• Strategic analysis and prioritization

Required Skills and Experience:

• Post graduate degrees in social sciences or law
• At least 7 years experience in development research, or programme management
• Experience in working with legislature on budgeting and planning processes
• Experience in training adult audiences
• Strong analytical skills
• Good command of the English language
• Knowledge of the region is an added advantage

To Apply:

Please apply online at: http://jobs.undp.org/cj_view_job.cfm?job_id=18168

Application Deadline: 3 August 2010.