GRB in Central, Southern and Western Serbia Women NGOs influence on local budgeting policies experience from Republic of Serbia

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1 GRB in Central, Southern and Western Serbia Women NGOs influence on local budgeting policies experience from Republic of Serbia Abstract: In this paper we will raise the issue of influence on state processes which are leading to greater transparency, and GRB as a good tool for setting GE indicators in public budgets, how women NGOs can contribute to this process and which obstacles are on their way. Context: Fenomena Association from Central Serbia conducted first part of GRB program in 2013/2014 funded by UN Women, New York, which resulted in prepared plans for GRB initiatives by 8 women s NGOs whose capacities were raised for this issue. Financial officers and other stakeholders were also included in certain project activities during advocacy activities. Parallel to this, Fenomena Association has trained financial officers from 32 Serbian towns in basics of gender mainstreaming and gender responsive budgeting. Relevance of GRB was raised during these processes. NGO Women s Center from Uzice Town succeeded in their four-year advocacy campaign based on GRB plan: budget allocations which address needs of women in agriculture were adopted by local government in Meanwhile, Ministry of Finance issued legal obligation according to which all budget users at the central, provincial and local level need to perform transition from the line item budgeting system to program budgeting, starting with 2015, next budget year. This reform intends to bring strategic use of budgets, better coordination of the public policies implementation, improvement of the public services delivery and higher transparency about the use of public funds. Women NGOs see this change as opportunity for GRB initiatives as a very good method of transparency; this is also opportunity for integration of gender perspective in the programme budgeting model. However there are many obstacles for realization of plans on national and local level. *** Fenomena is women-led NGO established in 2006, which started working in social protection sector, and by now expanded mainly to GM (gender mainstreaming), GRB (gender responsive budgeting) and local NGOs' capacities development. Fenomena s mission is improvement of lives' quality of women in Kraljevo, Serbia and in the region, through educational activities, creative initiatives, different forms of logistics support, social services, advocacy and networking. In last 4 years, Fenomena association is working with local governments and local CSOs in sub-national region central, western and southern Serbia and wider regionally in the Balkans. From 2011 we conducted several projects with GM and GRB as appropriate tools for enhancing transparency and democratic character of local governments.

2 Historically looking, the first comparative gender analysis of Republic of Serbia budget was done for 2002 and 2005 and from 2007 to 2009 UNIFEM also supported few projects in Serbia. 1 Fenomena's work in GRB field started in 2010 by participating in project "For poverty reduction: civil society and responsible government" that was conducted by Autonomous women center from Belgrade. During this project women s organisations representatives have passed trainings in budget s process and gender analyses of budget s programs after which they performed specific analysis of local budgets in 6 towns. The results are published in publication For poverty reduction: Gender equality and responsible government, Belgrade, This publication is one part of the efforts women s NGOs perform in raising issue of government s accountability for more efficient and more effective spending, through introducing gender budgeting taking in consideration different positions of women and men and different obstacles preventing them to have equal opportunities to participate in social life and contribute to the development. General conclusions and recommendations were produced 3 : - to render an obligation on collecting, analyzing and transparent reporting, based on sex disaggregated data by local and national government; - to ensure transparency of budgeting process and prepare for transition to program budgeting model according to objectives, activities and expected results with clearly defined indicators for each expenditure: all activities financed from public budget should be evaluated according to effects on women and men, therefore gender indicators need to be included; - to educate local government representatives on gender equality, gender mainstreaming and gender responsive budgeting as tools for development and improving everyday life s quality; - to raise CSOs capacities to follow and to participate in budgeting processes; - to enforce implementation of introduced strategies both on national and local level, etc. These recommendations are still very actual for Republic of Serbia. In 2011 UN WOMEN supported production of the practical tool "GRB3 - Gender responsible budgeting in three steps", by the author Aleksandra Vladisavljevic, and this tool was used as basis for Fenomena s future work, program called GRB in central, western and southern Serbia. Project results (first phase of the program) from 2013/2014: - GRB as a useful transparency tool was introduced strategically for the first time on a subnational level in 8 towns in Serbia - capacities of women-led CSOs were raised in the targeted area - joint regional GRB initiative was publically promoted with the support of Ministry of Finance of Republic of Serbia and feminist economists - local government officials and finance officers from central, western and southern Serbia were gathered for the first time on a thematic sub-national conference - harmonization of program and gender budgeting emerged as useful approach during the final project conference. 1 Information taken from publication "Towards gender budgeting in the Autonomous province of Vojvodina", issued by Provincial Secretariat for Labour, Employment and Gender equality, Novi Sad For poverty reduction: Gender equality and responsible government, AWC, Belgrade, 2010

3 The overall objective of first phase of GRB program was to contribute to development of more active civil society from less developed areas in Serbia to influence local policies and advocate for local gender responsible budgeting processes. Main outcomes of the project are: established coalition of 8 women s organizations from less developed regions of Serbia and raised capacities and willingness to influence polices and budgets at the level of local self-government. Informal women NGOs network was strengthened during the project realization and finally, as a result, consolidated document 4 with 8 local GRB plans was produced. These gender responsive initiatives plans have different perspectives: two initiatives are in agriculture, one for Roma women, two initiatives concerning violence against women, two initiatives concerning women and sport and one initiative concerning system preconditions for GRB. Prepared GRB plans have following objectives: - To analyse transparency of the budgeting process (preparation, implementation and reporting), and to get an overall understanding what policy priorities are going to be financed (Kraljevo town, NGO Fenomena association); - Lobby for budget allocations to address needs of women in agriculture (Uzice town, NGO Women s Center; Pirot municipality, NGO Women of the south); - Lobby for budget allocations to address needs of Roma women and policy priorities defined in Roma action plan that have received no money from the municipal budget (Nis town, NGO Women Space); - To identify how the budget has been spent and how many funds has been allocated for organization dealing with violence against women (Leskovac town, NGO Women for peace and Kragujevac town, NGO Alternative circle); - To analyze how funds are allocated for sport and whether both women and men are benefiting from budget allocations and to address the need of women in sport (Prijepolje municipality, NGO Women s Forum, Novi Pazar town, NGO Culture center Damad ). Different actors were involved and connected during project: women organizations had organized meetings with local government representatives and present their GRB initiatives. GRB initiatives plans have been also presented at the big final regional conference. This was the first time that gender budgeting was made public issue in targeted area, especially in the sense that it was brought as common sub-national initiative. The conference was attended by large number of different stakeholders from 9 towns (NGOs representatives, local governments representatives, local parliaments members, local financial and budget officers, gender equality Councils/Commissions, local social protection institutions, National employment service) and together with feminist economists, national association of towns and municipalities, Ministry of finance representative and foreign organizations/donors. There were 60 participants. 4 GRB plans Gender responsive budget initiatives in Central, Western and Southern Serbia for the period from 2014 to 2016

4 Parallel with this project, Fenomena Association conducted trainings in GRB for financial officers from 32 towns, in cooperation with Ministry of labor s GE Directorate who initiated this activity following their agenda for implementation of GE National action plan. The output is: 70 financial officers from 32 Serbian towns passed trainings in basics of gender mainstreaming and gender responsive budgeting. We see these contacts as a good resource for partnering at local level (of women NGOs and financial officers) and financial officers also showed solid interest for participating at the final conference, as well. It is very important to keep working with representatives of local governments departments to be able to reach solid level of social change. Experience teaches us that it s needed much more work and much more patience until decision makers and/or local town/municipality departments adopt any new approach since the system is very slow and inflexible especially in local level in Serbia. One of the good methods to make this process more effective and efficient is to involve all important stakeholders from the beginning working together on the initiatives and on the change (so the ownership on the topic is distributed equally), and to clearly demonstrate what is the benefit overall and in particular that citizens will have, but that local administration can also benefit from these system changes. One of the challenges which we perceive also as opportunity for further work on GRB initiatives is insufficient capacities of local governments departments for program budgeting (that is relatively new legal obligation in Serbia for both national, provincial and local level which tends to bring more transparent and more logical budgeting according to strategies priorities). The final conference within our project was the first time that the program and gender budgeting were put together on the agenda. To harmonize program and gender budgeting is the next huge step that we need to work on and it s a challenge that we will cope with in the follow up phase. Harmonization of program and gender budgeting is a good method for enhancing transparency and accountability of local government in budgeting processes, and these are also benefits that gender responsible budgeting is bringing to local governments: promotion of gender equality and equal opportunities policies effective use of resources improving public services transparency contribution to the local socio-economic development achieving better results of specific policies through better targeting compliance with policies and recommendations of the EU, as well as the recommendations of the UN (the Beijing Declaration, CEDAW). 5 Still, adopted local policies are not having reflections in budget allocations that would assure proper (or any, in some cases) realization of these policies. It seems as if decision makers at the 5 Practical tool for gender responsive budgeting in three steps ROB3 ( Praktičan alat za rodno odgovorno budžetiranje u tri koraka ROB3 ), author Aleksandra Vladisavljević, first edition issued with the support of UN Women, second edition supported in by Fenomena; page 4; association

5 local level do not see the connection between budget allocations and policies implementation, which is followed by increasing the quality of life of the citizens. This means two things that institutional capacities at local level are still at very low level and that accountability in financing for gender equality at the local level is still missing as in majority cases there is no funding for gender equality and women s rights. In the consolidated report GRB plans Gender responsive budget initiatives in Central, Western and Southern Serbia for the period from 2014 to it can be seen that the problems and needs are still considerable regarding transparency, gender equality and further democratization at the local level: - indolence of local authorities in creating and implementing effective plans and measures that are gender sensitive or regarding minority and multiply marginalized groups such as Roma, persons with disabilities, victims of violence, single parents, women living in rural area, refugees etc.; - already existing programs or budgets are not gender sensitive and thus they further produce inequalities (excellent examples are sport or agriculture allocations where women are large minority beneficiaries of public budget); - the process and methodology of budget creation are non-transparent and it doesn t include citizens; - etc. The author of the report, Aleksandra Vladisavljević, says that: GRB initiatives are still projects initiated only by NGOs, but there are objective chances that the current reform can transform the GRB in the system tool that will be used in budget creation and it s evaluation, both on national and local level. This will not happen by itself and it is necessary to make additional pressure, especially now while the process is ongoing and while program budgeting methodology is being created. Fenomena association is preparing follow up with the aim to set the agenda for harmonisation of program and gender budgeting at local level in central, western and southern Serbia and plan to work with local government s representatives as major target group who already show their interest for these issues. While preparing project proposal Fenomena association communicated with relevant sources and target groups public servants, state officials and NGOs working on the issue and learned that public institutions and staff are not prepared nor do they have needed resources (software, knowledge/trainings etc.) for transition to program based budgeting. Problems connected with implementation of program based budgeting is that this is the most complex type of budget and it s implementation requires a lot of time and resources to be done in the right way. However, main obstacle for realization of our next projects (including implementation of 8 GRB initiatives prepared for the next phase by 8 women s NGOs) is that financing for gender equality is at very low level (from international and national donor s fund for NGO s programs). Second problem that we encountered in preparation of next project is that agency which is officially appointed by Ministry of finance to assist to local governments in the process of transition to 6 Link to report on-line

6 program budgeting are closed for cooperation or, in other words, not interested to integrate gender perspective in program budgeting model at this moment. Nevertheless, we will use 8 women s NGOs coalition s capacities (in central, western and southern Serbia) as far as we can to address the issue of gender perspective integration into program budgeting at local level. Strategically looking it is important to address these issues in cooperation with other relevant entities, institutions and organizations international actors, national and local authorities and CSOs. Relevant example can be: UN Women s plan to make impact on national level in this matter. UN Women has initiated cooperation with the Ministry of Finance with the goal of supporting gender perspective integration in the program budgeting; this activity is relevant for the national level of governance and in particular is oriented to integration of gender perspective in the program budgeting methodology and indicators and preparation of gender sensitive budget instructions, but nevertheless the insights can be used for the local governance level as well. Another relevant example is Autonomous Province Vojvodina Secretariat for economy, employment and gender equality. They have produced gender indicators proposals for all of Secretariats programs, program s activities and projects and are currently in process of negotiation with Provincial Secretariat for Finance. Once their proposals are approved, this example can be used on other level of governance in Serbia. Fenomena is permanently in contact with UN Women s coordinators and other relevant actors whose positive experience in GRB will be incorporated in our future advocacy work on sub-national level. We believe that networking and joint initiatives in GRB framework can produce needed social changes and hope that we can find allies at international level as well.