By Nsan Ndoma-Neji, Calabar
A research, advocacy and capacity development group operating under the aegis of Center for Gender Economics Initiative, CGE Africa, has advocated fo the mainstreaming of gender into budgets of Ministries, Departments and Agencies, MDAs, during their planning process to avoid gender discrimination.
Executive director of CGE Africa, Uchenna Idoko, made the advocacy on behalf of the group, during the training workshop for 30 officials of MDAs in Calabar yesterday.
The NGO charged government at all levels to focus their attention on the implementation of projects that will bring economic equality among all genders.
Idoko said, “You cannot tell women that your government will provide gender equality and you reneged at the end of the day.
“Policy statements and promises need to be funded.
“When promised and policy statements are funded, you can be sure of prevention and mitigation of sexual and gender based violence.
“My message to Cross River State government is that there is no budget that is gender neutral. They should mainstream gender into those numbers that they ask the right questions to unpack the budget in every ministry.
“They should ask who this budget is for. Is it bringing women and men, who are they working for. Are female workers discriminated against? How about maternity leave?
“What is going on with female inmates who are in the correctional centres? They should start putting gender lines in all the projects.”
The executive director averred that with action planning on gender-responsive budgeting, sexual and gender-based violence SGBV, can be prevented and mitigated.
She added, “It is on the basis of this, that we urge you to employ a
comprehensive approach in the allocation of resources based on the unique needs of different genders for equitable society.
“Ours is to see both genders carried along in the area of resources distribution for egalitarian society. This is why we engage with policy makers, executives and the community to create innovative solutions for achievement of economic equality, advancing work, and
creating financial security for women.
“We promote the consideration of gender economic inequalities and find out exactly how they can be resolved by people of all genders in the economy.”
She stressed that with application of the knowledge gained at the training workshop, there is bound to be tremendous turnaround in MDAs, stressing that past experience in states where government officials underwent the same training witnessed a turned around.
She said, “Our experience in some other places, that we had this kind of training before, we later had beautiful stories. We want to hear those in places of authority say; ‘we have implemented what we discussed here in this training workshop.’
“We start hearing now that Ministry of Women Affair had already told us that they will do memo to collect their money for their shelter.
“Our expectation is that after this training, participants should start looking at their budgets as no longer data and numbers but lives of people.
“In education for instance, you will know that if you don’t provide money for guidance and counselors, they won’t be anyone to do psycho-social support for children when they get violated by their parents, loved ones and even by teachers.
“Same thing in sports, same thing in tourism, all these waiters and waitresses in hospitality sites of tourism, go through a lot of sexual-based violence and harassment. We need to work towards preventing it.”
