The aim of the project is to help promoting gender equality through gender responsive budgeting (GRB), in light of European experience and good practices. It is part of the implementation of the Morocco-EU Action Plan, particularly in the field of promoting women’s/gender rights and public finance management and control.
In Morocco, mainstreaming gender in the budget preparation and implementation process is part of the overall framework of gender equality reforms.
Context
The establishment of GRB began in the 2000s, with a World Bank study on the integration of the gender approach in the budgets of ministry departments. This study produced a reference document on the ministry departments able to integrate GRB into their strategic planning.
Following a partnership concluded in 2002 between the Moroccan Ministry of Economy and Finance and UN Women on the consolidation of the institutionalisation of GRB, Morocco was among the first countries to produce a report on gender, annexed to the economic and financial report communicated to the Parliament on the occasion of the preparation of the annual finance act.
Morocco is also a member of the IMF-led Gender Equality Community of Practices of finance ministers and is also a signatory to the outcome document of the Third International Conference on development funding, mentioning the promotion of gender equality and gender responsive budgeting in its articles 6 and 30.
Action Plan
This contribution to the implementation of gender responsive budgeting in the planning and programming of ministry departments seeks three main results, divided into three components:
1. Strengthening the institutional capacities of the GRB Centre of Excellence (CE-BSG), through the development of a diagnosis including recommendations with regards to the Moroccan context and European good practices;
2. Dialogue and exchange on the anchoring of GRB within the Moroccan budgeting process through the contribution to the sharing and clarification of CE-BSG missions in light of European experiences and good practices identified in the diagnosis;
3. Assistance to prefigurative ministry departments in the implementation of requirements aimed at integrating the gender aspect in their performance projects.
This project aims to bring stakeholders to work together on the subject of gender responsive budgeting (GRB) at national level.
Expected results
The proposed action is likely to have an impact on the CE-BSG, through the three proposed components of diagnosis, identification of European good practices, as well as operational work on declension in prefigurative departments.
This proposal is likely to have leverage at several levels:
• In Morocco, in all national ministry departments, but also at local level in municipalities.
• In France, thanks to possible improvements in gender responsive budgeting.
• Other multiplier effects can also be anticipated in the framework of Morocco’s multilateral cooperation with other Member States wishing to implement gender responsive budgeting, as well as with other States that are sensitive to this issue on other continents (Mexico, Paraguay, Uganda, Tanzania…).
The expected results of the proposed action will be institutionally and politically sustainable in two respects. On the one hand, they are intended to be registered under the finance act, therefore with the institutional legitimacy necessary to establish their sustainability. On the other hand, the positioning of the CE-BSG legitimises this administrative organisation.
Partners and mobilised expertise
This twinning involves the Directorate General of Social Cohesion (DGCS) of the French Ministry of Solidarities and Health, the Directorate of Budget (DB), the High Council for Gender Equality (HCEfh), local communities and European experts from the Institute for Gender Equality of Belgium and the Austrian Ministry of Health and Women’s Rights.
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