Towards Gender Equality: Mainstreaming Gender in Development Planning Commission and Planning & Development Divisions

UNIFEM and Planning Commission along with concerned departments in collaboration with Ministry of Women Development is planning to contributes towards Gender Equality in Pakistan through strengthening gender mainstreaming processes within government. The goal of this intervention is to contribute to the improvement of women’s human rights, health, education and economic empowerment in Pakistan through the promotion and strengthening of equitable development processes and the reinforcement of gender mainstreaming initiatives in all tiers of government (federal, provincial and local government levels).

The overall aim of this intervention is to build the capacity of government officials to enhance mainstreaming gender in the formulation, implementation and monitoring & evaluation of government plans, programs and projects in all areas of development. It aims to mainstream gender in the policy and project preparation processes of Ministries and Departments through strategic intervention at the Planning Commission (PC) and Planning and Development Departments (P&DD) focusing on the strengthening of policy and project preparation processes to include gender considerations, as well as building the capacity of staff to engage in sectoral operations in a gender sensitive manner.

To build the necessary background and analysis for the development of a new programmatic framework, GoP and UNIFEM will undertake in this planning phase a series of reviews and analysis of

- the present mechanisms for collection and management of data related to government programs will recommend ways of strengthening this in order to ensure it is possible to monitor and track progress along gender lines as part of a new medium term phase

- the rules of business of key stakeholder ministries around gender mainstreaming and its accountability throughout the planning and development process to help identify specific focused strategies to strengthen accountability around gender mainstreaming

This joint initiative between the Federal and Provincial governments, the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and CIDA supports the commitments that the Government of Pakistan (GoP) has made to promote gender equality. These include the commitment to the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), ratified by Pakistan in 1996. The proposed project is in line with UNIFEM’s global strategy which emphasises supporting countries to advance gender equality and women’s empowerment in line with their national priorities.

Within this 10 months time frame, this project seeks to contribute towards the achievement of the following outcomes (taken form the CIDA PAGE logframe):

Outcome 1: Mechanisms and procedures for systematic gender mainstreaming and accountability adopted.

Outcome 2: Improved capacity of mid-level P&D officials to integrate gender analysis into the project cycle

Outcome 3: User friendly gender disaggregated data and best practices on gender mainstreaming applied in government policies, plans and programs.

In the context of the UN Delivering as One pilot in Pakistan, UNIFEM is committed to support the UN system to deliver around gender equality and at the same time strengthen the accountability around this. It will specifically contribute towards the draft joint programme framework of the Agriculture, Rural needs and poverty alleviation with particular attention to MDG pro poor policies and institutional strengthening.