Japan Women in Development Fund Guidelines as of June 2006
Introduction
UNDP’s overarching goal is to contribute to halving
the proportion of people in poverty by 2015, a goal that has been
widely adopted in the international development community, including
the OECD/DAC in which Japan plays a significant role. UNDP and Japan
have been working closely to reduce poverty and achieve sustainable
human development. In the age of rapid globalization, governments are
faced with many emerging challenges and they require multi- faceted
assistance from the international development community. To maximize
value-added contributions, UNDP has shifted its focus to the areas of
policy support, institution building, and advocacy. By addressing poverty
in ways that it does best and knows best, UNDP intends to expand the
scope of partnerships with donor and programme governments, civil society,
the private sector and the poor themselves.
UNDP's Commitment to Gender Equality
More than half of the world’s poorest are women. Gender
equality is, therefore, a critical element of poverty reduction policies,
programmes and operations. UNDP is committed to incorporating gender
equality considerations in its own policy, operations and internal procedures
to support and advance gender equality goals in all projects and programmes.
It has successfully systematized an applied policy methodology for gender
mainstreaming and built a global gender network. It also supports governments
to develop gender-mainstreamed national policies, strategies, and institutions
that ensure equitable access by men and women to resources and promote
the empowerment of women to encourage their participation in development.
(Detailed strategies are discussed in the “UNDP
Corporate Gender Strategy and Action Plan” (MS Word))
Japan-UNDP Partnership for Gender Equality
Sharing the common goal of achieving gender equality
for sustainable human development, Japan and UNDP have built a strong
partnership through the Japan Women in Development Fund (JWIDF).
Yet there is much more to be done to achieve gender equality, as was
reiterated by the international community during the Beijing plus 10
Review and 2005 World Summit. JWIDF will continue to play a critical
role in efforts towards poverty reduction, human development, and gender
equality. JWIDF’s accumulated good practices and lessons learned serve
as an important knowledge source for advocacy and policy support. The
promotion of field-level collaboration with Japan has expanded opportunities
and maximized project impact. Exchanges with Japanese development partners
through the joint organization of gender mainstreaming workshops, public
events, and policy-level roundtables have provided a good knowledge-networking
opportunity and broadened the scope for Japan-UNDP collaboration. This
substantive collaboration and exchanges should be reinforced to best
contribute to the shared goals of gender equality and poverty reduction.
In addition, the Tokyo Agenda for Action adopted during TICAD II in
1998, with its overarching goal of poverty reduction, emphasizes gender
mainstreaming as one of the cross-cutting themes. JWIDF, therefore,
operates in support of the implementation of this Agenda by African
countries.
General Criteria and Priority Areas for JWIDF Support
General
Criteria
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Results-oriented:
Clear strategy and success indicators for best possible results.
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Cost-sharing:
UNDP country offices will be requested to commit resources.
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Technical
capacities of implementing entities.
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Potential
for replication, especially in the South-South cooperation context.
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Strategic
partnerships, in particular with Japanese partners, for best results
and new development opportunities.
Priority
Areas
UNDP
provides windows for developing countries to influence global trends
and benefit from knowledge on critical dimensions of sustainable human
development in order to reduce national poverty and human inequity.
JWIDF contributes through the following priority areas
of support:
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Political empowerment and participation
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Economic empowerment of women
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Post-conflict development
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IT for development
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Priority areas of Japan’s WID Initiative* (education,
health, and economic/social participation of women), in which UNDP
has a clear advantage (e.g. HIV/AIDS, IT education etc.)
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Support to the implementation of the Tokyo Agenda
for Action of the TICAD II
* The Government of Japan has recently launched
the Gender and Development Initiative that replaces the WID Initiative.
For details, please see
http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/oda/category/wid/gad.html
UNDP
primarily provides support for the above priority areas through the
following types of interventions:
-
Global
advocacy and analysis to generate knowledge on gender equality,
build alliances, and promote gender-mainstreamed frameworks on key
development issues.
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Policy
advice and dialogue drawing on the global network of policy specialists
and external partners.
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Knowledge
networking, sharing good practices, and capacity building for the
empowerment of women and gender equality.
1. Political Empowerment and Participation
By addressing
the political empowerment of women and their equal participation at
all levels of decision-making, UNDP seeks to make significant policy
impact in the area of national legislation for women’s rights and their
equal participation in democratic processes. In particular, UNDP contributes
to women’s participation in local governance and advocates political
space that brings women’s leadership to influence decision-making. This
work relates to the implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action
and CEDAW. The services that UNDP can provide include: support and advice
on legal literacy; support to government and CSO reporting requirements
to CEDAW; and support to capacity building for female parliamentarians,
legislature, and judiciaries on women’s human rights and violence against
women.
Most importantly, UNDP promotes gender issues in support of democratic
governance. Knowledge networking among field-based and headquarters
gender specialists and focal points, as well as with external experts,
plays a crucial role. This network contributes to the global knowledge
base on such critical issues as women’s ownership rights, land rights,
political leadership, men’s role in support of gender equality and affirmative
action. Policy dialogue rooted in countries’ best practices and cross-regional
exchange of experiences moves forward the development agenda in the
following areas:
2. IT for Development
UNDP has signed a Memorandum of Agreement with ITU
and UNIFEM that provides the policy framework for action on gender equality
and ICTs. In the larger IT initiative that UNDP spearheads, women’s
access to technologies and services is a critical issue at the country
level. However, UNDP also plays a global advocacy role in supporting
the review of IT policies with a gender perspective. In addition to
successful actions supported by UNDP in some countries where women have
developed creative use of IT, there is an overall need for women’s increased
knowledge of the use and potentials of IT connectivity. Sample JWIDF
activities include:
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Contribution of a gender perspective in the global
policy dialogue on ICTs for development.
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Capacity building for women’s IT connectivity,
Web design skills and innovative use of ICT for networking, e-commerce,
global advocacy for corporate social responsibility, participation
in virtual learning and in South/South partnerships to influence
global debates on critical issues such as trade and finance.
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Partnership and pilot initiatives to pool, process
and share knowledge and expertise: virtual reference system on gender
and ICT.
3. Post- Conflict Development
UN Security Council resolution 1325 points out that
solutions should be sought in empowering women, so that they may reach
equal decision-making power. The resolution states that this is the
best means to integrate women’s interests into conflict resolution and
peace building. UNDP has a significant role to play in the implementation
of this resolution, within the inter-agency framework, and its own activities
to address conflict situations and post-conflict reconstruction processes.
UNDP seeks to develop tools, including data collection especially through
NHDR indicators, in order to construct analyses on the impact of conflicts
and crises on the status of women. It is also developing its work on
mainstreaming gender concerns in post conflict situations into the areas
of governance, institution building, implementation of human rights
treaties, and covenants and economic reconstruction at all levels. Poverty
eradication is the underlying context of all post-conflict interventions.
Therefore, UNDP interventions focus on:
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Collection
of data disaggregated by sex and preparation of analyses of
the status of women in conflict and post-conflict situations.
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Institution-building
for the protection and promotion of women’s human rights, including
legislation review and development, training of the judiciary and
other law enforcement institutions, and advocacy and partnership
building between actors of the civil society.
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Supporting
women’s participation in dialogue and processes for peace building
and development.
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Economic
empowerment of women.
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Advocacy
and awareness-building for HIV/AIDS.
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Strengthening
and coordinating UN inter-agency cooperation in the implementation
of the UN Security Council resolution 1325.
4. Economic Empowerment of Women.
Economic empowerment of women
is crucial in achieving pro-poor economic growth. Poverty eradication
is at the center of UNDP concerns in promoting issues of gender equality
to develop national policies and strategies for sustainable economic
development and growth.
UNDP produces and disseminates policy briefs and advocacy tools for
initiatives worldwide in support of: financial accountability; national
accounting for women’s paid and unpaid work; macro-economic policies
that create an environment for women’s economic empowerment and businesses;
gender sensitive national budgets; and more opportunities for fair trading
on the global market (i.e., through e-commerce and participation in
trade fairs). Sample products include:
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Gender budget initiatives.
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Gender-sensitive statistics
and trend analysis.
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Macro-economic frameworks
for gender equality.
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Poverty eradication strategies
through women’s entrepreneurship and e-commerce.
Management Arrangements
Management
Streamlined management arrangements
are in place to ensure timely and strategic use of and accountability
of JWIDF resources:
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JWIDF is located in the UNDP
Gender Team in Bureau for Development Policy and is administered
in collaboration with the Bureau for Resources and Strategic Partnerships
in accordance with the cost-sharing agreement with the Government
of Japan.
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JWIDF Fund Manager coordinates
overall activities.
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UNDP country offices consult
respective Japan Embassies on projects in their application process
to the JWIDF.
Monitoring and Reporting Requirements
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For country-based projects,
UNDP country offices are requested to monitor progress against their
work plan, and to submit six-monthly progress reports and a completion
report to the BDP.
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For regional and global projects,
relevant UNDP offices are requested to monitor progress against
their work plan, and to submit six-monthly progress reports and
a completion report to the BDP.
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BDP submits to Japan an annual
report on JWIDF activities.
Public Relations
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UNDP country offices are encouraged
to include budgets for record-keeping activities (e.g. photography,
filming, production of a brochure etc) in their projects for a public
relations purpose. Photos and videotapes should be shared with BDP.
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BDP organizes an annual public
event in Japan to disseminate findings and build public constituencies.
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