How Kyrgyzstan can attract finance through gender equality

December 15, 2021

Official development assistance from developed countries for developing countries reached $161 billion in 2020. $53 billion in bilateral assistance went to gender equality in 2018-2019. Kyrgyzstan can mobilize aid for its development if it focuses on gender equality within the framework of the Integrated National Financing Framework (INFF).

Starting in mid-2020, the Kyrgyz government, together with UNDP and UNICEF, has been developing an INFF to improve the efficiency, effectiveness, and transparency in the use of public funds and governance of private finance to support the implementation of Kyrgyzstan’s National Development Strategy and the Sustainable Development Goals.

UN Women and UNDP have developed guidelines to enable countries to integrate gender equality in the INFF process. It provides seven recommendations for governments:

#1. Prioritize mainstreaming of gender equality throughout the INFF, in line with and to support delivery on existing gender and sustainable development commitments.

#2. Establish transparent, consultative dialogues on INFF process which explicitly include women’s organizations and national gender machinery.

#3. Integrate gender analysis at earliest stages of national financing assessments to strengthen the potential for alignment between gender equality commitments and targets in national development plans and the anticipated financing framework.

#4. Identify opportunities – in partnership with civil society, academia and/or development partners – to conduct supplemental gender analyses of financing flows and thematic areas.

#5. Consider the development of a national gender financing profile to provide supplemental analysis of financing flows with a gender perspective and the potential financing policies and instruments to best drive financing to gender equality objectives.

#6. Propose ways to integrate capacity strengthening for design and delivery of gender-responsive financing instruments and policies, based on gender analysis of fiscal policies and financing flows.

#7. Consider steps to strengthen national data and statistical systems to collect and present sex-disaggregated data on financing.

A number of developing countries have already begun to integrate a gender perspective in the development of INFF mechanisms. For example: Cape Verde, one of the early adopters of the INFF, is creating a gender finance profile to analyze financial flows in more detail through a gender lens. The profile will identify possible financial instruments for mobilizing and agreeing financial resources to achieve gender equality.

Given that official development assistance is increasing its funding to achieve gender equality, Kyrgyzstan may attract additional funding in sectors that can enhance gender equality.