The PRSP in Bangladesh

The Royal Netherlands Embassy (RNE) Dhaka has made efforts – together with other stakeholders - to bring a gender perspective into the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) of Bangladesh. The role of the gender unit, through which the RNE worked, contains three stages:

2002: Direct influence of process and orientation of the Interim-PRSP

Through pro-active and timely networking and donor harmonisation, the Gender Unit played a crucial role in organising and disseminating the information about the contents and consultation process of the Interim-PRSP. As chairperson of the consultative donor group working on gender equality (LCG-WAGE) RNE mobilised its core members engaging in macro-economic issues – RNE, DFID, CIDA, World Bank - and lobbied actively to the inclusion of gender issues on the agenda of a PRSP seminar organised by the Government of Bangladesh, IMF and the World Bank. The embassy invited the former gender advisor of the RNE Tanzania to give a presentation on the process of engendering PRSP in Tanzania during the seminar. The core group lobbied also successfully that a strategic number of knowledgeable women from government, NGOs, research and donor organisations attended this first workshop.

Before and after the seminar the LCG-WAGE subgroup organised three stand-alone sessions with the gender experts and activists present at the seminar, to prepare the participants for the seminar, and to align their reactions on the outcome of the seminar. They chose strategies to broaden the lobbying beyond the donor community and to have Bangladeshi stakeholders more involved, by creating a shadow task force of mainstream NGOs and women’s organisations to watch the PRSP process and outcome. A macro-economist was co-funded by RNE, to deepen the gender analysis.

2003: Facilitating a professional gender analysis of the Interim-PRSP

The report of the Interim-PRSP however was a disappointment. The report did not systematically address inequalities, as was brought out by the LCG-WAGE macro-economic core group. Immediately after the publication of the Interim-PRSP LCG-WAGE hired two macro-economists to make a gender analysis of the report and to propose and discuss amendments with experts and activists in Bangladesh. The assignment put emphasis on macroeconomic issues, because they were considered the least gender sensitive sections of the Interim-PRSP (e.g. fiscal policies, monetary policies, indicators for employment and wage differentials, reforms and privatisation, pricing of utilities and cuts in public expenditure, gender budget analyses). It makes suggestions for the inclusion of gender issues in the contents of the full PRSP and for indicators to monitor implementation from a gender perspective. The conclusions of these consultants were discussed in workshops with gender and PRSP experts (from donor organisations, WB and IMF, Ministries of Women’s and Children’s Affairs, Planning, Finance), NGOs and research institutions.

2004: Facilitating contributions of Bangladeshi stakeholders to the full PRSP

In the stage of writing the full PRSP the roles of the donor community changed drastically. MOWCA became the centre of lobby and action and was in charge of associating the private sector, civil society and NGOs in the contents. The LCG-WAGE now had to take a technical, advisory role rather than one of a donor representative. A gender lobby group ‘Gender and PRSP Group’ (GPG) was formed, from which the Gender Unit of RNE became a member, to pursue the gender analysis and to propose justified priorities for all the sectors, in the form of a matrix elaborating issues, priority actions, objectives, responsible institutions and timeframe.

The outcome was that almost all the contributions of the GPG have been incorporated in the policy matrix of the draft PRSP, however, still as a separate matrix. Another specific role of the RNE in this stage was to fund the consultancy services of a writing member on behalf of MOWCA. Both the funding and the choice of the person have been strategic. In addition RNE has decided to support financially the formalisation of the work of GPG for three years (together with CIDA).

The remaining work consists of incorporating the gender issues in the relevant sectoral chapters of the PRSP and policy matrix. Besides, the GPG becomes faced with the task of monitoring the implementation of PRSP.

Enabling factors

The fact that RNE Dhaka is still keeping a special budget for supporting women’s empowerment has enabled the gender advisors to fund some interventions that were considered necessary to proceed. This case also shows that effectiveness of policy influence is very much determined by knowledge, overview, commitment and funding. Constant presence and continuous appeal plus the reporting keep the agenda alive. A reality is that strengths and opportunities, weaknesses and threats are often linked to personal commitment and team work. These two matters have determined the success of the effort to engender the PRSP in Bangladesh.

Source: Zuidberg.