Gender budget framework needs to be redesigned for strengthened implementation: Experts 

Strengthened implementation of gender budget ensuring gender development and preventing gender-based violence requires increased collaboration between the ministries and collaborated data-based monitoring of budget expenditure, said experts during a budget dialogue. 

Ahead of the national budget, international development organisation Plan International Bangladesh and Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) organised the dialogue titled "National Budget Addressing Gender Based Violence" on Monday (6 June) at Pragati Insurance Building in Karwanbazar, reads a press release.  

During the discussion the discussants said, women's development is at the core of the overall development plan of Bangladesh. In the national budget, the gender budget is allocated for a number of ministries. 

Collective data on the specific expenditure of the ministries preventing child marriage and violence and proper monitoring will play an effective role in reducing gender-based violence through further planning. 

CPD Programme Associate Nadia Nawrin made an introductory presentation at the programme on "Budget Framework Analysis on Challenging Fear of Violence", a recent report produced by Plan International Bangladesh and CPD. 

While presenting the analysis, she said that Bangladesh has made significant progress on several Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This progress is also evident in SDG 5 on gender equality and women's empowerment. 

Despite Bangladesh's remarkable economic progress, violence against women is still widespread and unstoppable. This leads to advocating a proper implementation of the law's provisions through budgetary allocations and funds in the national budget. In this regard, the Government began to formulate a gender budget. However, the budget is not enough to address the existing challenges in the area of violence against women.

The analysis says, apart from budget allocations for gender over the years, there are a large number of projects in action to resolve all the issues related to gender-based violence, however, a lack of synchronisation remains.

The analysis recommended that in order to address and eliminate the fear of violence among girls and women, the current gender budget framework has to be redesigned. Four pillars of the budget framework recommended here include gender-disaggregated data; the participatory budgetary decision-making process; improved expenditure of budget; better revenue mobilisation and utilization. Finally, she said, it is evident that without protecting women and girls from the fear of violence, the

Aroma Dutta MP said the government prioritises the gender budget. 

"There are 36 ministries under which gender budget is allocated. But, for monitoring its proper implementation, we must ensure collective data on the expenditure. This will also support addressing the challenges of the existing laws and acts against gender-based violence," she said. 

The MP also urged a greater campaign against gender-based violence. 

Plan International Bangladesh Girls' Rights Director Kashfia Feroz said the fear of violence exists everywhere- from home to public space. 

"In a recent survey of Plan International Bangladesh, we have found that 35% of the survey participants believe sexual harassment is one main reason behind child marriage, while 25.6% believe parents marry their daughter off at a young age due to fear of violence. 62% parents shared that they fear sending their daughters to school picnic while 54.1% fathers fear sending their daughters to private tutors due to the same fear."

Plan International Bangladesh has done the budget framework analysis to understand the reflection in the national budget addressing the fear of violence against women, she said adding, "We have a National Plan of Action to address gender-based violence. But we do not have the data on the specific expenditure which directly works on the issue. We want to see the specific data to monitor the implementation." 

CPD Executive Director Fahmida Khatun said fear is an intangible thing which makes it difficult to reflect in the budget. 

She also urged ensuring budget allocation to ensure strengthened implementation of existing laws and acts preventing gender-based violence. 

Among others, Bangladesh Mahila Parishad General Joint General Secretary Shima Moslem, Dhaka University Women and Gender Studies Faculty Prof Dr Tania Haque, Brac Gender, Justice and Diversity (GJD) Director Nobonita Chowdhury and Sharmind Neelormi, associate professor of Economics at Jahangirnagar University were present as discussants.