UNICEF and UNWOMEN build capacity on child and gender-sensitive budgeting in Cameroon.

Under the joint Programme of the SDG Fund Financing, UNWOMEN, UNICEF and UNDP is supporting the Government of Cameroon to prepare child and gender sensitive annual and mid-term plans and budgets. This is part of the UN wide support to establish an Integrated National Financing Framework for development in the country aligned with the Paris Declaration to harmonize development aid to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). From August 17 to 20, 2021, total of 30 participants from the social sector such as health, education, and social affairs ministries under the leadership of the Ministry in charge of Women (MINPROFF), came together to carry out a workshop to improve skill sets to incorporate child and gender sensitive practices in the Planning, Programming, Budgeting and Monitoring-Evaluation (PPBS) national mechanisms for the upcoming 2022 state budget preparation due to be submitted to Parliament in November 2021.

UNICEF shared its experience through the findings of the recent Public Expenditure Tracking Survey in Health, Education, Nutrition and Wash, as well as presented performance indicators that could be adopted to ensure the needs of women and children are monitored against resources allocated. UNICEF and UN Women current engagement with the government includes continued effort to support the development of the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) to be child and gender responsive, promoting efficiency and effectiveness of domestic resources, and technical support to the central public finance reform to improve transparency and accountability measures for improved budget execution and service delivery.

Plans are in motion for the remaining of the year and into 2022 with the Ministry of Finance, to provide technical support in budget and expenditure classification to allow for better identification of resources utilized for children and women for improved monitoring and evaluation, development of a citizen budget execution report to increase social accountability and budget execution, and revision of the methodology for producing gender and child sensitive budget monitoring indicators for improved planning and budgeting in the future.

By Sylvain Mebara