Mid-Term Review of the Norwegian Action Plan for Women's ... - Norad

example of this is the Christian Michelsen Institute (CMI), which is a partner to research organisationsin Mozambique on a joint research project of gender and poverty analysis, and Centre for InternationalHealth (CIH), University of Oslo, which is a partner in a joint research project on maternal health inMalawi.There is no way the review team can make a sound judgement as to what extent the Gender budget linehas contributed to increased gender equality financing in other budget lines, or has replaced suchfunding.The State Auditor General (Riksrevisjonen) is conducting a review of the gender budget line in 2009,and more information will then be available. What we can see is that although over 300 Mill NOK intotal has been funded for WRGE through the gender budget line in 2007 and 2008, there are noindications of a general reduction of gender markers on the other budget lines. There was a slightdecrease in the gender maker for gender as main objective, and we have not been able to substantiatewhat caused such a decline.4.4 Is the Gender budget line catalytic?It is impossible to give a clear answer on this question given the limited documentation available. Toanswer this question would require much more in-depth analysis of individual projects. It seems fromthe overall picture given by the list of approved projects that most of the individual projects target oneof the priority areas in the GEAP, but that they do so by providing funding for women’s rights. Asgender mainstreaming has not been a target for the budget line, or criteria for allocation of funds, it isdifficult to use the concept of catalytic in the sense of gender mainstreaming. Catalytic would then haveto mean developing projects that may mature to full scale projects that can be funded by other budgetlines. This is an interesting question, but not one that can be answered with current data and time lines.The MFA is advised to develop more detailed guidelines, and designate what they mean with catalyticand innovative.Since 50 % of the funds go to or through the UN 8 ; one could imagine that these funds could have beenprovided over other budget lines. This is not studied in detail, and the conclusion could also be that thegender budget line has given MFA the necessary flexibility for rapid response to requests. However,there are budget items that one would expect to have been funded by other budgets lines had thegender budget line not existed, such as the UNFPA/UNICEF FGM and Fistula Funds. GIL/GU hasexpressed the view that UN probably will decrease in importance as recipient as other recipients will bepositioned to apply for funds form the budget line.The embassies have mainly funded UN/UNIFEM or local NGOs, while a few of them have fundedresearch. The embassies do not seem to have used the funds for developing activities that may matureinto projects and programmes that may be funded over other budget lines; nor have they fundedactivities for gender mainstreaming in programme activities as this was not included in the criteria forallocation of funds.It is also impossible to state clearly to what extent the Gender budget line replace other funds, orcompliment other budget lines. For the funds that go through the embassies, there is an indication thatwomen targeted projects are moved from the regional budget line to the Gender budget line, andaccording to Norad summing up note (May 2009) only 1,5 % of the embassies budgets now targetwomen and gender equality 9 . The reason for this might be that the embassies are under great pressurefrom MFA to reduce the number of projects and agreements. Moving the women targeted projects tothe Gender budget line might be a way of protecting funds for these projects. The alternative might be amore drastic reduction in women targeted projects at embassy level.8 This includes both funds directly to UN agencies, and through embassies allocation of the gender budget line to UNcountry programmes.9 The Review Team has not looked into the details of this, as the information came late in the review process.30