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

The review was carried out autumn 2008 by Norad in cooperation with Regional Swedish-NorwegianHIV/AIDS team and one local consultant.The selected areas of the portfolio were budget support, human rights, LRF and Legal Aid Clinic,Conservation Agriculture and Gender UN.The review conclusion is that mainstreaming remains a challenge, both when it comes to gendermainstreaming and HIV/AIDS mainstreaming. Gender analysis capacity at the embassy was not usedby the other desk officers, and more emphasis could be placed on working on gender issues in thegeneral budget support implementation and policy dialogue.EthiopiaThe review was carried out in January 2009, and looked at GM in natural resources management andthe environment portfolio of the embassy as well as university collaboration. The review found that GMwas in place for most of the projects in the design phase of the programmes, but that they were weakeron actual implementation and reporting on WRGE.The embassy staff seemed to work too independently from each other, not benefitting from in-housecompetence in WRGE. This led to a situation where the embassy missed out on opportunities topromote WRGE more systematically.Common findings:Mainstreaming as a problem. The following points were mentioned in the review from Zambia, butare more or less also relevant for the other two reviews.o The responsibility for mainstreaming must be placed at the management levelo Sufficient and relevant gender/AIDS expertise at the embassy level with a clear mandateand organisational location, a gender adviser must know the development cooperationsystem, be proactive in putting gender and AIDS on the agenda. Everyone has theresponsibility for mainstreaming, not just the gender advisero Internal and external demand for results on gender and AIDSo The general experiences - the work on women and gender equality is not systematicallyinstitutionalised and the organisations are dependent on individual expertise and efforts.(Reduction in staff – mainstreaming of gender/AIDS will suffer)Emphasis on gender - There should also be a stronger emphasis on women and gender, and there isa need to strengthen the implementation of the policies and increase the resources towardswomen’s rights and gender equality. This should be done by including women and genderconcerns within all sectors of cooperation and visualise this in the project documents, AnnualReports, Strategic Plan, Activity Plan and in project reviews.Integration of gender aspects - The embassies should facilitate better cross-fertilisation andintegration of gender issues in the work, both within the embassy itself and with partners. Therecommendations from the Zambia review could also be useful for others:o Peer review: in this way different programme officers could use their own competenceto give input to documents and discussions in different sectors, and thematic meetingscould stimulate cross-fertilisation between programmeso Facilitate dialogues on practical examples on how to enhance gender integration intoother programmes, for example in relation to agriculture and human rights’organisations.Internal cooperation: need for proper backing and competence-building regarding mainstreaming,trying to avoid that each programme officer works more or less in isolation. Bettermainstreaming requires good internal cooperation. Need for training in gender, sexual andreproductive rights and HIV, and on tools and approaches that may be used in order to enhancemainstreaming and analyse the effect of gender and AIDS on the different programmes33