Kudzai Makombe

Zimbabwe, is not among the 115 countries that have signed the Paris Declaration. Yet the country remains in a political crisis and has suffered strained relations with donors.
As governments, donors and civil society activists gather in Accra, Ghana for the 3rd High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, women’s rights organisations and activists say the declaration does not sufficiently address women’s concerns.

“Aid cannot be deemed effective unless it tackles this central issue,” Actionaid, an international civil society organisation, asserts in its ‘ten point plan for real aid reform’, published ahead of the Accra gathering.

The Accra Forum comes in the backdrop of the Paris Declaration based on the understanding that the conditions set for receiving aid are difficult for poor countries and that the process of transacting aid are expensive.

It calls on donors and recipients to uphold the five key principles that include ownership of development plans by recipient countries; donor alignment to these plans; harmonisation of aid flows; mutual accountability and; that resources and decision-making are managed for results.

The implementation of the Paris Declaration is also aligned to the achievement of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.

Looking at the case of Zimbabwe, the country is not among the 115 countries that have signed the Paris Declaration. Yet the country remains in a political crisis and has suffered strained relations with donors since the 2000 land invasions. Donor support to Zimbabwe has remained focused on humanitarian aid.

For the gender equality and women’s empowerment sector, funding has been steadily declining since the early 1990s and especially after the 2000 fast track land reform programme.

This has been combined with a weakening public sector and civil society’s inability to genuinely make a difference to the lives of women. Both civil society organisations and the national gender machinery, the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, Gender and Community Development, were severely underfunded. In the 2007 national budget, for example, the ministry was allocated 0.7 per cent of the budget.

However, this is set to change following a joint initiative by donors funding the country’s gender equality and women’s empowerment sector, the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and civil society actors.

The donors – the UK’s Department for International Development (DFiD), Swedish International Development Aid (SIDA), Canadian International Development Aid (CIDA), the European Union (EU) and the United States Agency for International Aid (USAID), came together as the donor steering group, together with UNIFEM and commissioned a study to assess the gender equality sector.

“Donors wanted to get a sense of what was happening in the gender sector that they had been contributing to. They had been getting their individual reports,” said Ndanatsei Tawamba, Gender Equality Officer at UNIFEM’s Harare Project Office. “However, at community level there was limited information on how programming was having an impact.”

The study came after successful lobbying by women’s rights activists for the enactment of the Domestic Violence Act. On this basis, the Women’s Coalition —a grouping of women’s rights organisations — and individual activists at the forefront of lobbying for the Act, were able to mobilise the EU to fund their membership programmes and projects.

The funding will be disbursed through UNIFEM, identified by the EU as fund manager and technical advisor. To further draw on the principles of the Paris Declaration, DFiD also contributed £50 000 in funding to be used by UNIFEM and the Women’s Coalition to develop a national working strategy and implementation plan for the gender equality and women’s empowerment sector. This strategy will inform the sector for the next three years and is intended to provide some coherence and coordination.

Under the Paris Declaration’s alignment principle, donors would normally provide direct budgetary support to a national government based on that country’s development priorities and national action plan. Because the government of Zimbabwe is not a signatory to the declaration, the strategy and working plan that is being developed by civil society organisations will act as the National Gender Action Plan and donors will align their funding accordingly.

“We are expecting that donors will pour funds into the basket fund for the sector once the national strategy is completed,” said Eunice Njovana, coordinator for UNIFEM’s Zimbabwe project office.

“The UN’s technical expertise is neutral and objective and can allow UNIFEM to work across different parties and interests since it has excellent and well articulated financial accounting systems,” she explained.

UNIFEM-Zimbabwe has learnt lessons in funds management from UNIFEM and other UN agencies in other parts of the world, especially in Kenya.
But with Zimbabwe in a limbo as strained power sharing negotiations continue between the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and the two Movement for Democratic Change (MDC of Morgan Tsvangirai and MDC of Arthur Mutambara), the question that has to be asked is what role, if any, a future government will play.

So far, government through the national gender machinery and other ministries, such as Justice, has been involved in the process of strategy development for the women’s empowerment sector. The 2004 National Action Plan, developed by the national machinery together with civil society partners, has been one of the key policy documents, together with regional, continental and international policy frameworks, informing the strategy development process.

“UNIFEM does not replace government role or responsibility but ensures strengthening of commitment to fulfill international commitments and obligations,” Njovana explained.

The approach being taken by donors and civil society organisations also sets the stage for government to enter into sector wide approaches (SWAPS) once a mutually and widely accepted power sharing structure is agreed.

Donors, the UN and civil society have adopted a basket funding approach to orphans and vulnerable children, culture, HIV and AIDS as well as other sectors.

The European Union funding for the Women’s Coalition is expected to come on board by the start of November. This, together with the potential of a growing basket of funds and a clear strategy, should hopefully result in an improvement in women’s lives.

Already, many civil society organisations and the communities are breathing a sigh of relief over the lifting of a ban on the field operations of non-governmental organisations that had been enforced ahead of the June presidential runoff election.