On Wednesday, December 23rd 2015, members of WPN had a meeting with representatives of gender-sensitive budgeting units from seven municipalities in Serbia, in order to discuss the good practice examples of municipal budget initiatives. In her opening word, the Coordinator of WPN Vera Paunović reminded the participants that gender-sensitive budgeting had become an integral part of budget for 2016 thanks to the Law on Budgetary System. She underlined that she saw this as a great success of all women MPs in our Parliament.
“Today, we’re meeting you, representatives of units from seven municipalities who have attended the trainings of UN Women and European Progress, with the aim to introduce gender-sensitive budgeting into the budgets of all municipalities. We’re also meeting the representatives of the expert civil sector, in order for all of us to exchange our experiences on gender-sensitive budgeting and its implementation at the local level,” said Ms. Paunović, using the opportunity to thank everyone who had provided support to the Network when it worked on preparing the amendments to the Law on Budgetary System.
Milana Rikanović spoke on behalf of UN Women, the United Nation’s organisation for gender equality and women’s empowerment. She emphasised that the priority in the work of this organisation was to mainstream the gender perspective into all policies and programs that they implemented together with their partner organisations. Mainstreaming of gender analysis and perspective in the budgetary system of Serbia, as she said, was a huge success achieved by WPN. It could serve as a good practice example that could be implemented in the future, in municipalities, provincial bodies and at the national level.
In her speech, Aleksandra Vladisavljević, Consultant for Gender-Sensitive Budgeting, said that all sectors were equally responsible for policies, and the budget was a joint endeavour. This is why it was extremely important to clearly define the roles in this process – what were the tasks of those who prepared the budget and what were the tasks of those who dealt with gender equality. She assessed that the success of this endeavour depended on designing how these units would operate in practice. They had to receive every form of support necessary for their work, and preconditions related to the implementation of Article 40 of the Gender Equality Law had to be met.
Dragan Božanić, Consultant for Gender Sensitive Budgeting, also commended the members of the Network. As he said, WPN made it possible to introduce gender sensitive-budgeting in our legislation on higher level – now it was no longer a matter of employees’ sensibility, but a legal obligation.
During the meeting, one of the topics was the opinion of local self-governments on gender-sensitive budgeting. Special heed was paid to the issue of raising awareness on gender equality in local self-governments, as well as to how local self-governments perceived this issue.
The member of WPN Marija Obradović highlighted that, to achieve good results, it was important not to be a slave to formalities, but to tackle the substance. She also believed that regular meetings on this topic should be introduced in order to discuss the future activities, because, as she said, this informal manner of work lead to establishing personal connections, and that could contribute a lot to gender-sensitive budgeting. “We have to be connected in order to come up with good arguments, and insist our cause is implemented all over Serbia,” said Ms. Obradović.
Aida Ćorović, member of WPN, spoke about the importance of working on this issue. She believed that this work did not only increase the reputation of WPN, but it contributed to the good image of the Parliament in general.
Ljiljana Malušić, member of WPN, said that women had to be united, that they had to show their power, because this world consisted of women. She encouraged the participants to develop women’s networks in their municipalities, because women could be stronger if they joined forces. According to her, that was the key to success.
Dubravka Filipovski, member of WPN, said that a lot was achieved in today’s area of interest, yet a lot of work remained to be done. She reminded the participants that in the upcoming period, the dialogue between men and women would be continued, as well as further activities to empower the local level through establishing more women’s networks in municipal assemblies, developing new mechanisms, and measuring indicators. “We have managed to reach 30% of women in the legislative branch of power, as parliamentarians and municipal assembly members. This is a fact. However, given the opening of Negotiation Chapters 23 and 24, the Republic of Serbia will have to adopt a new law on gender equality. If we succeed in our intent to have this law foresee 50% of women in the executive branch, we will reach the quota necessary to implement the law of gender budgeting,” said Ms. Filipovski.
Gender sensitive budgeting units consisted of representatives of local gender equality bodies and employees of municipal finance departments. They spoke about gender budgeting initiatives in their municipalities. They also presented good practice examples in the municipalities of Vlasotince, Nova Varoš, Vladičin Han, Sjenica, Prijepolje, Aleksinac and Priboj, and exchanged the experiences on gender budgeting implementation in the budget of these municipalities.
The meeting was attended by the representatives of the OSCE Mission to Serbia, UN Women and UNOPS.
Along with the Chairing Coordinator of the WPN, Vera Paunović, the Network members Marija Obradović, Dubravka Filipovski, Ljiljana Malušić, Sabina Dazdarević, Aida Ćorović, Jelisaveta Veljković and Ljibuška Lakatoš participated in the discussion.