UNIFEM project "Gender Budgets in Russia"

UNIFEM Project "Gender Budgets in Russia" was launched on the 1st April 2004.

The project goal is to increase women’s participation in the decision-making and budgetary allocations at national (Russian Federation) and sub-federal (Komi Republic) levels in the context of decentralization processes.

The topic of the project is very acute, not well developed and implemented into practice in the Russian Federation and in the CIS region in general. The necessity to provide monitoring of the gender approaches in the budgetary processes is recognized at international level and is reflected in such documents as the Beijing Platform for Action, Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination (CEDAW), Copenhagen resolution, Millennium Development Goals and etc. Russia has ratified all these documents and UNIFEM project is a dunning of the need to stir up implementation of the international obligations. The project was launched at the period of global administrative reforms in the Russian Federation. The reforming is concerned with fundamental changes of budgetary-taxation relations that are aimed to validate distribution of authorities, including redistribution of obligations to regional level in social sphere. At such conditions the most important mechanism for human rights monitoring in Russia could be budgetary relations for financing of social policy relations

Beijing Platform for Action "In addressing the economic potential and independence of women, Governments and other actors should promote an active and visible policy of mainstreaming a gender perspective in all policies and programmes so that before decisions are taken, an analysis is made of the efforts on women and men, respectively." (p.164), “and the Governments should facilitate, at appropriate level, more open and transparent budget processes (p.165). This will require the integration of a gender perspective in budgetary decisions on policies and programmes” (p.345). "Government should make efforts to systematically review how women benefit and adjust budgets to ensure equality of access to government sector of expenditures" (p.346).

The following results were achieved in the course of the project implementation:

An expertise of social laws was conducted that influenced draft of the 2005 budget was conducted, the most important of them being the Federal Law 122 dated 22 August 2004, “About the minimum salary level”, part II of the Taxation Code of the RF, “About state welfare payments for parents”, “About the budget of the Federal foundation of Obligatory Medical insurance for 2005", and etc

Most of the proposals and conclusions were reflected in the final draft of the approved law.

The following proposals were taken into account at federal level, prepared by the project experts “Gender Budgets in Russia”:

• On increasing of the minimal salary level for improvement of status of working women;
  
• On increasing the taxation benefits on children;
  
• On increasing state welfare payments for children;
  
• On exclusion on women on maternity leave whose payment on temporary disability to work is reduced;
  
• On increasing of expenditures on child care.

At the regional level of the Komi Republic has conducted the public expertise of the following draft laws: “About social support to population of the Komi Republic”, “About the state social support in the Komi Republic”, “On state guarantees to families having children in the Komi Republic”. The draft law “About public participation of citizens in solving of the socio-economic problems in the Komi Republic” ( which covers the following mechanisms: registration of the opinions of the population, civil control, civil expertise). The conceptual basis of the draft laws “About social expertise”, “About minimal socio-financial standards in the Komi Republic” were elaborated and discussed and currently they are under finalization.

The principles of gender budgeting (gender component should be a part of budgetary classification) were incorporated into the Gender Development Strategy of the Russian Federation. This document contains the plan of action for achieving of the gender equality that should be a part of the national machinery on improving of the women status. The federal component of the national machinery on improvement of women status, which consisted of the commission on improvement of the women status under the Government of the RF, Department on Women and family issues under the Ministry of Labor and Social Development, round table of women NGOs was destroyed in the process of administrative reforming. It is obvious that new verticals of power of the national machinery will not remain the same. The project experts are anxious about the current situation and initiating civil actions aimed at reconstruction of the national machinery on improvement of the women status.

Informational-analytical materials are placed in the Internet on the portal “Women and Society” (http://www.owl.rights/discussion2004/index.htm). These materials were overviewed by 14 thousand people starting from July 2004 by people all over the world.