Financing for development has always been present in international negotiations, debates and research. However, it has gained particular importance in recent years, especially since the International Conference on Financing for Development in Monterrey in 2002 where the international community both agreed to increase its funding for development and acknowledged the need to ensure aid would be used as effectively as possible. The Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, endorsed by countries from around the world in 2005, represents a more comprehensive attempt to modify relationships between donor and developing countries, based on principles of partnership. In 2008, the Third High Level Forum in Accra, Ghana took stock of progress and built on the Paris Declaration to accelerate the pace of change.

However, these international agreements on development include very limited commitments on gender equality. As the results of the Accra Women’s Forum point out, it is necessary to continue strengthening key areas to advance towards gender equality, women’s rights and empowerment of women. It is thus important to strive for a greater introduction of measures to strengthen gender equality in conceptual, financial and operational terms, while also assuring the implementation of already accepted measures.

This calls for national and international organizations, as well as civil society organizations dedicated to women’s empowerment and gender equality, to be closely involved in the research, participation in negotiations and follow-up of the execution of development-related international agreements. From this perspective, monitoring aid flows and their impact on gender equality becomes a key activity and demands for effective tools and capacity development processes with key stakeholders to be put in place. This will allow for the principles and actions of gender-related agreements (Cairo, Beijing, MDG) to be incorporated into the financing for development processes, and for the advances in the implementation of the agreements to be followed-up from a gender perspective.

In this context, UN-INSTRAW, now part of UN WOMEN, promotes study, research, capacity building and political dialogue on the agreements and actions related to financing for development from a gender perspective. In this regard, it is currently developing a global project with the support of the Government of Spain that aims to:

1. Evaluate aid flows to selected countries from a gender perspective
2. Initiate a political dialogue at national level in both donor and aid receiving countries about the effectiveness of the aid from a gender perspective
3. Strengthen capacities of key actors to monitor aid flows and their impact from a gender perspective