Outcome ETH_D_1.3

All people in Ethiopia benefit from an inclusive, resilient and sustainable economy

The Ministry of Finance (MoF) endorsed the Gender Budget Statement on September 30th, 2024, with the presence of the Minister H.E Ahmed Shide, State Minister H.E Dr Eyob Tekalige and State Minister H.E Samerita Sewasew. This shows that the ministry has taken a strong commitment in showcasing its firm political commitment towards the importance of financing for gender equality trough the development of the Gender budget Statement, UN Women has been supporting the development of the Gender Budget Statement since 2019 from experience sharing visit to Rwanda which the Gender Budget Statement has been taken as the best practice and contextualized by experts from major sectors, followed by consecutive trainings for more than 30 sectors at regional and federal level. The tracking tool serves as a comprehensive guide but also empowers the Ministry of Finance to effectively scrutinize and review the budgets of sectoral ministries in alignment with the Budget Call Circular (BCC) while ensuring gender responsiveness. The toolkit ensures that government’s budgets are more responsive to the needs of women and girls that will ultimately lead to more equitable and inclusive development outcomes. This result contributes to Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5.c.1 on availability of system to track is stated “proportion of countries with systems to track and make public allocations for gender equality and women’s empowerment”. The first-ever Gender Audit manual developed with the support of UN Women and its implementation by the Office of the Federal Auditor General (OFAG) is among the tangible results. The gender manual, targeting audit experts at the Office of the Federal Audit General, aims to enable an effective performance audit of gender equality at ministries and other government agencies. Through the support of UN Women, the audit experts at the institution were also capacitated through various trainings on gender equality auditing including on proper application of the manual. Mr.Tesfaye Alemu, the Performance Audit Manager at OFAG explained, “Before we started using the manual, there were a few general criteria that we used to apply for gender audit. It wasn’t as detailed as the one in the new gender audit manual to the extent that the findings were not even visible. When we used the manual, which is comprehensive, critical findings were identified.” Mr.Tesfaye also cited the findings from a pilot performance audit at the Ministry of Health, which looked into selected hospitals. “We found the cost of gender gaps in the health sector, including unsafe child delivery, improper family planning, and lack of focus on specific diseases that women are exposed to. These issues resulted because of lack of gender awareness, negligence, and weak or absence of policies for accountability. Based on our recommendations channeled through the parliament, the Ministry has prepared an action plan to accordingly address these issues,” said Tesfaye

All people in Ethiopia benefit from an inclusive, resilient and sustainable economy

In 2023, UN Women's efforts continues to focus on fostering an inclusive, resilient, and sustainable economy in Ethiopia. This is being achieved by supporting advocacy for the adoption of gender-responsive policy and regulatory frameworks that prioritize women's opportunities and contributions to the economy. UN Women’s support has led to the creation of Africa's first gender equality audit manual, a landmark achievement for gender equality. In 2023, UN Women’s support has been instrumental the Federal Audit General's gender audit team to build their capacity to utilize the gender audit manual for a pilot in the Health and Agriculture ministries. The key findings from the pilot with the Ministry of Health uncovered significant gender gaps, including medical errors contributing to maternal deaths, shortfalls in reducing maternal and child mortality rates, and inadequate cervical cancer screening. These ground-breaking findings have prompted the Ministry of Health to develop strategies to decrease maternal and perinatal mortality and morbidity, including enhancing healthcare professionals' capabilities and increasing community awareness. Furthermore, the Ministry of Health now implements sex-disaggregated planning to improve women's health, specifically targeting reduced teenage pregnancy rates and increased childbirths with professional healthcare assistance. Furthermore, building on the last year results, the Ethiopian government, influenced by UN Women programming, significantly advanced gender equality integration into its national investment and financing framework. Utilizing the Gender Budget Statement (GBS), which is a forward-looking mechanism to track and make budget allocations to gender equality and women’s empowerment, enabled three ministries (Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Urban Development and Ministry of Industry) , to adopt and pilot the mechanism and guide other sectoral ministries with their experiences. In 2023, for the first time ever, the Ministry of Finance allocated 7 million ETB (around 125,300 USD) for gender equality initiatives, particularly supporting the Ministry of Industry's goal to increase women's participation in the industrial sector to 85%. The Ministry of Urban Development and Infrastructure introduced a sex-disaggregated biannual plan, for the first time ever, focusing on urban development and gender equality. Key aspects include a 2% increase in adequately planned cities and capacity building of 400 women as planning experts. The plan also includes urbanizing 33 cities with 126 women leading these projects, and a SafetyNet program aimed to improve the living standards of 816,000 citizens, with half of the beneficiaries being women. This approach not only enhances women's leadership roles in significant urban projects but also addresses socio-economic disparities, making a substantial impact on the overall development and inclusivity in Ethiopia. These initiatives across various ministries showcase a comprehensive and holistic approach to embedding gender equality in Ethiopia’s investment and financing framework, laying the groundwork for sustained, gender-responsive policies and initiatives . In 2023, UN Women's collaboration with SOS Sahel, the Organization for Women in Self Employment (WISE), and the Ministry of Women and Social Affairs (MoWSA) led to significant outcomes in enhancing women's access to financial and non-financial services and resources in Oromia and the post-conflict areas of Amhara and Tigray. As a result, approximately 6,088 women and girls gained now access business skills and business development services (BDS) such as counselling, networking, and market linkages. This support enabled them to participate more effectively in market-driven businesses and diversify their livelihoods, contributing to their economic empowerment. Additionally, 16 Savings and Credit Cooperatives achieved notable financial milestones in partnership with SoS Sahel, WISE, and MoWSA. The total savings accumulated by members reached 2,084,900 ETB (approximately 36,882 USD) in 2023 compared to 2022 figures amounting to 1,481,170 ETB (approximately 27,946 USD). In addition, the 2023 revolving fund of 7,900,850 ETB (approximately 139,769 USD) was disbursed among members compare to 2022 figures amounting of 4,392,350 (approximately 82,874 USD ). The financial growth was further evidenced by the increase in the initial loan amount from 3,000 ETB in 2022 (approximately 53.07 USD) to 7,000 ETB (approximately 127 USD) in 2023. These achievements underscore UN Women’s commitment to bolstering women’s resilience and economic status in various settings, including those affected by climate and humanitarian challenges. UN Women's efforts in improving women's economic and social status have been marked by enhanced coordination among stakeholders, including government, CSOs, NGOs, and private sector entities. The second national Women's Economic Empowerment (WEE) forum, held in 2023, bolstered collaboration in providing gender-responsive financial services. Notably, the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia committed to supporting unbanked women and girls, who do not have access to get loans and related financial services from banks, due to inability to fulfil the requirement of banks including collateral and procedural requirements, in piloting its new initiative on digital finance through the platform.

All people in Ethiopia benefit from an inclusive, resilient and sustainable economy

The third outcome the Strategic Note 2021-2025, which is fully aligned to the United Nations Sustainable Cooperation Framework 2020-2025, recognizes the critical importance of building an inclusive, resilient, and sustainable economy. In 2022, UN Women contributed towards this outcome through supporting the advocacy for adoption of enabling policy and regulatory frameworks of the economy which are gender responsive and centered on women and their opportunities. UN Women has been instrumental in introducing the forward-looking mechanisms to track and make public allocations to gender equality and women’s empowerment in Ethiopia and as a result used by the Office of The Federal Auditor General Ethiopia (OFAG) through various capacity building. One of them is the gender equality audit manual used, by OFAG, to assess the performance gaps of government bureaus and health institutions to integrate, monitor and respond to gender inequalities in planning, financing, and budgeting in three regions and two city administrations. UN Women provided technical and financial support to OFAG to develop the manual and pilot it in Ethiopia, spearheading this initiative as an example for other African countries to deliver on gender-responsive planning and budgeting. The director of infrastructure performance audit publicly recognized the role of UN Women efforts in fostering accountability around gender equality in Ethiopia. In addition, the Gender Budget Statement (GBS) has been adopted by two sectoral ministries in Ethiopia. The Gender Budget Statement is a forward-looking mechanism to track and make budget allocations to gender equality and women’s empowerment, ultimately influencing the government in Ethiopia to increase financing for gender. The Ministry of Finance with the support from UN Women played a key role in introducing the Gender Budget Statement which has enabled two sectors, Federal Job Creation and the Ministry of Agriculture, to adopt and pilot the mechanism and guide other sectoral ministries with their experiences. Both sectors have planned their three-year programme budget plans and have started reporting using the Gender Budget Statement. Moreover, following UN Women’s technical and financial support, additional six institutions (Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Women, Children and Youth Affairs, Ministry of Planning and Development, Ministry of Technology, Ministry of Education, and Ministry of Labour) now have better understanding on the Gender Budget Statement and how to apply it to track and make public allocations for gender equality and women’s empowerment. The six sectors have committed to developing their GBSs in 2023 and started planning and reporting using the tool. The steps in institutionalization of both budget planning and tracking mechanisms within the key ministries in Ethiopia will contribute to the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 5 and its target (5.C.1) on the proportion of countries with systems to track and make public allocations for gender equality and women’s empowerment. The GBS encourages the government of Ethiopia for appropriate budget tracking and monitoring systems to be in place and strengthened commitment for allocations for gender equality by identifying if it has programs/policies and resource allocations for GEWE. In addition, UN Women made progress in advancing women’s economic empowerment by supporting multi-sectoral actors and systems as well as programs to advance women’s and female youth’s access to and use of services and productive resources. UN Women contributed to evidence-based policy advocacy, coordination, and capacity building to stakeholders that enable increased women's and girls' access to multisectoral gender-responsive and integrated development interventions. The national women’s economic empowerment forum (NWEEF), which was established engaging different stakeholders, has been instrumental in improving coordination among actors and serving as a platform that brings together key actors for collective decisions and collaborative actions. Ministry of Women and Social Affair (MoWSA), Ministry of Labour and Skills, Action Aid and Ethiopian Chamber of Commerce and Sectoral Associations (ECCSA) engaged in operationalizing the national platform and cascading to regional states. Following the forum, high-level policy consultation with Cooperative Promotion Commission, MoWSA and regional counterparts contributed to effort made in addressing barriers that affect women's participation in cooperative societies and enterprises. In 2022, UN Women continued to adhere to the theory of change for this outcome strengthening the cross-thematic collaboration in contributing to the economy, economic and livelihood opportunities and social protection institutions to be gender responsive and inclusive.