National Planning and Budgeting

In recent years the Albanian government has embarked on reforms to improve legal, policy and institutional gender equality mechanisms. The National Strategy for Gender Equality and Domestic Violence 2011-15 (NSGE) provides a strong gender equality vision, though financial and human resources to ensure the proper implementation are currently insufficient.

National plans and budgets are strategic opportunities for governments to turn their commitments into practical steps for achieving gender equality. Too often they fail to ensure that public services respond to women’s needs and priorities. Implementing commitments to gender equality requires innovative public policy tools like gender-responsive budgeting, which comprehensively assesses gender gaps and identifies actions to close them.

UN Women in Albania works to make gender equality central to planning and budgeting for national development and EU integration. We advocate for transparent and adequate public financing for gender equality, including for gender-responsive budgets that channel adequate resources to both women and men.

UN Women in Action in Albania

We work with civil society organizations and women’s advocates to make accountability to gender equality commitments and measures central to national planning and budgeting. In Albania, UN Women supports initiatives and groups that:

• Promote gender-responsive planning, programming and budgeting at all levels. Increasing the ability of civil servants, civil society and academics to apply gender-responsive budgeting ensures that women and girls’ needs are adequately funded.
• Support property rights and administration. Ensuring women’s property rights and applying gender equality principles in property administration support women’s economic empowerment.
• Collect and disaggregate gender statistics and indicators. This allows for evidence-based planning and strengthens accountability. Establishing official tools to monitoring the country’s gender equality commitments improves decision- and policy-making.
• Promote social inclusion and social protection. Broadening women’s inclusion in policy planning and service delivery, and ensuring adequate and equitable services for all remain the focus of our work. Properly designed and implemented social protection programmes that address gender-related constraints reduce vulnerability and integrate women and girls in the country’s economic progress.

As a result of UN Women’s work in national planning and budgeting in Albania, 9 ministries committed to set aside a dedicated budget to finance their gender programmes and achieve gender equality targets. Also, the collection of sex-disaggregated data is now mandatory in Albania.