Background
Over the past years, through the regional project “Promoting Gender Responsive Polices in South-East Europe”, UN Women has provided support to national and local stakeholders in strengthening democratic governance and advancing women’s rights through initiatives aimed at mainstreaming gender in policy planning and budgeting. As result, gender responsive budgeting has increasingly been recognized as important tool for advancing gender equality in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYR Macedonia) and the Republic of Moldova.
In this framework, FYR Macedonia has made important steps towards the institutionalization of gender responsive budgeting at central level. The Law on Equal Opportunities between Women and Men (LEOWM, 2012), Articles 11 and 14 introduced obligation for state authorities to incorporate the principle of equal opportunities of women and men their strategic plans and budgets; to follow the effects and impact of their programs on women and men and report in the framework of their annual reports. Further, the Government adopted a Strategy for the promotion of gender responsive budgeting (2012-2017), while the Ministry of Finance amended the budget circular requiring pilot Ministries to select programs for gender budget analysis and develop gender indicators to improve their gender responsiveness.
Objective
The overall objective of the request for proposals is to select service providers/two research organizations to conduct gender analyses of selected local programmes and budgets. The analyses shall produce recommendations on how to strengthen the gender responsiveness of local programmes and better reflect needs of women and men in budgeting for those programmes.
Proposals should focus on: assessing local programmes and their budgets from gender perspective. The programmes will be jointly selected with the local self-government units (LSGUs) in question and UN Women and will be in the domain of decentralized competencies of the LSGUs.
The proposals that will be taken into consideration should:
- Indicate the objective of the analyses specifying which LOT of five LSGUs they would focus on (from the pre-selected 10 LSGUs listed
below in section IV)
- Discuss the importance of gender analyses of local programmes and budgets for the LSGUs and women and men
- Provide basic data on the LSGUs subject to the analyses, based on brief pre-assessment of the situation, the stage of the decentralizations
process, demonstrated gender equality and gender responsive budgeting commitments; etc.
- Contain brief description of the methodology for analyses, including overview on key data to be collected and proposed data collection
instruments
- Provide outline for the structure of analyses of local programmes and budgets from gender perspective
- Propose activities to promote findings of the analyses among key stakeholders (Mayor, Local Commission for Equal Opportunities,
Commission for Budget, local community, etc)
Responsibilities
The Contractor is expected to conduct analyses of selected local programmes and budgets from gender perspective, provide set of clear recommendations for introducing gender responsive budgeting in the respective programmes and promote findings among key stakeholders (Mayor, Comission for Equal Opportunities, Commission for Budget, community, etc).
The analyses should focus on either of the two groups of LSGUs:
- LOT 1) Skopje, Aerodrom, Gjorche Petrov, Bogovinje and Mavrovo and Rostusha; OR
- LOT 2) Bitola, Tetovo, Strumica, Shtip and Sveti Nikole.
The contractors should clearly indicate which LOT they apply for (either LOT 1 or LOT 2). It is possible to apply to the two LOTs with separate proposals. The contractor will be responsible to analyze maximum one local programme per LSGU.
The Contractor in each of these two LOTs is expected to deliver:
- Inception report, delivered at the beginning of the assignment containing the following: 1) Introduction, including background information
on each LSGU, the selected programmes, type of analyses to be developed, information on the accessibility and availability of gender
disaggregated data to support those and a justification of the need to carry out the analyses; 2) Methodology for conducting the analyses
of local programmes and budgets from gender perspective, explaining the objectives, instruments and tools and the validation methods
used; and 3) Activities to promote the findings and recommendations of the analyses among key stakeholders.
- Analyses of local programmes and budgets from gender perspective (for each LSGU separately) which include findings and
recommendations for the LSGUs on how to devise programmes and budgets, which are responsive to the needs of women and men.
- Activities to promote the findings and recommendations among key stakeholders with the aim to raise their awareness on the importance
of gender responsive programing and budgeting.
Deadline: 01 September 2014
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