This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations Capital Development Fund, its Executive Board or the United Nations Member States. This is an independent publication by UNCDF and reflects the views of its authors.

The UNCDF/UNWOMEN/UNDP Joint Programme on Gender Equitable Local Development (GELD) was initiated in 2009, with support from the Belgium Government, as a global pilot programme for three years. Its goal is to improve women’s access to resources and services at the local level in the least developed countries (LDCs).

For this pilot, seven districts were selected in five countries (Mozambique, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Tanzania), building on previous experience of the implementing agencies - UNCDF and UNWOMEN- in each country. The broad objective of the GELD programme was to pilot a system of gender-responsive budgeting (GRB) within the context of decentralisation and local governance reform, in order to address more effectively gender equality through the local planning and budgeting system (public expenditure management cycle).

In doing so, it was intended to bring together the comparative advantages of both agencies in their respective fields - performance budgeting at the local level (UNCDF), and gender responsive budgeting (UNWOMEN) to test its joint application; and to create a policy model for replication.

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