In 2008 Rwanda's Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning (Minecofin) embarked on a gender-responsive budgeting (GRB) programme. This document describes the development of the programme to date. It describes the first, preparatory phase as well as the second phase of implementation. It explains why particular approaches were adopted, achievements, as well as challenges. The document is intended for both internal and external audiences.

Minecofin hopes that inside the country those who are already involved in the GRB programme will gain a better understanding of the initiative, while those who are not yet but could be involved will be encouraged to participate. For external readers Minecofin hopes that Rwanda's experience will help encourage actors in other countries to move forward with GRB initiatives that are tailored to their particular circumstances. Such circumstances include both the situation of women, men, boys and girls in the country, and the way that planning and budgeting happens.

Although Gender Responsive Budgeting (GRB) in Rwanda has progressed well, the programme has faced and continues to face challenges. The first and second challenges help explain the limited progress on the third objective of the first phase of the project, namely the objective of establishing a gender disaggregated data collection and monitoring system at national level that planning officers might use. The first challenge is that MINECOFIN is not the lead agency, and does not, in fact, itself produce data relevant to delivery or situation analysis.

The key agency responsible for production of situation analysis and outcome data is the NISR, while service delivery agencies are responsible for administrative data. The GMO has, among its responsibilities, the task of ensuring that gender-relevant data exist. The second challenge is that some of the materials produced during the first phase were developed before the strategy for GRB in Rwanda had been agreed and thus are not specifically tailored to assist with the gender budget statements. For example, the indicators document focused on "outcomes" rather than "outputs". It can thus serve as an aspirational document in two senses. Firstly it is aspirational in the range of indicators it hopes to see produced in Rwanda.

Secondly it is aspirational in that outcomes represent what one hopes to achieve in the medium-term, while the main focus of budget documents is on what will be achieved in a particular year.

A third more general challenge for the GRB programme is that the budget reforms are still ongoing. So the GRB programme is being implemented in a situation when officials are still learning how to do the new form of planning and budgeting and find difficulties even before the extra challenge of "gender" is added. With this third challenge, MINECOFIN feels that the GRB aspect can actually help rather than be an extra burden because the gender budget statement requires that officials think more carefully about activities and outputs and how these can be measured through indicators.

A fourth challenge relates to the high turnover among staff in ministries and districts. This creates difficulties as often those who are trained move out of the positions where they have responsibility for tasks such as development of gender budget statements.

As already mentioned GRB project has achieved substantial results in both phases. However, more remain to be done to reach sustained degree of Gender Responsive Budgeting mainstreamed at both central and local level.

Although several trainings have been conducted for pilot sectors, there is still need for more in-depth trainings to impart more skills to the planning, budget officers and chief budget officers of all ministries to allow them produce GBS for the budget year 2011/2012. The same trainings will also need to be done at the district level due to the high staff turnover that has been registered.

The other important activity that remains to be done is the establishment of BS monitoring system to track the progress each year. GRB project will also need to review and harmonise the existing training materials, methodologies and manuals to reflect gender in the whole processes of planning and budgeting.

Alongside this document, there is an ongoing activity intended to video document the GRB achievements since its inception to date. It is also against this background that GRB portal on the MINECOFIN website is being constructed as one way of raising awareness and sharing experience and good practices with the wider public.

Last but not least, GRB team and the whole national budget directorate team will need further trainings to increase their knowledge and skills in gender issues in general and GRB in particular to allow them provide hands-on and mentorship support to all budget agencies.

Conclusion: This document records good progress on GRB in Rwanda. But there is still much more to be done. Plans already exist for further activities at district level, including workshops for district councils similar to the earlier workshop for parliamentarians, and analysis and feedback to district officials on the gender budget statements produced. At central level, 2011/12 will see gender budget statements become mandatory for all ministries, rather than only the four pilot ministries. As noted above, ideas have also been developed as to how a midyear evaluation of implementation of the sub-programmes highlighted in the gender budget statements could feed into the joint sector reviews which constitute an important step in the planning and budgeting process for each year.