The Department for Community Development and Religion (DfCDR) brought together provincial officials from 13 provinces to participate in a workshop focused on developing budgets for 2022.
The budgets will support their efforts against Gender-Based Violence (GBV) in Papua New Guinea.
The workshop was organized in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Papua New Guinea, as part of the EU-UN Spotlight Initiative for Ending Violence Against Women and Children.
DfCDR is responsible for leading the drive to implement the National GBV Strategy 2016-2025.
In the workshop, Acting Secretary, Jerry Ubase, made it clear that this is a priority for the Department to work against GBV.
Mr Ubase stated, “This workshop brings together key provincial administration officers to develop GBV Strategies for their respective Provinces, supported by fully costed Budgets. We hope that our Department will be able to support provincial partners with complementary funding.”
He explained that the department just submitted a 5-year budget proposal under the Public Investment Program for urgent consideration.
“If our budget proposal is successful, it will enable us to more proactively work with provinces, and with civil society partners, to properly support GBV crisis response and prevention activities,” said Ubase.
During the three-day workshop, provincial participants built their capacities to develop provincial GBV strategies and to use these as a basis for developing annual GBV budgets.
Participants heard from representatives from the NCD and West New Britain who have already developed their own provincial GBV strategies, to learn from good practice in the country.
They also benefited from guidance given by officials from the Department of National Planning and Monitoring on budget development.
Day 2 of the workshop saw provincial officials working in teams to develop and refine their own GBV action plans and budgets. These were then discussed amongst the groups, so that officials could draw on their experience of their counterparts.
Participants also benefited from guidance given by officials from the Department of National Planning and Monitoring on budget development.
On the last day they also heard from other partners working to support GBV, including representatives from the Police Family and Sexual Violence Unit, the national Family and Sexual Violence Action Committee (CIMC) and the DFAT-funded Justice Services and Stability for Development (JSS4D) Program.
At the conclusion of the meeting, a number of priorities were identified for follow up:
- Formal establishment of Provincial GBV Secretariats in those provinces without them;
- Mapping of GBV Services and Service Providers in each participating province;
- Developing integrated GBV Databases and Information Management Systems; and
- Undertaking provincial surveys to properly understand the cost of GBV to businesses in the provinces.
The Department will now collaborate with UNDP to provide follow up technical support to the 13 provinces who attended, plus Enga Province, which is supported by the Spotlight Initiative but was unable to send representatives to the meeting.
The EU-UN Spotlight Initiative focuses on 11 provinces: Chimbu, East New Britain, Enga, Eastern Highlands, East Sepik, Hela, Jiwaka, Morobe, NCD, Southern Highlands and Western Highlands. In addition, UNDP is working with Oro, Milne Bay and West New Britain, as their MPs are active members of the Coalition of Parliamentarians to End GBV.
In Papua New Guinea, the Spotlight Initiative commenced implementation in 2020, and brings together UNDP, UN Women, UNFPA and UNICEF to work in partnership with the PNG Government to progress implementation of the National GBV Strategy, launched in 2016, as well as other sectoral strategies to improving GBV health responses, policing, and access to justice.
UNDP leads the work on governance, institutional strengthening, and strategy and budget development.
