PHOTO: Harold Aidooo, Integrity Watch (Left) and Prince Gaye, Action Aid (Right)
The Executive Director of Integrity Watch Liberia has called on civil society organizations to step up efforts aimed at encouraging the Liberian government to be gender responsive in formulating the national budget in the country.
Herold Aidoo said in the absence of a national budget that clearly underpins the factors that are creating gaps between the poor and rich, a vast majority of the ordinary people will continue to wallop in object poverty.
Mr. Aidoo made the call when he delivered the keynote speech at a one-day national stakeholder round table discussion organized by the Civil Society Organizations Budget Platform in collaboration with Action Aid in Monrovia.
According to him, the CSOs Budget Platform comprises of all civil society organizations from diverse backgrounds purposely to work together on issues on national budget and fiscal transparency with the Liberian government.
“We were all working in shadows,” Mr. Aidoo said; adding: “we have realized the need for us to annex our collective efforts to make sure that we address issues on public participation on the formulation of the national budget, fiscal accountability and tracking of its usage.”
Aidoo indicated: “this stake holders’ dialogue was organized on the backdrop of inequality in our society is widening and one of the ways through which we can address these inequalities and high rate of poverty is through the national budget.”
A cross session of participants at the CSOs Budget Platform dialogue
The Integrity Watch Liberia Executive Director maintained that the national budget is the single most important policy instrument next to Liberian Constitution that has the capacity to transform and change the lives of the people in the country.
“It is the national budget that determines who gets what, which resource goes to this to where and to whom; he said; adding: “ultimately, it is the national budget that determines whether our future will be better or not.”
“Therefore, as inequality has been widening, many challenges, economic, social, and political because there were many diverse challenges that came along with Covid-19.”
“This subsequently impacted more poor people and pushed more ordinary people deep into destitute and hardship; but, we strongly believed that in the absence of a clearly and define national budget that is underpinned by a gender response budgeting, that makes specific efforts to address the inequalities within our society by channeling resources to specific gaps in education, health, infrastructure and security, we will continue wallop in object poverty.”
According to him, the national budget is not gender blind because it can be used to addressed all the challenges the people are facing, can be used to push the people to reduce or push more people into poverty
“So, we believe that we need to have the conversation as civil society organizations and stake holders to see how much of our national budget addresses some of the key challenges of the ordinary people.”
In remarks, the Program Officer at the Action Aid Liberia, Prince Gaye, praised efforts by the CSO Budget Platform to work with the Liberian government on responsive budgeting in the country.
According to him, Action Aid Liberia has a key interest in responsive budgeting because the national budget should not only look at services at special areas but look at the vulnerable population.
“We believe that the national budget is the vision which the government uses to undertake development for the year,” he said; adding: “it is good that we have this kind of conversation to see how the budget can address the problems in health, education and agriculture where we see huge gaps.”
He expressed the fullest cooperation of Action Aid in working with CSOs that are working to address issues affecting gender disparity and poverty in the country
The stakeholder round table discussion brought together representatives from the CSOs, government agencies and ministries as well as partners in the gender equality sector. Report by Augustine Octavius