The Gender Budget Watchdog Network (GBWN), comprising over 100 civil society organizations in the Western Balkans and Moldova, including the TPO Foundation, organized an international forum called “Going Glocal” on gender-responsive budgeting (GRB) in Skopje, North Macedonia, on October 19th and 20th. The Forum’s objective was to connect global expertise and local experiences using gender-responsive budgeting principles, bringing together diverse activists, academics, and officials to discuss best practices, lessons learned, and methodological ideas. Among the Forum’s conclusions was the need to work together to:

1. Build a larger global coalition to better track spending towards gender equality;
2. Advocate with the European Women’s Lobby to make gender budgeting mandatory in the next Multiannual Financial Framework of the EU, set clearer targets linked to financing in the next Instrument for Pre-Accession and Gender Action Plan IV, and improve internal financial management systems to better tie outputs and impacts to actual expenditures;
3. Establish a coalition with United Nations (UN) agencies to advocate for further improving GRB in UN agencies’ systems as part of the upcoming 2024 Commission on the Status of Women on financing for gender equality;
4. Provide recommendations to inform the World Bank’s new Gender Strategy for institutionalizing gender budgeting in all of the Bank’s activities; and
5. Collaborate to influence climate change financing from a gender perspective.

 This initiative was organized by GBWN with support from the Austrian Development Agency (ADA) and the Swedish International Development Agency (Sida). It was also supported as part of the project of the Center for Research and Policy Making (CRPM), funded by the EU, which focuses on shaping policies and budgets to address the needs of women and men, especially during times of crisis.