26 May 2025, Tashkent, Uzbekistan - Today EU-funded project “Promoting Gender Responsive Policies and Budgets (GRB): Towards Transparent, Inclusive and Accountable Governance in Uzbekistan” has been officially launched. The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) will be implementing this new project in close cooperation with the Ministry of Economy and Finance of the Republic of Uzbekistan and will serve as a response to priorities of Uzbekistan in advancing gender equality. The new project supports these efforts by building institutional mechanisms that make gender equality a part of budgetary decision-making and national development strategies. 

“By integrating gender analysis into our planning and budgeting processes, we create a more effective government – one that is responsive to the diverse needs of our society and ensures that no one is left behind. GRB helps us deliver more transparent, inclusive, and result-oriented public finance, which is essential for achieving our national development priorities and goals. In this regard, it will serve as a practical and transformative tool for more equitable budgeting, especially to improve the lives of women and girls across the country”, - stated Shokhruh Ishankulov, Deputy director of State budget policy department, Ministry of Economy and Finance of Uzbekistan.

 “Gender Responsive Budgeting will empower girls and women of Uzbekistan. Therefore the EU is proud to be able to work with UN Women in supporting Uzbekistan’s fiscal authorities in including Gender Responsive Budgeting practices into the regular national policy-making and budgeting processes. Gender Responsive Budgeting helps allocate resources in a way that addresses gender disparities, ensuring that also women and girls have equal access to public services, economic opportunities, and decision-making.”- said H.E. Toivo Klaar, EU Ambassador to Uzbekistan.

“Uzbekistan made a powerful step toward delivering on its commitments to gender equality. This project strengthens accountability by ensuring that public resources address gender gaps and empower those most often left behind.” – highlighted Elisa Fernandez Saenz, Deputy Regional Director of UN Women Europe and Central Asia. 

 “This collaborative effort between the Government of Uzbekistan, the EU, and UN Women to implement gender-responsive budgeting has the power to truly transform how public finances are managed, leading to more impactful outcomes for both women and men nationwide,” - said Sabine Machl, UN Resident Coordinator in Uzbekistan. 

Project Background:

The project was officially launched in Tashkent on 26 May 2025, during a high-level event attended by representatives of the Ministry of Economy and Finance of Uzbekistan, Delegation of the European Union to Uzbekistan, UN Women Europe and Central Asia; UN Women Uzbekistan, UN and other International organizations and Media representatives.

Uzbekistan has made significant strides in advancing gender equality, including the adoption of the Gender Equality Strategy (2030), the establishment of the Committee on Youth, Women, Culture and Sport in Parliament, and improvements to legislation on women’s rights. The GRB project supports these efforts by building institutional mechanisms that make gender equality a part of budgetary decision-making and national development strategies.

The initiative aims to strengthen the capacity of Ministry of Economy and Finance and include Ministry of Agriculture as a pilot ministry, to improve women’s lives and support the inclusion of the most vulnerable groups through systematic and sustainable integration of gender perspective at all stages of national and local policymaking, planning and budgeting processes. The process has been started in October 2024 with the seed funding of UN Women to strengthen the capacity of 30 civil servants of different Ministries to increase the understanding GRB and its implementation.

Over the next two years, the project will enhance both national and local capacities to implement Gender Responsive Budgeting, in alignment with Uzbekistan’s Public Finance Management[1] (PFM) reforms and the Sustainable Development Goals—particularly SDG 5 and target 5.c.1. By strengthening the national gender machinery and promoting inclusive, transparent governance, the initiative aims to address deep-rooted structural barriers, including women’s limited ownership of land and property, higher rates of poverty, and underrepresentation in high-value economic sectors.

With having very high goals of halving the poverty and doubling the GDP in a short period of time, GRB project will bring a very strong tool to channel national and local budget to the best way for women and girls in addition to a strong monitoring approach. 

UN Women

Globally, for the past two decades, UN Women has supported more than 80 countries to design and implement to gender-responsive budgets. UN Women has pioneered gender-responsive budgeting by championing global norms, building strategic partnerships, strengthening national government capacities and building the evidence base on the – centrality of gender-responsive budgeting to achieving SDGs, aid effectiveness, public sector reform and financing for development. 

Additional information:

Gender responsive budgeting (GRB) is a strategic policy approach to systematically integrate gender equality objectives into government policy, planning, budgeting, monitoring, evaluation, and audits. It highlights the distributive impacts of the budget (revenue and expenditure) on women and men and adjusts, or reallocates, resources to ensure that both benefit equally from government resources. It is a transformative tool for advancing gender equality. It makes budgets more effective, inclusive and ensure that needs of girls, women, boys and men are counted. 

Over 100 countries have initiated efforts on gender-responsive budgeting to address gender equality and the historical underinvestment in essential services for women and girls. Data from 105 countries shows that only 26 per cent have comprehensive systems to track gender equality allocations in the budget.

By applying the GRB tool to all policies, measures and programs financed from the budget, we contribute to achieving gender equality. Gender-responsive budgets require a whole government approach, robust institutional frameworks, political will, laws in place to support equal distribution of resources, reliable data to fully understand the diverse needs of people, engagement with the private sector and civil society, and monitoring and evaluation systems to inform future budget adjustments.

Sustainable development goal 5 calls for gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls and has the only SDG indicator that measures the proportion of governments with systems to track and make public resource allocations for gender equality.

For interview opportunities, additional information, please contact: 

• Gulnaz Anisio De Oliveira, Regional Communications Analyst, UN Women Europe and Central Asia Regional office, +77774700443, gulnaz.imamniyazova@unwomen.org

• Malika Musaeva, Press and Information Officer, Delegation of the European Union to Uzbekistan, Malika.MUSAEVA@eeas.europa.eu

Jakhongir Shodiev, Chief economist, Ministry of Economy and Finance of the Republic of Uzbekistan, Jahongir.Shodiyev@imv.uz

[1] Public Financial Management (PFM) is the system by which financial resources are planned, directed and controlled to enable and influence the efficient and effective delivery of public service goals.” (CIPFA 2010: 5)