resources, so that beneficiaries of any resources are the women and children in that community. 8. All socio economic rights should be enshrined in the constitution to make them justiciable particularly right to education, health, work and the right to social security. PUBLIC FINANCE AND MANAGEMENT With regards to public finance women demand: 1. Gender budgeting should be provided for in the Constitution. This will ensure adequate funding for women programmes. Gender budgeting should be mainstreamed into all Government Ministries as well as in all budgets including those for local authorities. 2. There must be independence of Public Institutions, this means that, parastatals, universities and hospitals should only pass on a small percentage of their revenue to national treasury. 3. Decentralisation of public institutions: This decentralisation would then allow the existing local governance structure to make decisions efficiently and be able to plough financial proceeds back into the institutions. 4. An engendered public tender system which caters for 50/50 in terms of awarding of tenders must be in place to ensure women benefit from public procurement. 5. Publishing of public accounts for public perusal: Public Accounts of public institutions should be available for public inspection at local, provincial and national level. Transparency of accounts should be the underlying objective for this exercise. 6. Civil Society funding from government: The government should have a fund which is available for NGO organisations. This will make the government a stakeholder and force it to take a more positive attitude towards NGOs. There is need to have non constituency NGO representative in Parliament to oversee allocation of sufficient resources and support from the State. 7. Political Party funding: This should be provided for in the constitution and parties should only be eligible once they have proved that they have a following/ constituency. The funding should be available pro rata. A total of 1% of the national budget should be allocated to this political party funding to encourage plurality. 8. Issues of debt and loan contractions should be addressed within the constitution with contractual obligations discussed in Parliament before actual contraction. The process should be open to a referendum should need arise. 9. Loan contraction decision is currently based and limited to the President and the Minister of Finance. These powers should be decentralised to allow more players in making these critical decisions. Checks and balances of national loans and debts should be addressed within the constitution.

Select target paragraph3

Add to table of contents