- 2009–2013: Accountability for Women’s Health Indonesia

Holding governments accountable for their legal and political obligations to women’s rights requires civil society to have the skills and capacity to actively engage in activities not only at the national level but also at the local level of government. Uplift International implemented a program in Indonesia that focused on accountability for women’s right to access health services in the local government municipalities or districts, which administer health services. The work responded to local women’s voices about their need to access maternal health and family planning services, as well as health services for women and girl victims of violence.

This work to hold local governments accountable involved an assessment of gender responsive budgeting or GRB. Women’s health is directly related to resources available for health services. GRB provides a critical process for analyzing the gaps between government policy and reality for women’s health services.

Uplift International partnered with six Indonesian NGOs to dig deep into the local budgeting for women’s reproductive health and learn why women were not able to access reproductive health services. Was it budget mismanagement or misallocation of funds? Our project trained NGOs to conduct GRB, which entailed analysis to check what money is allocated to implement the government’s reproductive health policy, whether this money was spent as allocated, whom it reached, and how/whether it changed access to health services for women.
Focusing on budgeting for women’s reproductive health was directly related to women’s health and the right to universal access to health services. Read the blog in Harvard’s Health and human Rights Journal.