The following information was submitted by CARE offices in the countries reviewed in the report to provide additional context and detail.
How France Scored on Our Report Card
What France Is Doing to Support Women and Girls in Crisis
The French government committed to implement a feminist diplomacy which is reflected in its international strategy on gender equality and humanitarian strategy, both running from 2018 to 2022.
France effectively promotes a strong Women, Peace and Security agenda in multilateral settings, taking advantage of its UN Security Council’s permanent seat and attempts to get a wide range of countries on board. France also leveraged its G7 presidency in 2019 to get G7 Heads of States and Governments to commit to better encourage and coordinate their support in favor of women’s full, meaningful and equal participation in peace processes, peacemaking and peacebuilding, including through the G7 Partnership Initiative for Women, Peace and Security , with a specific focus on women peacebuilders and local women’s organizations. France also aims to support actions that provide specific assistance to women and girls and contribute to their reintegration into social and economic spheres and their empowerment, including the development of income-generating activities. The third French UNSCR 1325 National Action Plan (NAP) is due for adoption in 2021.
France has committed to allocate by 2022 50% of its ODA to projects and programs that integrate gender equality as a significant objective (OECD gender marker score 1) or main objective (OECD gender marker score 2) and to apply the OECD gender marker to all of its bilateral humanitarian projects. In 2018, France’s share of bilateral ODA marked 1 or 2 amounted to 25% of eligible ODA. In 2020, France launched the Support Fund for Feminist Organizations which allocates 120 million euros over three years to feminist associations operating in partner countries of France’s development policy. This fund aims to support both the activities and the structural costs of local feminist associations.
The French ministry of European and Foreign Affairs (MEFA) humanitarian branch, called the Crisis and Support Center (CDCS), directs NGOs which receive funding to implement humanitarian or stabilization projects to produce sex- and age-disaggregated data and to indicate to what extent gender equality, disability and environmental aspects are taken into account. Over recent years, the CDCS has increased its scrutiny over the gender sensitivity of project proposals submitted by NGO partners and has systematically applied the OECD gender marker to the funding it allocates.
According to the CDCS, 60% of the projects it funded in 2020 mainly or significantly aimed at gender equality: increasing women’s and children’s access to healthcare (e.g., projects in Iraq, Libya), psychosocial and legal support, creating tools to prevent and respond to gender-based violence (e.g., projects in Lebanon, Central African Republic, Libya) and supporting women’s participation in the public debate and in the media (e.g., projects in Cameroon, Sudan). A third of the projects supported by the Minka Peace and Resilience Fund under the responsibility of the French Development Agency promote gender equality as their main objective. In addition, in 2019, France granted 6.2 million euros over four years to Dr. Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad’s Global Fund for Survivors of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence. France was one of the first countries to support this fund.
In line with the Grand Bargain commitments, France announced in 2018 that it would increase its funding for local associations. The MEFA estimates that 2% of the total humanitarian and stabilization funding provided by France in 2020 went directly to local NGOs, which is still far from the 25% target set out by the Grand Bargain. However, the tool used by France does not allow for tracking of humanitarian and stabilization funding which goes indirectly to local associations, such as funding disbursed via international NGOs, OCHA and Expertise France.
In 2018, France committed to setting up a capacity-building mechanism for local stakeholders. A portion of the budget allocated for each NGO project funded by the Emergency Humanitarian Fund was earmarked for capacity building of their local partners. So far, the CDCS has supported a couple of pilot projects. Recently, the CDCS revised its guidelines to classify costs related to capacity building efforts as support costs, and to restrain all support costs to 30% of the project budget. Such change is likely to discourage French NGO partners from integrating and scaling up capacity-building efforts in future project proposals.