Guidelines for mainstreaming the reduction of inequality in interventions (EN, FR)

OVERVIEW

What is it?

Addressing income inequalities through development cooperation is a reference document (n.29) reflecting the engagement of the European Union to address inequalities in its partner countries. The document focuses primarily on income inequality, effective policy responses and how to address inequality in development cooperation. It also, provides guidance on how to prevent and reduce socio economic inequalities in a number of relevant policy areas.

While Volume 1 - Concept and definition and Volume 2 - Policy Brief on tackling inequality address theory and impact of inequalities, Volume 3 propose a methodology guidance helping Operational Managers to mainstream their work on inequality in policy dialogue and intervention design, as well as to engage national authorities and local actors of the partner countries on this endeavor.

What can it be used for?

EU staff can use the methodology to maximise the inequality-reduction impact of their operations, by mainstreaming a series of guiding principles and supporting policy measures having the potential to reduce inequality in partner countries.

When can it be used?

At any stage of the Intervention Cycle Management, as the guide provide guidance related to programming, policy dialogue, intervention formulation, monitoring, evaluation etc. etc.

Who can use it?

EU staff and other development practitioners.

What are its strengths?

The reference document as a whole presents in a clear manner what inequality is, why it should be placed at the center of development cooperation interventions, and how to mainstream it in all our interventions. The 18 policy briefs (Vol. 2) have been drafted in collaboration with all thematic units, effectively representing the position of DG INTPA on a number of policy areas and their linkage with inequality reduction.

Volume 3, in particular, is a mainstreaming guide that provides a set of tools to help EU officials enhance their work on inequality in all their policy dialogues and development cooperation operations, as well as to engage national authorities and local actors of the partner countries on this endeavor.

What are its limitations?

PRACTICAL APPLICATION

Key elements

Vol. 3 provides both mainstreaming principles and mainstreaming steps.

The four mainstreaming principles that can be followed to address inequality and integrate the reduction of inequality are:

Adopt a beneficiary approach: involvement and social dialogue;
Accountability and transparency;
(Re)distribution - targeting the bottom 40 per cent;
Geographical Targeting to address spatial inequality.

The EU intervention cycle provides several entry points where the reduction of inequality can be mainstreamed:

In design phase, when conducting context analysis on inequality, its drivers and determinants;
In policy dialogue, raising inequality awareness in policy dialogue and keeping the dialogue alive;
At different stages of implementation, e.g. during monitoring and evaluation
In particular through budget support, e.g. analyzing eligibility criteria through an inequality lenses (i.e. macroeconomic policy, PFM, transparency, analysis of national development plans).

Requirements

Data/information:

The Guidelines for mainstreaming the reduction of inequality in interventions include two annexes:

A selection of useful data sources on economic, social, political and environmental inequality that can be used to perform the context analysis of any intervention in the design phase Some are country specific, (e.g. agricultural census data or household surveys) and their availability will have to be assessed at country level. Others are well-established repositories of data and information, which can be accessed depending on which specific inequality dynamic is being researched. Access is free unless otherwise noted.
Recommended Inequality tools to carry out diagnostics and ex-ante assessments to further maximise the impact and targeting of planned actions. In particular, the Inequalities diagnostic tool from Agence Française de Développement and the distributional impact methodology and the inequality marker have been developed with EU support.

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