Chairperson of the National Commission on the Status of Women, Noureen Bano Lehri, participated in a policy dialogue on Gender Responsive Budgeting (GRB) in the justice sector, emphasizing the need to move beyond policy commitments toward measurable outcomes for women across Pakistan.

In her remarks, the Chairperson highlighted concerns emerging from recent budget analyses, particularly in Balochistan, where gender considerations are increasingly acknowledged in planning processes but are not consistently translating into tangible improvements for women. She stressed that budget tagging alone is insufficient without clear outcome indicators, effective service delivery linkages, and strong accountability mechanisms.

Referring to critical sectors such as health, she noted that investments in frontline services, including the training of midwives, remain inadequate or insufficiently prioritized despite their direct impact on women’s health and wellbeing. She observed that this reflects a broader challenge in development planning, where policies and budgets often fail to align with the lived realities and needs of women, particularly those in underserved and rural communities.

The Chairperson reaffirmed NCSW’s commitment to advancing outcome-based budgeting approaches that link public expenditure with measurable improvements in access, protection, and opportunities for women. She highlighted ongoing initiatives including the National Gender Data Portal, the Gender Justice Forum, and the Gender Justice Tracker as key mechanisms aimed at strengthening the alignment between data, budgeting, policy implementation, and accountability.

She further noted that NCSW’s collaboration with UNICEF Pakistan on training Gender Focal Persons, alongside upcoming engagements with provincial departments and the Women Parliamentary Caucus, forms part of broader efforts to institutionalize gender responsive budgeting across governance systems.

Concluding her remarks, Chairperson Noureen Bano Lehri emphasized that gender responsive budgeting should not be measured solely by the size of allocations, but by the real impact those allocations create in the lives of women and girls. She underscored that meaningful budgeting requires measurable results, responsive governance, and sustained accountability to ensure that public resources effectively serve women across Pakistan.