Under the patronage of H.E. Kholoud Saqqaf, Minister of Investment to Jordan; the JOINT SDG FUND together with UN Women and Amam Ventures, a WEPs signatory, lauched the first session of Financing for Gender Equality & Unpacking Sustainability Series on 18-19 March in Jordan.
The event brought together key players in the financing ecosystem including the government, IFIs, DFIs, funds, investors, private sector and CSOs from Jordan to unpack sustainable innovative strategies for designing and mobilizing catalytic innovative financing instruments for gender-responsive impact investments that are aligned with national SDG priorities.
UN Women has been leading efforts to enhance financing for gender equality on economic and social life through building partnerships with key stakeholders, developing tools, providing capacity building, and tailored technical assistance and guidance, and building institutional knowledge.
Building on the momentum of the joint UNCT SDG financing initiative, UN Women’s gender smart investment initiative, UNDP’s flagship SDG Impact initiative, and UNICEF’s engagement on climate change, and child-friendly budgeting and social protection would create an enabling environment for public and private sectors to boost up financing for development resources in line with Jordan’s Economic Modernization Vision.
The “Jordan- Enabling an SDG Financing Ecosystem” Programme, the Joint UNDP, UNICEF, and UN Women Programme– aims to develop strategic investments to accelerate progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and focus on two key entry points: climate change and gender equality as cross-cutting issues requiring integrated, multi-sectoral approaches to be successful in green and inclusive economic transformation. The JP aims to enable the SDG Financing Ecosystem and accelerate progress toward the SDGs by identifying the key building blocks for an integrated, gender-responsive development financing framework, ensuring systemic and sustained change through more effective and efficient resource mobilization while focusing on strengthening linkages between planning, budgeting, and financing. Targeting gender equality and women’s empowerment is a useful strategy to achieve immediate gains and progress on implementing the Economic Modernization Vision, and at the same time, it supports the progress towards the achievement of SDG indicators in contexts with a wide gender gap as in Jordan.
Financing for Gender Equality Platform is a network of impact-driven stakeholders from the financing ecosystem in Jordan; including the Government, IFIs, DFIs, funds, investors, private sector partners, CSOs and organizations of the UN System, that will work on designing catalytic innovative financing approaches. Highlighting the importance of their influential role in leveraging the power of capital markets to steer the ecosystem and incentivize improvements in corporate culture and business environments; that encourage business model alignments and investments toward the SDGs and gender equality.
The plan for network members is that they will work together towards identifying and addressing challenges, sharing best practices, exchanging experiences, and accelerating the use of inclusive gender smart financing standards and IMM frameworks that aim to enhance SDG investments in Jordan and unleash new regional opportunities to promote equitable transformative recovery. With the objective of integrating impact to fill financing gap requirements by investors and donors.
The Unpacking Sustainability Conference Series
From 18-19 March, distinguished speakers from various sectors discussed key challenges and leverage points to enable the local economic environment to identify entry points, policy recommendations and interventions to encourage and expand financing for gender equality. They called for adopting a holistic approach to ensure successful alignment with national SDG priorities to achieve sustainable growth for a gender-responsive recovery, green and just energy transition.