Role of the Executive Branch in Gender and Public Participation

Abstract

Before we explore the role of the executive branch of government in gender and public participation in Afghanistan, it is important to briefly discuss the overall governance system of the country; Afghanistan has 34 provinces and a centralized government. The president directly appoints provincial governors. Each province has an elected provincial council and a provincial development committee that are supposed to play an important role in planning and budgeting for provincial development. Similarly the budgeting system is also centralized, the central ministries manages its budget in the provinces; however, the central government is discussing the possibilities of allocating some portion of the national budget to the provinces directly and of delegating to the provinces full control over spending of the allocated budget for implementation of projects in the provinces.