against Women (CEDAW), the Beijing Platform for Action, the Millennium Development Goals, "and similar international conventions and commitments." The Guidelines require all government departments, attached agencies, bureaus, offices, state universities and colleges, government owned and controlled corporations and local government units to formulate an annual Gender Plan and Budget within the context of their mandates and to mainstream the gender perspective in their regular activities. fhe Guldelines set the cost of implementing the activities in the Gender Plan at 5 percent of the agency's total budget. The Guidelines stress that agencies should link GAD objectives and PAPs to their major final outputs. The Guidelines emphasize that mainstreaming the gender perspective in the agency's PAPs in order to attain the desired GAD outcome is a priority, and requires all agencies to perform gender analysis. The Guidelines indicate specific gender mainstreaming activities; these include: the creation and/or strengthening of the GAD focal point system; capacity building on gender and development; the conduct of gender audit; and the institutionalization of a GAD database with sex-disaggregated data. The Guidelines also stress that agency PAPs may be client-focused or those addressing gender mainstreaming in major programs or organizationfocused or those addressing gender issues within the agency. The Guidelines are a welcome-and long-awaited-initiative, as they serve to clarify exactly how to spend GAD funds and on what items GAD funds should be expended, in order to achieve the equal enjoyment by women and men of all their human rights. 45