5.4.3 Budget analysis and monitoring22
National human rights institutions should advocate for the identification and resourcing of activities that support human development from a rights-based perspective in national and sub-national budgets. NHRIs can raise awareness and advocate for the prioritisation of economic, social and cultural rights issues in the context of national budgets and public expenditure, based on the principles set out in the ICESCR, CEDAW, and the CRC, among others.
It is the State’s responsibility to develop and implement national budgets, and NHRIs cannot impose budget allocations on the State. However, a NHRI can monitor progress and make recommendations so that budgets respond to Treaty Body report recommendations and move forward on MDGs. At the very least, NHRIs can ensure that there is no retrogression or roll-back on previous commitments, and no budget cuts regarding established programmes that have advanced human rights.
International human rights instruments generally make no specific reference to public expenditure or revenues, but do impose general obligations on State parties to take ‘all appropriate measures’ to ‘the maximum of available resources’. Such provisions exist in Articles 2 and 3 of CEDAW, for example, and Article 2 of the ICESCR. Article 3 of CEDAW for instance, imposes a requirement to ensure gender equality in relation to all human rights, including in their economic dimensions. This provision should be read in light of the guidance on requirements of international human rights law regarding resource allocation that has been provided by the ICESCR. The Committee has noted:
“[E]ven in times of severe resource constraints whether caused by a process of adjustment, economic recession, or by other factors the vulnerable members of society can and indeed must be protected by the adoption of relatively low-cost targeted programmes”23
Because States are obliged to use “the maximum of available resources”, a failure to do so will render the State in violation of its obligations. Because of the obligation on State parties to “achieve progressively the full realization of the rights recognized,” States cannot wait indefinitely to take steps to assure economic, social and cultural rights.
According to the principle of taking all appropriate measures “to the maximum available resources”, NHRIs can advocate for existing resources to be allocated efficiently and effectively with a view towards the achievement of development-related rights, including ESC rights, without negatively affecting other human rights. States should ensure that resources are distributed while respecting principles of equality and ensuring that the rights of women and vulnerable groups are addressed. This requires several levels of analysis of government budget allocations, depending on the objective. For example, the CEDAW Committee has, in the past, made recommendations that a State ensure that its national human rights institution itself be properly funded, as the following example illustrates:
“The Committee recommends that the State party ensure that the National Commission on Human Rights is provided with the necessary financial resources and personnel well trained in gender equality issues to effectively fulfil its function in regard to monitoring and evaluating the General Act on Equality between Women and Men.”
To ascertain whether maximum available resources have been spent on development issues of national priority using a rights-based approach, the following steps may be taken by an NHRI:
- A specific assessment of budgetary ‘envelopes’ such as health, housing, education, income assistance and employment, looking in particular at whether budgetary allocations reflect the “maximum available resources” and the extent to which they match priorities from the human rights perspective, including from a gender based perspective;
- A cross-cutting assessment of budgets, based on gender, disability or other selected grounds, to determine the impact of budgets on the affected group; and
- A relatively straightforward measure is to compare the spending in a country with regard to identifiable ESC issues with similarly situated countries. For example, in a country like Uganda, the commission has examined ESC issues to see how spending in the selected envelope compares to other countries in Eastern Africa. If the national budget allocation is lower than that average, the NHRI has a clear argument for calling for an increase.
Examples of recommendations and observations offered by UN treaty bodies are set out in the following section, and are drawn from Diane Elson’s work on this topic.25 While the strategies raised by Elson are focused on gendered approaches to budgets, similar strategies can be used for taking a rights-based approach to development issues and vulnerable groups more generally.
Recommendations and Observations Regarding Budgets
CEDAW Committee: General Recommendation No. 24 (20th session, 1999)
30. “States parties should allocate adequate budgetary, human and administrative resources to ensure that women’s health receives a share of the overall health budget comparable with that for men’s health, taking into account their different health needs.”
As well, it should be noted that NHRIs can rely on general comments developed by treaty bodies when interpreting specific provisions related to ESC rights and when advocating for specific budgetary allocations to release that right.
Case Study: Gender Analysis of a Budget
Using the framework of a budget being analyzed along gender lines, the key dimensions of a budget analysis project are:
1. Review Public Expenditure;
NHRIs can monitor the extent to which States consider:
- Priority given to gender equality, or other thematic issues, and the advancement public expenditure between programmes;
- Presence of discrimination against vulnerable groups, for example women and girls in expenditures;
- Adequacy of public expenditure for realisation of gender equality in the impact of public expenditure; and
- Gender equality and public expenditure reform.
2. Public revenues, especially taxation;
- For example, CEDAW implies that women should be equally free to choose how to live their lives; and the tax system should not favour one set of choices above another; and
- The income tax system should be neutral in the burden of taxation on different types of families, taking into account the value of unpaid as well as paid work, and irrespective of the marital status and sex of the partners.
3. Macroeconomics of the budget (secondary impacts on inflation, jobs and economic growth)
- Macroeconomic policy should support the right to paid work on equal terms, for example between women and men (CEDAW Article 11); and
- Vulnerable groups should not suffer disproportionately if, as a result of a budget deficit, public expenditures are cut (for example, see CEDAW Article 2);
4. Budget decision-making processes:
Some of the key areas in the budget making process should reflect the participation of vulnerable groups in the process and this, in turn, reflects the need to ensure political and local leadership, and the importance of information about how current budget decisions are made and how they affect different sectors of the population. Taking women’s equality as an example, this means:
- increasing the presence of women;
- increasing the capacity of women;
- reforming budget decision making processes to make them more transparent and participatory;
- special measures to increase women’s presence in:
- national parliaments, and in parliamentary committees that scrutinize budgets;
- local council, and in council committees responsible for budgets; and
- participatory planning and budget processes.
Finally, citizens have:
- a right to information, including sex-disaggregated information; and
- a right to demand a formal investigation or seek legal redress for misappropriation of funds and poor delivery of services.26
22 This section is adapted from Equitas, Women’s Equality Rights: A Handbook for National Institutions. (2008).
23 CESCR General Comment No 3, at para 12.