Funding the Commission on Human Rights (Mexico) CEDAW

“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.