Frameworks for Budget Analysis: Human Rights

Anti-poverty work is increasingly being understood from a human rights perspective.  Human rights provide an anchor of values and a framework for trade-offs and choices so necessary in anti-poverty budget analysis work. 

A plenary session was held to explore this intersection between human rights work and budget analysis, raising questions about the role of the state in securing rights, and the distinctions between priorities and rights.  Speakers gave examples of costing rights in India, defending women’s rights in a conflict situation in West Bank/ Palestine and legal defense of rights in Ghana.  The session was chaired by Warren Krafchik from the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA) and Helena Hofbauer from Fundar.   

Subsequent workshops explored themes of using budget analysis to measure commitments to children's and women's rights, and indicators for such measurement.

Warren introduced the issues with some examples of poor people defending their social and economic rights to public services.  In Cape Town, South Africa, a woman who had to leave her squatting community for health reasons took the local government to court for the failure to provide her children with the right to housing with their parents.  The case was referred to the constitutional court and upheld, stirring up broad public debate about the responsibilities of the state, what it could, and should, afford to pay for. In another case in Costa Rica an HIV positive man challenged the government to provide health care as a fundamental right to life.  This type of case provides an opportunity for progressive budget organizations to engage in rights and policy debates, challenging conservative opinions about government spending and responsibilities.  

Costing rights in India:  
MD Mistry spoke about the work of DISHA, a grassroots rights-based advocacy organization working with laborers to secure their rights to work and food.  The typical government response to demands for such rights was lack of funds, so DISHA began to look into the state budget, including special grants to tribal areas.  It was a journey of discovery to learn all the jargon and structure of the budget, which is designed to confuse, but important as financial allocation is a key indicator to measure government commitments and progress towards fulfilling obligations.

DISHA have used budget analysis tools to calculate the potential cost to the Gujarat government of ensuring food security for those below the poverty line in the state.  Nearly a third of people in the state are living below the poverty line, 2.6 million families in 1998.  Although 3.3 million people are issued with a ration card for the family to provide subsidized grains, these are not enough to provide nutrition to a family, leaving the average family with a shortfall of 40 kilos per month to make up on the open market.  If the state government is to guarantee the right to food, they need to spend more on food subsidies or employment creation.  Careful analysis of the figures shows that for all underemployed in the state to reach full employment a further 412,300,000 rupees would need to be spent in various departments on generating employment.  It is only through such calculations and analysis that arguments can be sharp and realistic and the government brought to account.

Legal defense of rights in Ghana:  
Dominique Ayine shared the experience of the Centre for Public Interest Law in Ghana in defending the rights of the poor in Northern Ghana. The Centre for Public Interest Law has been providing legal assistance to people displaced from mining areas in Northern Ghana through confiscation of land, pollution of drinking water and other rights violations.  Taking these cases to the only high court in the area, with only one underpaid judge seeing 50 cases a day, many of the cases are lost to the richer mining companies who are able to bend the law through bribery and corruption.

The Centre began to understand through this experience that rights are affected both directly and indirectly by the budget, and as such began to explore the constitutional legal framework for examining rights and responsibilities, monitoring the impact of the budget on rights, and holding the government accountable through law.  

Human rights may be universal and indivisible, but in many cases they are provided for and upheld by the state, especially in the case of social and economic rights.  This in turn depends on budgetary allocations, so budget analysis provides a framework for examining rights and priorities.  The Ghanaian constitution provides for an elaborate though not exhaustive bill of rights, which is honored more in rhetoric than practice.  Some ministries and departments have more of a responsibility for rights than others, including the Commission for Human Rights and Justice (CHRAJ) and land and social welfare ministries.  The more starved these agencies are of funds, the more negative the impact on the rights of the population.  CHRAJ, which depends on direct government funding, had its income cut in half after handling labor claims against the government interest, losing some of its better qualified and experienced lawyers and reducing severely its effectiveness.

Sustainable and equitable development is a process tied to the efficient and just use of national resources.  To ensure that allocations reflect rights and priorities in the Ghanaian context there are two routes:

·        The administrative process: to force the Auditor General to monitor government spending in line with priorities through law;

·        Judicial enforcement:to invoke investigation by CHRAJ of alleged corruption in public money;

However, when rights are seen in terms of budgetary allocations we are forced to prioritize, as funds are not unlimited in our countries.  This raises more difficult questions, which challenge the very concept of human rights, and is perhaps where the intersection of rights and budgets weakens.  The questions we need to ask are:

1. Which group of rights has an overriding claim to resources?

2. Which set of rights maximizes collective welfare?

3. How do we resolve conflicts between rights and other values in society?

Defending women’s rights in a conflict situation: 
Maha Abu-Dayyeh Shamar of the Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counseling, highlighted the complexities of securing rights in a situation without a sovereign state, a constitution to guarantee basic rights, or clear structures to uphold them.  In West Bank/ Palestine different areas are under different administrative authority, different sectors and services are the responsibility of different authorities and the three main religious groups (Islam, Christian and Jewish) are liable under different parts of different legal systems.  It is what Maha called a ‘Swiss cheese situation’. 

This makes questions of accountability for rights hard to manage.  Ultimately it is Israel that is responsible for the rights of the population of West Bank/ Palestine, they are the signatories to the International convention and are required to submit reports on the situation.  However, the Palestinian authority must also be held up to standards for human rights, despite their absence from international community conventions. The Palestinian authority does make efforts within these constraints to provide services and protect rights, operating with donor funds which are available for project proposals, but it is only possible to hold them accountable to their lip service to such principles through popular pressure or donor influence.  

The Women’s Centre addresses women’s rights as human rights, through counseling, legal aid and advocacy.  There are various laws applying to women, depending on their religion and the area in which they live, and there are sub-official and traditional systems at work to enforce the law, which can be dangerous.  In this context of religious tension it is important to remove women’s rights from the arena of sterile religious debate and women’s ghetto, so the Centre concentrates on mainstreaming women’s issues within the context of broader social and economic rights. 

An important part of the work of the Center is training government and NGOs to create awareness of women’s rights as human rights.  These training sessions address rights issues, from defining and identifying rights, to the ideology of rights, the international agreements and responsibilities.  The budget becomes part of the work when planning how to demand provision or protection of rights.  

In a situation like that of West Bank/ Palestine, where planning is dependent on donor funds, previous budgets are the only indicator of government activity.  Provisions for women’s rights have been good in previous years, due in part to donor priorities.  However, this is an important time to make an impact on nascent structures before a permanent legitimate governance structure is put in place.  Energy is spent now on developing budget lines, structures and systems which new governments will be forced to maintain.  

Conclusions and comments:
In conclusion, Helena articulated some of the advantages of the marriage between the two anti-poverty perspectives of human rights and budget analysis.  While the former offers a large, well-built movement with powerful experience, history and advocacy skills, an understanding of the budget strengthens opportunities to influence policy through use of the language and domain of the powerful.  While knowledge of the budget can help to identify opportunities for securing funds for human rights work, a human rights perspective provides an anchor of values for budget analysis.  And while good budget analysis can be used to cost rights and sharpen advocacy arguments, budget work and human rights are mutually supportive in unpacking and overcoming issues of trade-offs, choices and priorities. 

The nature and extent of this link was an issue for discussion, with the feeling expressed that budget analysis experts should support the issues and voice of the human rights struggle with their skills.  Budget analysis can find information to counter the arguments of the powerful, but our own arguments need to be formed not defensively but from the perspective and values of human rights, and our advocacy based on mobilization around these issues and perspectives.  Although one won’t work without the other, we need to be aware of the priority within the partnership.

The issue at stake with both rights and the budget is power.  Deepening democracy is about devolving power, and this cannot be done without reclaiming the state from the elite bureaucracy and career politicians.  Budget analysis asks the questions of how to operationalize rights in terms of financial distribution, and how to turn policy rhetoric into action through congruence of law and finance systems. But if budget analysis is not grounded in the grassroots, not tied to economic literacy and capacity building through action, the budget analysts themselves just become more power brokers and bargainers.  

Sunil Bastian makes a comment on the human rights debate

… rights and globalization: Dominique made the point in his presentation that in order to protect rights, governments need to properly fund the appropriate public institutions.  In other words, only governments who are strong enough to raise taxes and fund such institutions have the capacity to respond to people’s social and economic rights.  So the question of rights, in relation to budget work, brings with it all the issues of corruption, the size and capacity of government and attitudes to democracy and respect for government.  Since the powerful global actors are promoting smaller, weaker governments we need to think about how far we are prepared to engage in the questions of privatization and the role of the state.  

... the indivisibility of rights: Difficult questions arise when rights are viewed through the lens of the budget and trade-offs and choices are introduced.  The Universal Declaration on Human Rights is a standard, a bench-mark and a goal for us to work towards and refer to.  However, to look at budgetary allocations in terms of rights dilutes this benchmark, as we begin to prioritize between ‘rights’ to fit within a budget ceiling.  If one right is less priority than another does it remain a right?  How can we still fight for it?  However, Maha responded that in most cases those who have their rights violated in one area, such as education, are the same people whose rights are violated in other areas, such as employment, housing or food.  With this analysis we don’t discriminate between rights, but use them to set objectives and do strategic planning in budget advocacy, focused on equality in access to rights.  

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