Applied Budget Analysis
Budgets can be viewed as important statements of governments’ and non-state actors’ economic and social priorities. Fittingly, the overriding goal of ESC rights-based applied budget analysis is well targeted social spending on essential social services. In this regard, human rights defenders may consider the following best practices:
- seek engagement in public expenditure reviews and medium term expenditure frameworks, and encourage governments to incorporate the results of social and economic rights-based research into those instruments;
- ensure that poor communities are included in the design and management of basic social services;
- ensure the continuity of basic social services during times of complex humanitarian emergencies;
- audit mechanisms available under development programs to ensure accountability to project stakeholders;
- explore the possibility of social and public budgets;
- design systems that yield disaggregated data on expenditures and outcomes in terms of such areas as rural-urban gaps, gender, ethnicity, and geographical differences;
- access appropriate technology and software to analyze data to assess the impact of policy and program interventions affecting the poor and other marginalized groups;
- improve distributional analysis of poverty programs, and build the capacity to translate data results into policies adequate to advance ESC rights concerns;
- assist in building national capacities for economic and debt management; and undertake participatory public expenditure reviews to determine the impact of public investments on the asset base of poor people.
A further resource on ESC rights-based applied budget analysis is Health Indicators and Budget Analysis.
The following case summaries illustrate how human rights defenders have used human rights research and reporting to protect and promote ESC rights: