Children are mightily affected by the government's budget, and thus it is critically important to understand how budgets are used to advance or obstruct child rights.  The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) details the extent to which, and how, guarantees in other international human rights treaties apply to children. Article 4 of the CRC essentially reiterates the obligations contained in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), applying them to government actions affecting children. The Committee on the Rights of the Child makes specific mention of budget-related measures in its General Comment 5, where it says:

…No State can tell whether it is fulfilling children’s economic, social and cultural rights “to the maximum extent of … available resources”, as it is required to do under article 4, unless it can identify the proportion of national and other budgets allocated to the social sector and, within that, to children, both directly and indirectly….The Committee needs to know what steps are taken at all levels of Government to ensure that economic and social planning and decision-making and budgetary decisions are made with the best interests of children as a primary consideration and that children, including in particular marginalized and disadvantaged groups of children, are protected from the adverse effects of economic policies or financial downturns.

Globally work on child rights and budgets range from initiatives that assess the impact on children of specific allocations and expenditures in a budget to ones that inform children about the budget and seek to involve them in discussions and advocacy related to the government’s budget.