News & Events

  • In 2011, Equal in Rights published “A Guide to Costing Human Rights” by Victor Steenbergen. This paper provides an overview of all the central concepts and definitions relevant for costing human rights policy.
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  • In 2011, Equal in Rights published “ Frontloading Human Rights: A Conceptual Framework for Building Budget and Realising rights” by Victor Steenbergen. This paper defines all the key concepts and provides an understanding of their relevance for Frontloading Human Rights.
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  • The International Human Rights Internship Program (IHRIP), in collaboration with the International Budget Partnership (IBP), implemented a ten-day West African Regional Learning Program on Human Rights Budget Work in Monrovia, Liberia from July 4th to July 13th, 2011.
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  • The Center for Women’s Global Leadership published its report on“Maximum Available Resources and Human Rights” in June 2011. This report examines a number of ways that governments can access financial resources in order to fulfill their obligation to use “maximum available resources” to realize ESC rights.
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  • “ No Protection for Children in the Budget 2011-2012” provides an analysis from a child rights’ perspective of the allocations for children (Budget for Children—BfC) in the 2011-12 Indian Union budget. 
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  • In December 2010, The Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights in an article, "Austerity Budgets Will Cause Further Child Poverty", recently said that political priorities and budget allocations are the principal reasons for the large differences in child poverty rates among European countries, and between those countries in similar economic situations. 
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  • In mid-2009 the International Budget Partnership (IBP) released “It’s Our Money. Where’s It Gone?”, a documentary film on the work of one of its partners, MUHURI (Muslims for Human Rights).  MUHURI involves communities directly in monitoring expenditure of the government’s Constituency Development Fund (CDF) in Mombasa, Kenya.“
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  • In early 2010 IHRIP and the International Budget Partnership (IBP) produced “Reading the books: Government budgets and the right to education” that looks at elements of the right to education and where these might be found in a government’s budget; a government’s human rights obligations and questions these raise about a government’s budget; a process for using a rights framework to analyze a government’s education budget; and a short discussion of costing related to the right to education.
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Participatory budgeting PDF Print E-mail

 

The public budget is a central aspect of government in all countries.  Article 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantees the right of each individual to take part in the government of his country. This right is also guaranteed in article 25 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). The public budget is a central aspect of government in all countries. pbvotingThe UDHR, ICCPR and other documents thus guarantee everyone the right to participate in the process of developing, implementing and monitoring the government’s budget.

Many civil society organizations are involved in participatory budget work. When people talk about “participatory budgeting,” they generally mean one or the other of two things: 1) government-initiated participatory budget processes, the most famous of which is undertaken in Porto Alegre, Brazil; and 2) which happens more commonly, efforts by non-governmental groups to increase civil society involvement in and influence on the formulation and expenditure of government budgets (aside from or in addition to any such government-initiated projects). In addition to “participation” by the civil society organizations (CSOs) themselves through their budget work, this latter category includes a wide range of initiatives, such as:

  • developing and disseminating “citizens’ budgets” to enhance the public’s understanding of the budget;

  • providing information to legislators to encourage them to push for a more pro-poor, pro-human rights budget;

  • a range of initiatives that track expenditures of the budget at the national down to local levels, including social audits undertaken by communities, monitoring of government procurement of services in education and other spheres, "citizen report cards" on government services (how well was the budget spent?), and oversight of reports submitted by government auditors to the legislature.

Many groups involved in participatory budget work refer to human rights—the right of people to participate in governmental affairs, as guaranteed either in their national constitutions and laws, or in regional and international documents. Many other groups, however, do not—and indeed, international human rights standards supporting participation are underdeveloped. For information on national standards related to participation, see Legal Frameworks for Citizen Participation, produced by LogoLink in 2003.

A useful resource containing summaries of participatory budget work around the world is Participatory Budgeting, which was published by the World Bank in 2007. Another resource, which describes expenditure monitoring methodologies used by civil society groups in various countries is Our money, Our responsibility: A citizens' guide to monitoring government expenditures produced by the International Budget Partnership (IBP).

A web site that focuses on municipal participatory budget initiatives is hosted by the Participatory Budget Project. A more eclectic source of information is the IBP web site.