In its budget work, INESC undertakes the following principal activities:

• Monitoring the public budget and working to influence the formulation and execution of the budget;

•  Producing budget analyses and providing budgetary data to strategic partners and to others through newsletters and reports;

• Calling for increases in social expenditures as well as greater access to and transparency of public information to facilitate the society's participation and social control;

•  Advocating for proposals submitted to the National Congress designed to establish and institutionalize channels for civil society’s participation in formulation of the public budget.

INESC participates in the Brazilian Budget Forum (Fórum Brasil de Orçamento - FBO), a civil society grouping.  FBO spearheads analysis processes and holds public hearings with parliamentarians and competent authorities to discuss budget proposals.  INESC develops draft amendments to budget proposals, sometimes on its own and sometimes in collaboration with FBO, that are considered by the Congress’s Budget Commission (Comissão Mista de Orçamento).

INESC also translates the technical information on public budgets into more accessible language, preparing booklets designed to facilitate the Brazilian population’s understanding of the relevance of the budget to their lives.  INESC also sponsors courses for its CSO partners.  Focusing on the budget, the courses aim to strengthen the popular political actors vis-à-vis the State and government institutions, and enhance their capacity to advocate for human rights.

INESC uses national, regional and international human rights standards in its policy analysis and budget work.  It is strongly committed to a rights framework, believing that such a framework is a fundamental way to address values and notions of citizenship.  It has used the rights framework to address a range of social issues, including those affecting indigenous people, youth, the environment, land and agrarian reform and the right for food.  These social issues are priorities for the organization, and INESC monitors related policies, such as Hunger Zero, and social security policies related to income transfer programs targeted at poor people, children, the elderly, etc.  INESC has concluded that human rights standards are the most valid way for the government and legislators to formulate, enact and implement the government’s budget.

Until 2004 INESC’s work was almost exclusively at the national level.  That year it started working with social movements at the local level, to build up their knowledge of human rights and capacities in budget work.  With this shift INESC expanded its work to include not just the national budget, but also state and municipal budgets.  INESC finds that in this state and municipal level work it can see more concrete results from its efforts.

In order to take on work at the state and municipal levels, it spent two years working with a network of 60 civil society grassroots groups in Maranhão in the northeast of the country, adapting its methodology to the state and municipal levels.  After it had satisfactorily tested its new methodology in Maranhão and another state, two years ago it initiated a project with public schools at periphery of Brasilia and few of which are in very poor areas of the city. 

This latter project was INESC’s first significant initiative related directly to the education budget.  In this project the organization works with adolescents in six schools, discussing with them about budgets, human rights and citizenship.  It has taught them budget analysis.  The project has been very successful.  The students, for example, identified what were to them the most important elements in the right to education.  Using the results of their budget analysis they successfully lobbied for an increase in the local education budget by US$1 million.

While INESC has had a number of successes in its budget work, it still faces significant challenges.  Currently one of those challenges is enhancing the concrete impact of its methodology.  It is in dialogue with the government and working with consultants to develop a theoretical basis to ensure that its approach and methodology are strong.  It is also working to develop “shadow budgets” at both the national and local levels using a human rights framework.  The central question is: How is it possible to build a budget using human rights and human rights obligations?

November 2009