Will Human Rights in Future Determine Budgets?
(07.04.2006) Pure utopianism, many will think. So far it is thought to be outright nonsense to try and calculate the cost of say the Human Right to Food, let alone to make that right subject of budget planning. And yet 144 countries, many of them from the developing world, have ratified their determination to progressively fulfil this and other Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and 153 are party to the Civil and Political Rights. Why not therefore, try and concretise the realisation of the Human Rights, even by way of costing and budgeting them? An international workshop of 35 participants from 4.-6.4.2006 took place near Geneva in Switzerland responded in the affirmative to this question.
The workshop brought together seven European protestant development agencies, among them also EED, their partners form developing countries and Human Rights experts from the Office of the High Commission on Human Rights and the World Health Organisation as well as others. The partners were form Hong Kong, India, Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia, Nigeria, Brazil and Mexico. The workshop explored if Human Rights, both Economic, Social and Cultural as well as Civil and Political can be costed and budgeted and whether methodological hurdles could be overcome. Moreover, it assessed if budgeting is a good advocacy tool to promote the realisation of the Human Rights.
In Mexico the NGO FUNDAR intervened successfully for better budgets to avoid risks of maternity referring to the right to health. In Nigeria state level budget officials had to respond to critism of the Christian Health Association of Nigeria about the deficient equipment of basic health care. In Tanzania civil society actors had achieved that the Government now regularly consulted them with regard to Gender equality in the budget. In Zambia partners had costed the Millennium Development Goals. They see the Human Rights as the better frame of reference for development. They do not want to only half the income poverty by 2015 as the Millennium Development Goals foresee. They rather want the fulfilment of the Human Rights to employment, health, education, etc. for everybody. They see no reason, why the Human Rights should not be costed and then in a second step be budgeted as a result of successful advocacy work with Government and Society.
The Human Rights experts of the Workshop were of the opinion it is high time to look at the macro-economy of a country from the perspective of the Human Rights. It was concluded, that the primary responsibility of a finance minister is towards the fulfilment of the Human Rights of the citizens of his own country. Only after that e.g. the servicing of the foreign debt is permissible. To satisfy creditor demands from scarce state revenue before the Human Rights of the citizens of that country are ensured, is illegitimate on the basis of the covenants.
It became clear during the Workshop that the Office of the High Commission on Human Rights is presently working fast to identify indicators. These indicators will be the basis to calculate the cost for the fulfilment of the Rights to Food, Education or Water. The World Health Organisation is doing the same for the Right to Health. There are efforts in the University of Sussex in England to elaborate basic tenets for a Human Rights perspective of macro economics.
The workshop contributions left no doubt: Human Rights defenders worldwide have begun to take up the challenge of budgting. The workshop of the protestant development agencies came just at the right time, to strengthen this process. The workshop confirmed, with an appropriate effort most or the Human Rights can be costed and budgeted. And the participants responded to the question if the effort would be worth the while with an emphatic: YES!
Maybe, therefore it will not remain unthinkable any longer to organise and equip budgets from a perspective of the Human Rights. The participants of the workshop are positive, that this would indeed be an important contribution to the eradication of poverty and a sustainable development in the interest of the people.
Peter Lanzet
© 2011 eed |
Last Update: 10.04.2006 09:01:08 |
Realisierung: