Aidan Flegg (PhD researcher) University of Glasgow / University of Stirling / Scottish Human Rights Commission
Embedding children’s rights, and with it, a meaningful and positive impact on the lived experiences of children throughout society requires a range of governmental action. From legal measures such as direct incorporation, as we are seeing in Scotland, or increasing legislative protection as we have seen in Wales, to equally important non-legal or administrative measures such as rights education, awareness raising, capacity building, and widespread monitoring and evaluation, there are many avenues from which to further children’s rights. To many working in this field, these are well-known as General Measures of Implementation for the UNCRC, outlined by the CRC Committee through General Comment 5. While many of these measures are already in use throughout the UK, there remains a relatively unexplored measure for children’s rights realisation in the UK (and the wider world), that of public budgeting for children’s rights.
Comprehending the importance of public finance for realising children’s rights begins with the understanding that all human rights realisation requires the generation, allocation, and expenditure of public resources. Whether it be fulfilling economic and social rights through the delivery of adequate health and social care, the provision of housing, water, and waste services, as well as appropriate education, or civil and political rights through the execution of fair elections or protection of fair judicial process, for example, advancing all human rights is inherently tied to its resourcing. In other words, viewing a government’s commitments to human rights through the lens of financial commitments can really help rights advocates in separating the reality from the political rhetoric. Or, as the prominent scholar in this field, Aoife Nolan, has captured more articulately: “Budgets are a key sign of a government's values. So, if human rights are not in there, what’s being said is that they are not a value worth counting.”
Linking Human rights and public finance is an area of growing interest and expertise. With recent work from the CRC Committee via General Comment 19 providing clear international guidance, it is possible to deliver a process for developing, approving, executing, and oversight of public budgets in a way that is sensitive to and reflective of human rights standards and obligations. Public budgeting for children’s rights is thus best understood under this wider umbrella but with a specific focus on ensuring children’s rights, with children as independent rights holders, are adequately considered and captured throughout the budget cycle. It raises key questions around the visibility of children's rights outcomes within the budget (the evidence base), the transparency by which the budget process is carried out and made available (accessibility of the budget to children), and whether children have had the opportunity to meaningfully participate in the budget process. These represent examples among many other necessary considerations but begin to demonstrate how the theory can be translated into meaningful policy and practice.
Legally, children’s rights budgeting is derived from Article 4 of the UNCRC which requires States to ‘undertake all appropriate legislative, administrative, and other measures for the implementation of the rights recognised in the present Convention’. Moreover, Article 4 continues and demonstrates the need to realise children’s economic and social rights to the ‘maximum extent of their available resources’, making a clear bridge to the obligation of progressive realisation contained within Article 2(1) of the ICESCR and the sub-duties it contains. Beyond a tool from which to evaluate a government's broad commitment to rights realisation in general, public budgeting for children’s rights really offers rights advocates with an effective framework from which to monitor the progressive realisation of children’s economic and social rights. A notoriously difficult feat.
As is now well known amongst children’s rights advocates, Scotland in March 2021 passed the UNCRC (Scotland) Incorporation Bill with the aim of incorporating the UNCRC into Scots law as far as possible within the devolved context. While it is yet to receive Royal Assent, due to a successful challenge by the UK government in the supreme court, much of the Bill's content is likely to remain unchanged while in reconsideration, leaving Scotland’s wide-ranging intentions and methods to further respect, protect, and fulfil children’s rights available to view. Among the measures adopted through the Bill is the publishing of a Children’s Rights Scheme (“the Scheme”). Through the Scheme, there is a clear commitment for children’s rights to be considered within the budget process in Scotland, making this the first commitment of its kind for Ministers within the UK. This is a hugely positive step forward and will continue to emphasise the nexus between financial decision-making in Scotland and its commitment to and advancement of children’s rights.
What lies next is turning this progressive commitment into tangible and practical action. There are a wealth of necessary considerations, from the relationship and flow of a budget down from the UK Government to Scottish and on to local authorities, for example, to longer-term preventative planning, impact assessing budgetary allocations, and maximising available resources via progressive tax systems (yes, tax and subsequently tax avoidance is an issue for children’s rights!) These structural considerations must act alongside improvements to the process such as increasing the transparency of the process and moving towards meaningful participation of children throughout the yearly cycle. At its heart, public budgeting for children’s rights asks us fundamentally to assess where rights are violated or at the most risk of being so, determine the allocation and spend of resources required to realise children’s rights and put in place the necessary mechanisms needed to generate the resources needed to fulfil those rights. There is no doubt this will be an iterative process for Scotland and one that requires both patience and care to avoid tokenism and achieve impact.
To its benefit, Scotland’s active children’s sector and human rights commission have been increasingly pushing this work forward through awareness raising and capacity building, publishing several reports to pressurise government into action. Further help can be garnered from the thorough international guidance set out by General Comment 19 which sets out in detail key considerations to be taken at each stage of the budget as well as how to give effect to the General Principles of the Convention within budgetary decision-making. This is further supported by an increasing presence of UNICEF in children’s rights budgeting, with useful, evidence-based, resources being developed to help guide States in realising children’s rights via public budgeting. While state practice in relation to public budgeting for children’s rights remains limited, evidence and practice can be gathered from the work of NGOs such as HAQ: Centre for Child Rights in India and the Children’s Budget Unit in South Africa who have spent decades working on analysing, improving, and disseminating budgetary information from the perspective of children’s rights.
Additional considerations and practice can and should be brought in from mutually reinforcing budgeting frameworks, also explored in Scotland and more widely around the world. From participatory and gender budgeting to wellbeing budgeting for children, there is growing acceptance that our approach to decision-making on public resources has the potential to improve the lived experiences of both individuals and entire communities. Scotland has taken its first step towards a rights-based approach to budgeting, placing its commitment to children’s rights budgeting in legislation. The task left is to accumulate and analyse the resources on best practice that are available and determine how best to implement children’s rights budgeting within Scotland’s devolved context. In doing so, it will offer a great deal to the advancement of public budgeting for children’s rights not just in the UK and globally.
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