What? Why? and How? of human rights budget work

Summary

In this webinar, presented on International Human Rights Day by The Alliance, the theme centered around integrating human rights into budgetary practices. Alison Jose, the research officer at the Scottish Human Rights Commission, discussed the intersection between human rights and governmental budgets. The primary focus was on understanding how implementing a human rights-based approach to budgeting can ensure transparency, fairness, and accountability, while also questioning the use and allocation of resources. Although it's a relatively new field, there’s potential for significant impact on policies and outcomes by embedding human rights considerations into budget preparations. The session also emphasized identifying effective practices and learning from frameworks abroad, with an aim to enhance the quality of public service and policy implementation in Scotland.

Highlights

• Human rights budget work aims to put values and policy priorities of a government into financial allocations. 📊
• There's a global shift towards integrating human rights into budgeting, ensuring policy alignment with human rights obligations. 🌍
• The Scottish Government has an opportunity to lead in human rights budgeting by aligning with international standards. 🚀
• Examining a government's fiscal management from a human rights perspective can separate rhetoric from reality. 🧐
• Realizing human rights through budgets involves questioning resource allocation and its impact on law adherence and individual rights. 🔎
• Meaningful participation and representative policy-making are essential elements in human rights-focused budgeting. 🤝

Key Takeaways

• Budgets should reflect governmental values, including human rights. If they don't, it implies those rights are undervalued. 🤔
• Integrating human rights in budgets ensures transparency and accountability in resource allocation. 💡
• A human rights-based budgeting approach can question who participates in decision-making, aiming for fairness in resource distribution. 🏛️
• Scotland has a history of equality budgeting but still needs to fully integrate human rights into the budgeting process. 🕵️
• Understanding human rights obligations can lead to better allocation of resources to marginalized groups and essential services. 🩺
• Public involvement and scrutiny are crucial for integrating a human rights framework within budgets. 👥
• While Scotland is beginning to apply human rights budgeting, it still lacks fully implemented examples. 🌍

Overview

The webinar hosted by The Alliance, featuring Alison Jose, provided a deep dive into the what, why, and how of integrating human rights into budget practices. Held on International Human Rights Day, it aimed at enlightening participants on the significant role budgets play in expressing governmental priorities, particularly emphasizing the potential for human rights-enhanced policy outcomes.

Throughout the session, Alison discussed the critical intersection of budgetary allocations and human rights compliance. With examples from Scotland, she highlighted the challenges and opportunities of adopting a human-centric approach to public budgeting. The ability to understand how governments generate, allocate, and spend money within a human rights framework opens pathways for more transparent and equitable governance.

Scotland, while making strides in equality budgeting, still has a long journey to travel in embedding human rights perspectives fully into their fiscal processes. The importance of public involvement, alongside learning from international practices, sets the stage for robust policy-making that prioritizes the welfare of all citizens. Participants were encouraged to engage actively in these developments to ensure accountability and betterment of public service goals.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and Overview This chapter serves as an introduction and overview of a webinar series called 'Alliance Life,' which is focused on innovations and integrated work in health and social care across Scotland. The specific session highlighted is in celebration of International Human Rights Day, discussing the significance of human rights in the context of budgeting, budget scrutiny, and adopting a human rights-based approach. The presentation is part of a broader effort by 'Alliance Live Webinars,' hosted by Alison Jose.
• 00:30 - 01:00: Speaker Introduction: Alison Jose The chapter titled 'Speaker Introduction: Alison Jose' introduces Alison Jose as the research officer at the Scottish Human Rights Commission, a position she has held since 2008. Her role involves supporting the Commission's research needs by developing and managing external research contracts, as well as conducting primary and secondary research. Her current work focuses on human rights budget work, measuring national progress on human rights, and the sustainable development goals. The speaker concludes by inviting the audience to submit questions using the chat box during the presentation.
• 01:00 - 02:00: Discussion on Budget and Human Rights This chapter involved a discussion on budget and human rights, initiated with guidance on using phone controls for a Q&A session that would follow the main presentation. The speaker, Alison, expressed excitement about the topic and shared her experience of working on it for a couple of years, hinting at the challenge of doing justice to the subject in a limited timeframe.
• 02:00 - 03:30: Importance of Budgets in Human Rights This chapter discusses the critical role budgets play in the realm of human rights. It underscores that a budget is more than just a financial plan; it acts as a blueprint that reflects a government's policy priorities and their conversion into fiscal allocations. The chapter emphasizes the importance of transparency in outlining how much revenue the government plans to garner, the sources of that revenue, and the methods of allocation and expenditure. It is implied that this financial transparency and prioritization are key to upholding human rights.
• 03:30 - 06:00: Human Rights and Budgeting Process The chapter discusses the relationship between human rights and government budgeting processes. It highlights that, historically, budgets and human rights have been considered separately with little interaction between them. Despite efforts in recent years towards equality and participatory budgeting, and a commitment from the Scottish Government in 2014 to consider human rights in future budgets, the Scottish budget still lacks grounding in human rights principles.
• 06:00 - 07:00: Scotland's Progress on Human Rights Budgeting The chapter discusses the significance of integrating human rights into government budgeting, as it reflects the values of the government. It highlights that if human rights are not considered in the budgeting process, it indicates that they are not prioritized. The chapter emphasizes that the generation, allocation, and expenditure of funds by the government play a crucial role in respecting, protecting, and fulfilling human rights obligations.
• 07:00 - 09:00: Engagement and Scrutiny in Budgeting The chapter discusses the intertwining of civic rights and the practical systems that uphold them, highlighting that the right to vote is ineffectual without an effective electoral system, just as access to justice is meaningless without a well-funded judiciary. It emphasizes that rights to housing require well-regulated housing sectors. It further highlights the importance of understanding government budgeting and financial management to discern the reality of governmental commitments and obligations.
• 09:00 - 11:00: Q&A Session Part 1 The chapter discusses the importance and value of incorporating human rights standards into budgeting processes. It is argued that doing so is not merely a nice consideration but a necessity for effective, transparent, fair, and accountable use of national resources. By applying human rights budgeting, governments can enhance political and social processes, exemplified by the context of Scotland.
• 11:00 - 14:00: Q&A Session Part 2 The chapter discusses the integration of human rights treaties into budget development and implementation. It highlights that such integration ensures accountability and continuity across different government administrations. The chapter emphasizes that while laws and policies are crucial, they must be adequately funded to be effective. It concludes that considering human rights in budgeting is not a complete solution but is essential for asking the right questions to support human rights realization.
• 14:00 - 16:00: Q&A Session Part 3 The chapter titled 'Q&A Session Part 3' focuses on the importance of using resources in a way that is effective, transparent, fair, and accountable. The discussion revolves around the Human Rights budget and the role it plays in decision-making, particularly in how it impacts various social groups. It emphasizes the significance of allocating appropriate resources and priorities to critical sectors such as health, education, access to justice, housing, and employment. Additionally, the chapter underlines the need for not just providing access to services but also continually improving them.
• 16:00 - 17:00: Conclusion and Contact Information This chapter delves into the synergy between human rights and economic policy, emphasizing their role in enhancing accessibility, availability, affordability, and quality of goods and services. It presents human rights as a tool to steer economic policies towards more people-centric outcomes. The discussion also introduces the concept of 'Human Rights budgeting,' which involves integrating human rights standards to establish budget goals and applying human rights principles to guide every phase of the budgetary process. Overall, the chapter underscores the significance of embedding human rights into economic policy-making and budgeting to foster equitable progress.

What? Why? and How? of human rights budget work Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 hi everyone and welcome to Alliance life the online information and learning portal showcasing examples of innovation and integrated working taking place across Scotland within health and social care we continue this uses these 30-minute webinars and Mark International Human Rights Day by looking at the what why and how of Human Rights Bahji work exploring the processes of budgeting budget scrutiny an added value of taking a human rights-based approach to this work and by now for Scotland the Alliance live webinars presented by alison jose alison
• 00:30 - 01:00 has been the research officer at the Scottish Human Rights Commission since it commenced work in 2008 she supports the Commission's research needs by developing and managing external research contracts an undertaking primary and secondary research her current areas of work focused on human rights budget work measurement of national progress on human rights and the sustainable development goals finally as our speaker deliver their presentation we invite the audience to pause questions using the chat box which
• 01:00 - 01:30 is phones within the toolbar at the bottom of top or top of your screen these will make up the questions for the Q&A session which will fall on presentation and bring our webinar to a close now without further delay over to Alison thank you very much I just want to see a few words this is a really interesting topic I've been working on now for the last couple of years and trying to do it justice in half an hour it's gonna be a real challenge but I
• 01:30 - 02:00 will do my best and we have a lot of resources available on our website for anybody who wants to look in more detail at some of the work that we've been doing but just to start off and the more than a plan the budget is the blueprint for how our government expresses its policy priorities and translates those policy priorities into its spending allocations it reveals how much money a government intends to raise from whom and how those resources are going to be allocated and spent and it's probably
• 02:00 - 02:30 the most important policy tool prepared by any government for managing the economy and to express what it values however historically we've had budgets in one corner and human rates in the other corner and there hasn't really been a lot of discussion between them and despite extensive work on equality and participatory budgeting in recent years and a commitment from the Scottish Government back in 2014 to explore human rights considerations of future budgets the Scottish budget remains one that's not grounded in is existing human rights
• 02:30 - 03:00 obligations and the government itself has said that the you know its budget is a key sign of government values but others have noted that if a budget is a sign of what a government values and human rights are not in there then what they are seeing effectively is that human rights are not a value worth counting so why are human rights relevant to the budget well all governments must respect protect and fulfill human rights and the way that they generate allocate and spend money plays a key role in this you can't
• 03:00 - 03:30 guarantee the right to vote if you don't have an effective electoral system just as you can't have access to justice or a fair trial without a well-funded judiciary and you can't guarantee the right to habitable accessible affordable and secure housing without well-regulated public and private housing sectors understanding how a government manages public money also helps us to sort the rhetoric from the reality about the commitments rates and if the government has an obligation to
• 03:30 - 04:00 do something specific then it must be reflected in the budget it's not just something nice to consider but with all the different types of budgeting people often ask why do human rights budgeting what would be the value or the added value into the political and social processes of Scotland by pursuing human rights budgeting for me the answer to that is firstly that if a government takes human rights standards into account when it's developing the budget it brings effective transparent fear and accountable use of national resources
• 04:00 - 04:30 the added value here is that the budget is developed and implemented in line with human rights treaties that bind all future governments regardless of who's in power human rights budget work helps us to progressively realise human race good rights laws and policies can also still result in unacceptable experiences for rights holders if they're not properly resourced so taking human rights owners into account when we develop the budgets isn't a magic bullet but it can help us to ask the right questions to support
• 04:30 - 05:00 effective transparent fair and accountable use of resources the Human Rights budget where it also allows us to question who takes part in decision-making and how different social groups are affected by the budget it means that appropriate pot and priority must also be allocated to critical areas like health education access to justice housing and work it also means focusing not only on who has access to services but I'm continually enhancing the
• 05:00 - 05:30 availability accessibility affordability and quality of those goods and services human rights in this sense provides a lever for more people focused economic policy Human Rights budget work if you think about it it's about two different processes really human rights budgeting which is where we use the standards to shape the goals of the budget and Human Rights principles to shape the process of budgeting in all its phases and Human
• 05:30 - 06:00 Rights budget analysis or scrutiny it's where we analyze the public budget to assess the government's compliance with its human rights obligations all with the goal of making public budgets more effective in helping to realize human rights and impact on people it also allows us to monitor the budget process how is the budget designed was it participative where decisions feared and transparent and Canada that government be held to attempt to account for their decisions and also monitoring revenue generation allocation and spend and tying that into impact about budgetary
• 06:00 - 06:30 decisions through human rights lens the principles we're talking about here these ensure that the budget process and decisions are transparent and accountable decisions taken must also be done without discrimination and with a meaningful and active participation of regs holders when we talk about the standards by signing up to human rights treaties governments are obliged to respect protect and fulfill human race and this means that they mustn't interfere with the enjoyment of your
• 06:30 - 07:00 race they've got to prevent violations of Rights by third parties and they've got to proactively take measures to fulfill and that fulfilling if soliciting access to goods and services promoting rates and how to claim them and providing goods and services to people for whatever reasons beyond their control are unable to attain them and it's these steps aim that you need to take into account many things but one of them is the budgetary issue and governments often use a lack of resources as to why certain rates are
• 07:00 - 07:30 not being realized and we need to interrogate that you need to ask questions are they using their existing resources effectively without discrimination are their decision-making process is clear and transparent and participatory are their efforts to generate additional resources adequate and equitable and my favorite way of thinking about this involves cake as many things in life are good with cake instead of just seeing you know here is your cake and you fight over who gets which slice and who deserves the biggest bit or what's really deserve any cake at all it's about first asking is the key
• 07:30 - 08:00 is that effective in fear I'm have we done everything we can to crack down on tax evasion tax avoidance and date which takes an estimated three and a half to almost eight billion pounds a year away from the Scottish public purse these are the steps that you've got to take to maximize available resources and in doing that maximization we have to ensure that we deliver a minimum core of
• 08:00 - 08:30 each right and this is regardless of any countries given level of economic development this is the red line below which a state can't fall and failure to provide this minimum core means that the state is presumed by the UN to be in violation of a covenant or treaty and unless it can demonstrate that every effort has been made to use all of its resources at its disposal and to prioritize reaching that minimum level we've also got to be progressively realizing people's rates so in other words that minimum core I just mentioned
• 08:30 - 09:00 is not a ceiling of achievement but it's a basic floor so governments are expected to meet continual progress on what they deliver as effectively and efficiently as possible towards the full realization of rates government's also mustn't take backward steps aim if a state does take a retrogressive step it must fully justify that option and it must be a temporary measure it must be necessary and proportionate it mustn't be discriminatory so it mustn't have discriminated or disproportionate
• 09:00 - 09:30 impacts on different grips you must still protect that minimum core and all other options other financial options must be have been looked at so you must be looking at whether or not money could be raised in other ways before we make cuts and this all must be done and to reduce inequality as soon as possible but on its own through human rights human rights budgeting is not sufficient for realizing rates it's got to be part of a larger process before the
• 09:30 - 10:00 development of the budget comes the development of laws policies and plans that are also shaped by human rights standards the budget is then created to directly realize these plans the Scottish government in recent years has made a number of commitments to further human rights protections including economic social and cultural rates however for us to now move beyond the rhetoric and to actually respect protect and fulfill those rates the government needs to develop its policy and then allocate generate and spend its money
• 10:00 - 10:30 all in a way that is grounded within the human rights framework and this involves examining a country's international human rights obligations looking at port rates and duties that they have before then analyzing human rights concerns that face different groups within and across different social sectors then designing our laws policies and plans that respond to those concerns before allocating adequate budget to implement those policies and then finally
• 10:30 - 11:00 monitoring whether the money has actually been spent as planned looking at what was delivered and who was delivered to and then evaluating where the policy was implemented and what impact it had so that's the kinda that the why and the port and moving into a bit of a whistle-stop tour onto the home just for me these are the lots and lots of questions here I'm not going to go through them all but for me doing Human Rights budget work both in terms of
• 11:00 - 11:30 budgeting and budget scrutiny starts with asking the right questions and there 8 questions based on principles and standards during whether the budgets created and through a budget cycle and in relation to the budget process these questions help us to assess whether or not it's been done transparently participate to really and occur and whether it's accountable they help us to identify if the government has raised all of the revenue it can from all possible sources and whether it's allocated and spent money efficiently and fairly to ensure that minimal level of provision and the
• 11:30 - 12:00 continual improvement of rates the answer to these questions should be included in a full cycle of scrutiny that starts with policy goals and ends with our impacts and outcomes and using human rates to connect the national budget to policy outcomes will help us identify whether or not that allocation spend has indeed resulted in greater enjoyments and rates whether funded programs are discriminatory I'm and Scotland's natural performance framework includes a set of national outcomes the budget process review group in 2017
• 12:00 - 12:30 said it wanted to see better connections reflected within the national budget process connecting outcomes with spends so these are all asking the same questions and the questions help us to raise red flags it helped us to strengthen democratic debate about key policy decisions and critically thinking about what human rights implications are of the different budget decisions in this way helps us to ground budget decisions in the experience of people of rank holders and this is a really important way of ensuring that human beings don't get
• 12:30 - 13:00 lost in the technical process of budgeting and analysis in order to ask those questions it's also worth looking at identifying indicators making comparisons and analyzing over time for the indicators there's a variety of different types that we can develop both to look at the process and also to compare the money that's generated allocated and spent when we make comparisons it's looking at relative regression or regression we can
• 13:00 - 13:30 look at national or international targets such as the UN treaties national targets such as the national outcomes looking at other countries to compete ourselves and not just comparing ourselves to see for slightly better than the rest of the UK but looking other countries that we aspire to that have more better rates realization than we do looking at other economic indicators relevant indicators and also crucially looking between groups so for example looking at equalities grips with protected characteristics to see whether
• 13:30 - 14:00 or not people are benefiting and who is benefiting because disparities at the local level can also help us raise red flags of possible discrimination in the distribution of centralized funds or decentralized funds analyzing over time allows us to assess if governments are making a genuine effort to progressively realize rates and it can also help support impact analysis connecting budgets to outcomes and showing whether allocations are for allocations have potentially been drivers for change but
• 14:00 - 14:30 often what really matters the most is what's actually spent so if a government hasn't spent all of its allocated money then it's not made full maximum available use of its maximum available resources so we need to ask as well has the government spent what it said it was going to do during the course of the year it has it's paint it and what it said it was going to spend it on and if allocated funds haven't been spent however they've been reallocated and was that process of reallocation done in a transparent participative and accountable way and then perhaps most
• 14:30 - 15:00 importantly for our analysis over time is remembering to ask are we talking about cash terms or real terms because inflation here is really important when you look at the budget and you look over time quite often it will tell you on a year-to-year basis whether there's been any change and from a year-to-year basis you might have a policy that's had money allocated to and it says no change no change no change and over a five year period it said no change every year but over a five year period that's
• 15:00 - 15:30 potentially about 8% decrease in actual funds so you need to look at the rate of inflation and ask the questions particular when politicians are talking about money and money that they're putting onto policy are they talking about cash terms or real terms that in a sense is a whistle-stop tour of aim the what why and how on the screen right now we have a range of the different resources that you can access either via the Commission or other resources global sources that are really useful in
• 15:30 - 16:00 reading and finding out a bit more about human rights budgeting I am also more than happy for people to contact the Commission to contact me if they want to find out more about the work that we are doing currently on this area that's great Thank You Alison that brings us to the end of the presentation section and on to the Q&A portion of the webinar so just remember if you've got any further questions as Allison is answering the ones that we've got so far then just please feel free to post them and we'll begin posing them so
• 16:00 - 16:30 the first one up that we have as how those Scotland's record and human race budgeting compared to other countries it's an interesting question I am we haven't specifically looked at comparing what other systems exist mainly because a lot of other countries are not also doing this work so I think we're not any worse than other areas but we're not any better Scotland has a good track record on trying to embed equality budgeting
• 16:30 - 17:00 processes with the support of the Equality budget Advisory Group and we have been producing and quality statement on the budget for the last 10 years so there there is a history there aim but a history that needs to be built on because it doesn't go far enough and it doesn't look at our rate standards but we are in doing this work and starting to do this work starting I think I'm a bit ahead of the game we have an opportunity in Scotland the government has an opportunity right now to really take a lead in this field and
• 17:00 - 17:30 can you point a specific example where Scotland has used human rights budgeting successfully not yet okay I think it's fair to say that the Scottish government doesn't use it doesn't do human rights budgeting and I think we are starting at the moment to develop and when we went we the whole project started and we had some funding from the EU to look at doing some budget scrutiny and the
• 17:30 - 18:00 problem was when we actually get into it was really difficult to do because the budget as it is set it's really difficult to break into it's quite or peak it's not very transparent it's not easy to follow the money so our first stop was to actually develop some indicators on to help create a better process to try and encourage better transparency so that we will be able to do that budgeting in future but at the moment aim we don't do it from that perspective okay and so this is the final question we've got but please continue if you've if you've got any
• 18:00 - 18:30 others that you'd like to ask before we close here so it's how can citizens or organisations advocating on their behalf scrutinize the the Scottish Government from human rights budgeting approach we've got a really good aim dissemination series of sort of leafing papers that look at lots of different aspects of how you can start to do this work I'm the budget process in Scotland in terms of being able to access it it is a good system it's it needs a lot of
• 18:30 - 19:00 improvement and the committee's particularly the Scottish parliamentary committees are working on improving the access that the general public has to be able to support budget scrutiny across the board in the there is moved from just written izing the period just directly after the budget is released to know being a year long process and all of the parliamentary committees throughout the year they take part in pre budget scrutiny and anyone can participate within that and each of the
• 19:00 - 19:30 committee's will put out calls during the year either on inquiries on a specific subject or at the pre budget scrutiny stage during the summer and people can participate in that aim we've got a lot of guidance about how they can make best use of doing you know part taking part in that process but that's a key area where people can really start to ask the right questions and of the government and a again using the the resources that we've got to help ask
• 19:30 - 20:00 those questions from a rates perspective and so we've had two more questions coming actually first one is from ebony bamboo as human race budgeting as an approach to an extend a development of participatory budgeting models which started in Brazil yeah and I mean fly-through out a few slides just here's the one when I thought this question might come up people often ask you know human rights budgeting how different is it from participatory budgeting or gender budgeting or equality budgeting and this
• 20:00 - 20:30 aim schematic that's put together by the center for economic and social rates the different types of budgeting that can be done and whether you're focusing on process or content or decisions or analysis the point that we would make is that they're all about articulating demands for action to improve the situation on the grain for different people using the budget as the tool to do that and with a common goal questioning whose voices are heard in and how different groups are affected by
• 20:30 - 21:00 budgets government's budgetary decisions with reference to agreed-upon standards and I guess this is where I mean participatory budgeting Human Rights budgeting is and should be participatory what we found in looking at what the difference between human rights budgeting are where to adds the value is that it provides that agreed-upon standards that participatory budgeting can be there are can have as its focus that framework is the human rights framework and so I think we've got the one final question and Marie Ward says
• 21:00 - 21:30 I'm particularly concerned with budgets for alcohol and drug treatment are the current budgets and Lane with human rights budgeting the current budgets are not done from a race-based perspective same for whichever particular issues we we don't use that as a starting point where we what what we should be doing is looking at what our commitments are and particularly in the right to the highest attainable standard physical mental health within there and there are
• 21:30 - 22:00 obligations about what governments should be doing and there's a lot of international advice about what that should look like in terms of budgeting I'm that would allow governments to be able to look at the marginalized groups people most in need and for your money should be being spent that would be the gold standard and that's notes happening at the moment thank you very much so that brings us to the end of our webinar thank you to Alison for delivering the fantastic presentation and answering those questions we hope it has provided
• 22:00 - 22:30 some insight and takeaways to bring to your own organizations before we go we'd like to draw your attention to the contact details for alliance life should you be interested in holding your own Alliance live activity so you can reach us on the via Twitter at Alliance cot or using hashtag alliance life you can also email us live at Alliance - Scotland org
• 22:30 - 23:00 dot u K or call us on oh one four one four zero four zero two three one so finally a big thank you to everyone again who registered for this webinar this has been our final one for 2019 we're looking forward to engaging with you all again in January with a new program of activity and please keep an eye out for further announcements on this through the Alliance Twitter thank you very much