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Summary: Report from working group 1 from the Day of General Discussion held on 21 September 2007 by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. Main questions considered - Social budgeting in Ecuador - a case study - Child rights budget tracking in Egypt - a case study - Interventions from the floor As the theme of this year’s Day of General Discussion - Resources for children – responsibility of States’ – was broad, the Committee divided participants into two working groups. The first working group, which was chaired by Moushira Khattab, member of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, focused on the concept of ‘available resources’. Go here for the report on working group two: the use of resources to the maximum extent. Participants in working group 1 reflected on how to identify and analyse the resources available at the national level, including those obtained through international cooperation. The main questions considered were: To introduce the topic, Ms. Elizabeth Gibbons, Chief Global Policy Section, from UNICEF’s Division of Policy and Planning spoke about UNICEF’s experience in social budgeting in Ecuador. The UNICEF initiative focused on using the CRC principle of universality to enhance social rights. Ecuador had experienced a serious macro-economic crisis in the late 1990s. An analysis of the budget revealed that between 1996 and 1999, education allocations fell from 600 million to 300 million; allocations for health also fell about 50 per cent. By the year 2000, 15 per cent of the budget was allocated to social spending, whilst 60 per cent went towards debt repayment. In addition to these shortfalls in social spending, the analysis highlighted that marginalised groups, particularly indigenous groups, were not getting their fair share. UNICEF initiated a dialogue with Congress which included the Minister of Finance and Economy, to help devise a tool for budget analysis which would lead to greater transparency and help legislators and the public to understand the budget process. They worked with a wide range of partners to build civil society capacity on budget priorities to sustain the programme over the medium and long-term. By 2002, social spending had risen to 22- 23 per cent, and the minister of finance had carried out tax reforms, increasing social spending from six per cent to 14 per cent of the country’s GDP. The programme helped to build broad social consensus on public spending policies by democratising budget information. The most important lesson learnt was that a human rights based message can resonate. This was evident in the fact that there was no resistance to idea that rights are for everyone. Although Ecuador had ratified the CRC in 1990 and approved a Code for Children and Adolescents in 2002, participation in implementing the provisions of these instruments was needed to propel them forward. General constraints to maximising budget allocations for child rights that remain include governments’ tendency to prioritise pro-growth policies [which they do not see as including human rights]; that budget priorities are not transparent; and that while allocations might be monitored, it is hard to quantify their impact. Furthermore, national plans of action are not tied to budgetary allocations. Elizabeth Gibbons gave the following recommendations: Ms. Lobna Abdellatif, Professor of Economics at Cairo University, then took the floor to explain the lessons learned from a budget tracking project for children in Egypt, which produced the first ever child rights based budget report. She began by highlighting several obstacles to budget tracking for children: The two-year study has informed the next stage in Egypt of taking a systematic approach to budget allocations for children, she said. While children represent almost 40 per cent of Egypt’s population, public spending on children amounts to no more than 17 per cent. She proposed that governments create an institutional link between rights and budget activities, devising a matrix system to match inputs to outcomes. In conclusion, she emphasised the need for follow up. The study helped to jump-start a national dialogue on child rights and budgets. This is particularly important as Egypt will soon report to the Committee on the Rights of the Child. She said the findings call for national actions and international efforts to fulfil child rights and streamline details of budgeting and emphasise the need to encourage more coherent action to make children visible in the national budget. The 'Ad hoc working group on ‘Available Resources reported on a meeting held on the availability and maximum use of resources in the African context. The reality is that the States concerned do not have available resources in the immediate future. We should look at this through a different lens, at the important role played by the private sector, especially in resource rich countries: those rich in minerals or oil for example are often the worst performing countries in terms of child rights. She recommended that the Committee ask States to indicate the level of private sector activity in countries were fair trade policies to be followed. Donor States often have trade policies which are not fair to recipient countries. The Committee should recommend that they align their foreign policies with aid policies. This requires a coordinated approach, and should include reporting on the efficacy of UN country programmes when it addresses available resources devoted to Africa. Donor agendas often result in a wastage of resources, programmes are not conceived with a child rights focus. Aflatoun, Child Savings International supports child social and financial education to ensure resources are harnessed to the maximum extent through the education system to children as young as six. This can help unlock inter-generational cycles whereby parents have not learnt financial skills and so cannot pass this knowledge on to their children. Aflatoun teaches financial skills within a clear human rights framework, providing a moral and social compass. It harnesses the education structure in different countries to unlock children’s future through a life skills centred teaching approach. In this way, children become more aware of the financial resources that are available in their own country and can become agents of change. International Peace Bureau: A key focus of IPB’s work is on the relationship/ disparity of resources allocated to the military and those allocated to the social sector, especially to children. In the flurry of statistics, one that is rarely mentioned is the total annual sum spent on the military sector around the world: this is now higher than during the cold war, amounting to 124 billion dollars. This is in direct competition with resources allocated to the social sector, in particular to children. Four key concepts need to be taken into account: Currently, world military expenditure amounts to more than 10 times that that required to meet the Millennium Development Goals. Child Rights Chair for UNICEF at the University of Antwerp spoke about the right to development aid. International cooperation is broader than development aid. It is useful to take into account the typology of obligations, for example to respect, protect and fulfil. In terms of development aid, the emphasis of the obligation is to fulfil. But it should also focus on the obligations to respect and protect. The availability of resources in a country is not only determined by domestic resources but also by external policies. The way children’s rights are respected in policies also impacts on the availability of resources. States need to live up to their political commitment of allocating 0.7 per cent of the budget to development aid. Everychild recommends a gate-keeping system to reduce number of children in public institutional care. States identify a central planning body across departments to overcome the problem of responsibility lying with different departments. To do this, tools should be developed to ensure the number of children is broken down by type and included in the human development index. To support States Parties, the UN should issue guidelines on how to measure public care provision. The Nicaraguan Network for Children and Adolescents, which is part of a wider Latin American network, made the following recommendations: The Network for Children and Adolescents in El Salvador recommended that: Caritas Internationalis monitors child poverty in EU Member States. Member States have an open method of coordination, which is a legislative rather than a political method of adopting common objectives and national reports, this is coordinated by the European Commission. States elaborate and draft national reports on fightiing poverty and social exclusion. Since January, Caritas has started monitoring the implementation of national reports. There is a child poverty thematic grouping of five Member States. The preliminary conclusions show that child poverty is multi-dimensional which is strongly connected to unemployment in the child’s family. It is therefore important that State policies focus not only on child poverty, but on supporting the child’s family to ensure that there is a sufficient household incomes so the child feels equal to others. When these conditions are not met, they say the child is in a ‘risk household’. Caritas Internationalis make the following recommendations: Swiss Committee for UNICEF: The General Comment issued on this year’s Day of General Discussion should reflect the fact that in some countries, such as Switzerland, the cantons have great autonomy and often draft their own budget. The Committee could therefore invite different regional governments to contribute to the budget report. Save the Children Sweden spoke of the need for coordination between trade policy and foreign policy. We should look at how consistent countries are in how they apply child rights across different sectors, not just in education, health, and other traditional areas. The Committee should ask each government not just how it spends money at the national level but also at the international level because if different donor countries are working together, issues such as child rights are often lost as the tendency is to work to the lowest common denominator in the group. African Child Policy Forum: How many governments actually know that this is their responsibility? They often look for international aid on issues such as child rights. We must try to engage more with Ministries of Finance and look at trends. The formulation of the budget must involve children. There is a need to monitor allocations by matching the amount allocated to actual expenditure to find out how the money was spent and used. Government of Canada: Over the last 12 years the government has provided programmes for children in low-income families with a health focus. They have developed a set of guiding principles for this but priorities for budget allocation are a local decision. Local NGOs play an important role in this. This is leveraging an average of 8,000 voluntary sector hours a month on this. These programmes are rigorously evaluated on a regular basis, both quantitative and qualitatively. An important factor in the programmes’ success is the fact that they are a shared responsibility. For the past six years, Canada has carried out annual public child reporting at the national and sub-national level. Every two years, this is matched against indicators of children’s wellbeing. This can be an uncomfortable process for governments, but it is a healthy process. Action for Children and Youth, Aotearoa recommended that the Committee ask governments about their financial investment in child rights as well as on issues of climate change. On the issue of climate change, children in the Asia Pacific are especially vulnerable as rising sea levels will mean that children and families will have to leave their own countries. Governments should make financial commitments to provide for this, and the Committee should ask them to report on their implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. Innocenti Research Centre: It is important to provide information on trends and recognise that this issue is relevant beyond the implementation of economic, social and cultural rights. Costs of services to support children must be identified and civil society must be trained to get to grips with legislation and to make use of it. Assessments are often limited to material issues, but it is important to acknowledge non-material aspects and reflect other dimensions of child wellbeing. We should involve children in surveys of how they see the impact of resource allocations. Importance of research in comparative analysis so that we can see what those countries which have similar level of development can achieve. We should aim at the highest common denominator and assess the disparities within countries, and hold local and national governments to account. India Alliance for Child Rights: How can children get involved in this if they don’t know how to budget for themselves? They should start learning about money, financial planning in conjunction with human rights from age six. Recommendations: Rosa María Ortiz, member of the Committee on the Rights of the Child: Countries are still approaching the Convention by seeing children as objects of charity. They see it as something that is imposed from the outside, like international aid. This explains why countries pass legislation, establish institutions etc., but stop there when it comes to incorporating child rights into the national budget. The problem becomes worse when international aid itself does not recommend the rights-based approach. We should ensure that aid is directed at strengthening national action plans. States supplying international aid often do so with their own agenda without taking into account the efforts made by the country to which they are providing aid. The Committee has tried to make recommendations on this. This has met with resistance. The States concerned thought their responsibility for implementing the Convention ended at their borders. In talking to a number of international and regional banks, they found the same sort of response: aid and credit depended on the country requesting them, even if it infringed the rights of the child. Sometimes donors say people in country cannot decide on how aid should be distributed, international aid must therefore be coordinated. The Red latinamericana y caribeña para los derechos del niño (REDLAMYC) made four points: The Vice-President, Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ECOSOC): listed some common goals and concerns shared by ECOSOC: OHCHR: We need a discussion about priorities. We are often faced with a choice of priorities between different groups of rights or different people, for example, in the community budget, there may be a choice between allocation to pre-primary education or places in care for elderly people. Abdellatif: To enhance budget allocation programme based budgeting is needed. But governments do not know how to budget according to programmes. The World Bank has supported governments on this. However, the World Bank does not have the capacity to do this everywhere. There must be an alliance, a sort of networking with the World Bank. Many rights can only be fulfilled in a family context, but the rights of the family are not recognised everywhere. Child Helpline International: Economic, social and cultural rights must be implemented in tandem with civil and political rights. In 2005, 10.5 million children contacted member helplines. In doing so, they exercised the basic right to freedom of expression, but this means nothing if the resources are not available for children to access a telephone. Governments often direct resources into specific child–related issues without taking into account the society in which they live, i.e., their coexistence with adults. Child helplines are integral to the child protection system, they can help to identify gaps. Government resources should be distributed in a non-discriminatory way. In 2005, only 51 per cent of member helplines received some form of funding from governments. State parties need to consider mechanisms such as helplines as key tools for child protection. Save the Children Sweden, Latin America: It is important to focus on technical mechanisms. Specific proposals must be submitted to States about how much to spend on each right, in this way, we can avoid entering into a civil war with other sectors over budget allocations. Agnes Aidoo, Committee member: We must at look at resources in a broader way than financial resources, acknowledging that children also live in families and communities. Families and communities have other resources such as knowledge, skills, love and affection, even in cases of child-headed households. Many countries do not in fact have family policies and you find social welfare programmes that determine that families have failed. We need to assess family and community resources. Governments often focus on pro-growth policies, so we must open a dialogue with governments about what growth means. There may for example be growth in mineral, oil production and infrastructure etc. But there is a lot of human decay whilst this growth is happening in terms of education, and so on. We need to find a way of getting governments to recognise that growth and development are based on human rights are essential. On the issue of the budget process, local or national focal points for children such commissions, NGO coalitions, etc, are relatively weak - many are not equipped with the knowledge and capacity to participate in budgetary matters. Many international treaties ask countries to develop national action plans. These are drafted by committees, but they are not linked to resources. In addition, they are based on a multiplicity of donors which means that noone is held accountable. Elizabeth Gibbons, UNICEF emphasised the importance of strengthening civil society’s capacity to make budgets work, particularly the role of civil society to press the ministry of finance to make the budget process transparent. We should also look at legislation. To what extent have governments codified a child rights approach to the budget? Rosa María Ortiz: There must be a high-level coordinating body to ensure that a rights-based approach is communicated to society as a whole. Some programmes for children even go against the rights-based approach. This high-level body would also coordinate resource use. Data collection is also important. Ombudsmen can also strengthen children’s rights by ensuring that they have the necessary resources to ensure their economic, social and cultural rights are fulfilled. Professor Nielssen: Jurisprudence on this matter must be developed. General Comment No. 5 stipulates that there must be a willingness by States to give priority to children, but it does not say that this is the first priority. Save the Children Sweden, Latin America: People are talking about an imminent global economic crisis. In the event of this, a reduction of State expenditure on social programmes and children will be likely. Spending in these areas should be protected in case stabilisation measures are required. We should also look at the effects of free trade agreements on children. Mexico’s experience is discouraging. The issue of the State budget and investment is key. Progressive tax reforms would enable more resources to be allocated through special equity policies. Lucy Smith, member of the Committee pointed out that the discussion had not explored ways of making the cake bigger. This, she said, could be done through changing taxation policies. In democracies, it is always shocking that such a small group of the social elite have such a large part of the total resources. UNICEF: Income tax increases had not been accepted in Ecuador. Being able to show the inequalities between groups of children vis-à-vis government investments, had proved a powerful tool. Eighty per cent of children who die under five years old are from poor backgrounds. Equality is a powerful thing to work on. One way of increasing allocations to the social sector in Ecuador was to persuade the government to increase the amount of oil revenue it funnels back into the social sector rather than debt relief, although this entailed negotiating with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). REDLAMYC: Part of the problem is that people feel excluded from budget processes because they think it is something for economists that they do not know about. The same thing happened when the Convention came into force initially, they thought “If I am not a lawyer, how am I going to be able to talk about this?” But now, everyone talks about the Convention. We must empower ourselves to talk about this with support from economists. Latin American Network for Children and Adolescents: Many countries have been focusing on internal and external debt and military expenditure. There is a need to look at fiscal equity and higher taxation. Lots of companies are exempted from certain taxes as governments have regressive tax policies. UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre: The OECD, in collaboration with the Global Fund for Aids, malaria has been able to mobilise substantial resources, but other resource gaps have not been filled. What does it take for international community to be stimulated to fill these resource gaps? International Peace Bureau: One actor is missing from discussion – political parties. They make an enormous contribution to the position taken by governments. They form the framework of debate, does anyone have any experience in involving political parties in this area of discussion? Professor Nielssen from the 'Ad hoc working group on ‘Available Resources spoke of her experience in South Africa in costing the children’s bill to use as an advocacy tool in parliament. One key finding of this was that there were not enough social workers to implement the act. To remedy this, the government gave bursaries to students to study social work. Maria Herczog, member of the Committee on the Rights of the Child: In preparing the Hungarian Children’s Act, policy makers and politicians missed the point: the timeframe. Elections are held every four years, but investing in children is a long-term necessity. Four years is too short a time period to evaluate results, so they are not enthusiastic about it. Indeed, many professionals who work on children’s issues, such as paediatricians do not see the outcome of their investments until later in life, say 10 or 15 years later. Ways should be found to measure and make these investments more visible in the shorter-term so that people get feedback on their work. Note: If we have not included your intervention, please email us at [email protected] and we will add it to this report.