Budgeting for Human Rights Initiative 2009-2010: Phase 2
Following on from the workshop organised by the APRODEV Rights and Development Group in April 2006 and with the support of the APRODEV agencies, Equalinrights has since institutionalised Phase 2 of the Budgeting for Human Rights Initiative and is in the process of initiating a 2-year pilot process (2009-2010) with the focus on costing and frontloading human rights in national budgets.
Costing is proposed as an important human rights tool for a number of reasons. First, it requires prioritisation of a number of activities that are core to making human rights more practical and accessible for use in political struggles against poverty. For example, it requires the development of concrete, simple and clear standards for human rights, particularly ESC rights (meaning of core obligations for each right, progressive realisation, maximum use of resources etc) as well as indicators to measure their progressive implementation. Secondly, costing requires human rights actors to specify their claims more clearly, i.e., put figures to their demands and articulate more clearly what their demands will mean to the state, thereby identifying what is feasible and how it can be achieved.
In this context, Equalinrights seeks to exchange and learn from experiences in developing indicators, methodologies and strategies with the aim of formulating a methodology for costing rights in order to develop an ‘advocacy tool’ for budgets and/or human rights organisations.
To this end, Phase 2 activities have been organised along the lines of the following four pillars:
1. Pilots with partners
Pilot groups from different countries and regions will come together twice (2009 and 2010) to exchange results and discuss strategies in order to work on methodology-development, compare, reflect on and explore ways to strengthen practices and optimise results.
If you are interested in a piloting a costing human rights project in your particular context, then we would like to hear from you: contact Cornelieke Keizer.
2. Academic development of conceptual thinking
Parallel to and intertwining with the pilots with partners will be the development of the academic pillar to clarify and sharpen the conceptual thinking on costing and frontloading. Ideally, the development of conceptual thinking will be based on the practices of the pilots and vice versa. The intention is to analyse, share and foster dialogue on case studies of the process with a view to evolving standards, indicators, policy analysis and costing methodologies etc.
3. Documentation of resources
New resources - academic research/papers, relevant articles/publications and publications from practitioners - will continually be provided on EiR’s Budgeting HR web portal. Use will also be made of such online Web 2.0 tools as Wikis and Dgroups to document learning and practices. In this context, Equalinrights has created the Budgeting for Human Rights Wiki as a collaborative platform for sharing experiences, learnings and resources. It has also set up the Budgeting Rights Dgroup to provide an interactive discussion forum. Additionally, there is a Resources and links page on our website to access available literature as also some of the main organisations working in this domain. Click on the following links to access the relevant pages:
Budgeting for Human Rights Wiki
Budgeting Rights Dgroup
Resources and Links
4. Case documentation
Provision and development of real-life case-studies - a body of practices that we can draw upon and synthesise guidelines for optimal use.
If you are interested in looking more deeply into the issues of budgeting economic, social and cultural human rights and at the attendant challenges and opportunities, then please contact us: budgetingrights(at)dgroups.org or Cornelieke Keizer. Join us in exploring the ways in which we can cost and budget human rights. We are convinced this will strengthen human rights campaigns and advocacy and help fulfil them.
