Economic and Social Rights, Budgets and the Convention on the Rights of the Child

Recent years have seen an explosion in methodologies for monitoring children’s economic and social rights (ESR). Key examples include the development of indicators, benchmarks, child rights-based budget analysis and child rights impact assessments. The Committee on the Right of the Child has praised such tools in its work and has actively promoted their usage. Troublingly, however, there are serious shortcomings in the Committee’s approach to the ESR standards enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which threaten to impact upon the efficacy of such methodologies.

Confronting the Contradictions: the IMF, wage bill caps and the case for teachers

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) restrictions on recurrent government spending are working against the MDGs, and Education for All, this report argues. Through research with the governments of Malawi, Mozambique and Sierra Leone, this study shows that IMF-imposed macroeconomic policies and explicit caps on teachers’ wage bills have forced many poor countries to freeze or curtail teacher recruitment, and are a major factor behind the chronic and severe shortage of teachers.

Budgeting for Women’s Rights Monitoring Government Budgets for Compliance with CEDAW: A summary guide for policy makers, gender equality and human rights advocates

This booklet articulates what it means to take an explicitly rights-based approach to government budgets and draws on the lessons of Gender Budget Initiative experiences around the world. It links govern­ments’ commitments under CEDAW with the four main dimen­sions of budgets: revenue, expenditure, macroeconomics of the budget, and budget decision-making processes. It shows links between the share of educational expenditure and the realisation of girls’ right to education.

 

A Budget Guide for Civil Society Organisations Working in Education

This guide provides civil society organisations (CSOs) in the education sector with the basic information they need to get started on budget work. It introduces core concepts relating to budgets, and discusses ways of analysing them. It also demonstrates how budget work can inform strategic advocacy messages, and bring about change in the education sector.

Making the Budget Work for Education: Experiences, achievements and lessons from civil society budget work

This report explores a range of innovative education budget work initiatives from Bangladesh, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi and Uganda, where civil society has monitored and challenged their governments over education expenditure in order to hold themaccountable for commitments to EFA and the MDGs.

Reading the Books: Governments’ Budgets and the Right to Education

This is a 28-page booklet setting out a process for using a human rights framework to assess a government’s education budget.  The booklet looks at elements of the right to education and where these might be found in a government’s budget; a government’s human rights obligations and questions these raise about a government’s budget; a process for using a rights framework to analyse a government’s education budget; and a short discussion of costing related to the right to education.

 

Global Corruption Report: Education

Corruption and poor governance are acknowledged as major impediments to realising the right to education and to reaching global development goals. Corruption not only distorts access to education, but affects the quality of education and the reliability of research findings. From corruption in the procurement of school resources and nepotism in the hiring of teachers, to the buying and selling of academic titles and the skewing of research results, major corruption risks can be identified at every level of the education and research systems.

Abolishing School Fees in Africa: Lessons from Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi and Mozambique

Abolishing School Fees in Africa is the product of a SFAI workshop, “School Fee Abolition: Building on What We Know and Defining Sustained Support,” held in Kenya in 2006. The book begins with a comparative overview of the processes, challenges, and lessons learned by five countries that had already abolished school fees: Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, and Mozambique. The subsequent chapters delineate the actual experiences of each of the countries in planning and implementing their policies.

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