Blog: Human Rights Budgeting – Resourcing a Fairer Future

Our Lydia Murphy recently shared her expert human rights knowledge with THRE - Third Sector Human Rights and Equalities. A recording of her webinar is above, and in this special blog she talks about how organisations have a responsibility to use their budgets to support our shared human rights.

In recent years, in Scotland and beyond, there has been much debate on what it looks like to legislate and budget for human rights outcomes. In a recent talk for the THRE connectors on human rights budgeting I argued that progressive, rights-based policies can still result in unacceptable outcomes for people if they are not adequately resourced. Human rights budgeting is one solution that helps governments guarantee access to our everyday human rights, like the right to food, housing, clothing, social security and healthcare. 

Human rights budgeting means that the goals of budget are defined by human rights standards and that human rights principles guide the budgetary process, from start to finish. This makes the goal of the budget to ensure everyone can access a baseline level of our economic, social and cultural rights, and continually advancing living standards for all, without discrimination. Ensuring the government meets two key obligations outlined in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR): minimum core obligations and progressive realisation.  

Crucially, as well as shaping the budget's content, human rights budgeting requires that the human rights standards of transparency, participation, accountability and nondiscrimination shape the budget process. 

With over 15,000 households in temporary accommodation in Scotland, and cuts to key budgets like housing, we often hear that Scotland just doesn’t have enough of the resources needed to guarantee everyone a dignified life. This is simply untrue; we are a wealthy yet highly unequal country but our tax system often reinforces preexisting inequalities. 

Under ICESCR, states have an obligation to use the maximum available resources to support everyone to access their everyday human rights. This is another key principle in human rights budgeting. This principle does not just refer to the government’s current resources (financial, human, technological etc.), but also the potential resources that could be mobilised. This principle places a duty upon governments to explore strategies to maximise the available resources that can be used to ensure that everyone can access their fundamental human needs.  

Taken in partnership with the principle of nondiscrimination — an ever present human rights principle — it also mandates that resource generation and allocation must be free from discrimination. This means efforts to generate additional resources must be equitable and not regressive. This has also been interpreted as meaning that these efforts should also try to address the inequalities that exist in society. This is not an impossible task, and pathways to do this have been explored by many. Just last year, together with IPPR Scotland, Oxfam Scotland, CPAG in Scotland, Scottish Women’s Budget Group, One Parent Families Scotland, and the Wellbeing Economy Alliance Scotland, we put forward a series of recommendations to reshape our tax system to ensure that Scotland can adequately resource its progressive policy goals.  

Currently, the Scottish Government is not budgeting through a human rights-based lens. Although not a silver bullet — as no one policy or strategy is — adopting a human rights-based approach to budgeting could support Scotland to be a compassionate nation where we can all access our everyday human rights and live a dignified life and show leadership across the UK.