Budgets are used everywhere—from local agencies, to non-governmental organizations, to governments and international bodies. They provide a concrete tool for evaluating how programs and policies actually fulfill their financial and legal obligations. In South Africa, Idasa’s Children's Budget Unit (CBU) has used budget analyses to monitor the government’s legal obligations, commitments, and progress in advancing child-specific socio economic rights and programs. The CBU monitors and evaluates these programs by looking at the government’s budget allocations, spending of funds, and program expenditures and implementation. The power of this tactic lies in its ability to reveal, in black and white, the extent of a government’s efforts towards its human rights obligations and commitments.

Year of Publication: 2004
Author(s): Lerato Kgamphe