Article 2 and Government Budgets

Governments’ budgets are fundamentally about people’s human rights. Budgets are the central means by which governments can help realize their people’s access to quality education, decent health care services, a safe working environment, potable water, and other opportunities, and goods and services essential for people to live their lives with dignity. Article 2 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) sets out what governments are obligated to do to help realize those rights: Each State Party to the present Covenant undertakes to take steps, individually and through international assistance and co-operation, especially economic and technical, to the maximum of its available resources, with a view to achieving progressively the full realization of the rights recognized in the present Covenant by all appropriate means, including particularly the adoption of legislative measures. The States Parties to the present Covenant undertake to guarantee that the rights enunciated in the present Covenant will be exercised without discrimination of any kind as to race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. This handbook, focused on civil society budget work, explores what “achieving progressively,” “to the maximum of its available resources,” and “without discrimination” mean for the way that governments should raise, allocate, and spend their budgets so as to best realize people’s human rights. It is, primarily, a resource for civil society organizations, human rights commissions, and even legislators, to hold governments to account for their human rights obligations.