3. The budget is the ultimate embodiment of a nation’s priorities as it is a product of political decisions regarding the amount of resources the nation is willing to dedicate to a given policy or programme.

4. Why invest in children?  Ethical argument  Implement rights, achieve equity  Age-sensitivity argument  Childhood is a unique window of opportunity  Economic argument  Productivity gains and economic growth  Political argument  Social cohesion and democratic governance

5. Objective of Child-responsive Budgeting (CRB)  Goal is NOT to  create a new classification of expenditures  introduce new budget procedures  Goal is to  present new criteria  apply tools to measure child responsiveness of allocations to all sectors

6. A child-responsive budget…  Recognizes that all forms and levels of public spending have a potential impact on children  Provides appropriate resource base for progressive realization of child rights  Prioritizes excluded sectors and most vulnerable  Is transparent and allows for effective participation of key stakeholders, including children  Includes accountability mechanisms

7. Main challenges  Availability of information  Openness/priorities of government’s budget work  Availability of expertise  Dominance of certain ministries, development banks, IFIs, etc. in designing policies/budget  Level of civil society activism and media interest  Weak public financial management systems

8. Role of development partners in ensuring CRB  Raise child rights issues via analysis and advocacy  Develop capacity of stakeholders, including government, to understand and assess child rights  Fund new spending programmes and policy experimentation

9.  Country context analysis  Political/institutional, economic and social  Partnering with key stakeholders  Children, politicians, social leaders, CSOs, media, private sector, etc.  Policy and budget dialogue  National/sector plans  Specific studies  Sector working groups  Budgeting monitoring  Capacity development activities

10. 1.Perform child-sensitive budget analyses  Good starting point Classification of Functions of Government (COFOG)  Activities Identify child-friendly programs, how funded, vulnerabilities Analyze amounts, distributions, allocations-expends, gaps Look at impact of revenue side policies (e.g. VAT, subsidy) Assess impact of different shocks

11. 2.Influence the budget via capacity development and opening decision-making processes  Good starting point Convene and advocate key stakeholders  Activities Create spaces for making the budget child responsive Disseminate analyses, policy dialogue, indicator development, verify costed plans, feedback forums Develop tools, trainings, knowledge sharing

13. 3.Improve efficiency  Good starting point Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA)  Activities Invest in data and information systems Assess corruption and governance issues Support media, audit institutions, anti-corruption agencies, other oversight institutions Help develop cross-national comparative databases and indices of budget openness

14. 4.Help secure adequate resources to sustain child-responsive policies  Good starting point Assess current allocations  budget often already committed and inflexible to support implementation of new policy  Activities Perform fiscal space analyses, which consider current spending, revenue and financing policies

15. 5.Carry out evaluations to promote accountability  Starting point Assess current commitments (sector/national plan)  Activities Determine outcomes for verification with beneficiaries Assess potential long-term impacts Review policy effectiveness Determine satisfaction of stakeholders Be a sounding board for determining ‘what works’

16. Group Activity

17. Case example 2007-13 EU Strategy Paper for a country in East Asia

18. Background  Focal sector is education  ~80% supports sector-wide approach in basic education  Equity focus: remote areas, minorities, special needs  Goal to improve equitable access to quality education  Contribute to govt’s strategy to improve basic educ.  Overall quality  Governance and management systems  Enhance efficiency of planning/budgeting processes

19. Background (cont)  Challenges and risks  Decentralization: reconciling new roles  Education financing: low public investment, most funds go to routine expenses (e.g. salaries) with little room for funding education development  Civil service reform: limited political will to address big bureaucracy, corruption, inefficiencies, low pay  Transparency: weak PFM mechanisms and auditing and monitoring mechanisms

20. CRB can improve outcomes  Child rights are inter-dependent, with mutually reinforcing effects  Without improvements in other dimensions of deprivations, education outcomes will suffer  Possible design and budgeting enhancements  Coordinated or integrated mixture of school-based and home-base interventions to address other deprivations  Multi-sectoral allocations and tracking

21. CRB can mitigate risks Risk CRB activity Mitigation Education financing  Raise child rights issues via deprivation and budget analyses/advocacy  Build/present investment cases to MoF  Help line ministries to develop child- sensitive budget proposals  Strengthens national ownership/resource commitment to education programmes Civil service reform  Highlight impact of low pay/arrears of frontline teachers on learning outcomes  Assess impacts of “back office” functions  Strengthens support for civil service reform Trans- parency  Open spaces to allow public analysis/ scrutiny of budget allocations and use  Develop capacity of local communities to monitor/track government allocations  Enhances transparency and accountability

22. Takeaway from this example CRB can help achieve objectives of EU programmes Improves the design and hence learning outcomes Addresses implementation risks Context of EU’s new country programme cycle Important to invest in others’ work aimed at leveraging government resources for greater child-responsive investments

23. Child allocations and deprivations Revenue impacts Fiscal space Supporting development of plans and budget Costing universal access to basic education or school building Briefings/meetings with key decision makers Creation of cross-sectoral groups Formalizing govt partnerships Ensuring widespread participation PETS Decentralized monitoring of service delivery CSOs, EU, World Bank, IMF PERs CSOs for analysis/advocacy Govt for analysis, implement- ation and tracking Publishing information

24. Adaptable tools to support CRB work  Testing the child sensitivity of the budget  Child rights-aware policy appraisal  Child rights-disaggregated beneficiary assessment  Disaggregated tax incidence analysis

25. Adaptable tools to support CRB work  Assessing quality and credibility of policies via the budget  Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA)  Public Expenditure Review (PER)  Public Expenditure Tracking Survey (PETS)  Marginal Budgeting for Bottlenecks (MBB)  Fiscal space analysis

26. Adaptable tools to support CRB work  Stakeholder assessments  Identifying key stakeholders  Mapping opportunities to engage different stakeholders throughout budget cycle  Institutional analysis

27. Group Discussion

28. Group discussion  What are the experiences of CRB in this region?  What are the main challenges/constraints for working on CRB?  What can development partners do to engage more actively in CRB work? How can UNICEF and other CRB partners help?