A Budget Is a Human Rights Document
Government budgets can look like pages of percentages and financial decisions. But behind every number is a choice about what a society is willing to protect.
A 2026 submission by the Center for Economic and Social Rights, ISER, and GRADE argues that the way governments raise, distribute, and spend money is directly connected to economic and social rights. Their example from Uganda is striking: in the country's 2025/26 budget, debt servicing represented about 36.5% of spending, compared with 7.7% for education and 6.2% for health.
The point is not that governments can simply stop paying debt. Public finance involves real constraints and difficult trade-offs. But the comparison reveals why budgets should not be treated as purely technical documents.
A decision about taxes can affect how much money is available for schools. A decision about debt can affect healthcare spending. Cuts to social programs can fall most heavily on people who already have the fewest alternatives. CESR also argues that tax avoidance by wealthy individuals and multinational corporations can reduce resources available for public services and social protection.
Reading this made me think differently about what accountability means. Human-rights work often focuses on laws, discrimination, or visible violations. Economic decisions can seem much less dramatic, yet they may quietly shape whether millions of people can actually exercise those rights.
A right to education means something different if schools are consistently underfunded. The same is true for health, housing, and social protection.
Budgets do more than show where money goes. They reveal whose needs a society chooses to prioritize.
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