Budget Justice Coalition Seeks Human Rights-Based Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS)

Pretoria/Cape Town, 30 October 2024

Today, October 30, 2024, members of the Budget Justice Coalition (BJC) will be attending the Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS) lockups in Pretoria and Cape Town. Representing a coalition of over twenty civil society organisations committed to advancing human rights-centred budgets, the BJC will conduct a critical analysis of the MTBPS, focusing on the human rights and social equity implications within the context of ongoing fiscal austerity measures. These budget cuts have, in recent years, significantly impacted the delivery of essential public services.

Organisations participating in the lock up include the Alternative Information and Development Centre (AIDC), Amandla.mobi, Equal Education, Equal Education Law Centre (EELC), Ilifa Labantwana, Rural Health Advocacy Project (RHAP), the Public Economy Project, and SECTION27. Each of these organisations will contribute unique perspectives on how South Africa’s budget allocations align — or fall short — in addressing the urgent socio-economic challenges facing the country.

As South Africa’s government embarks on a new era of unity and cooperation, the upcoming MTBPS presents a pivotal opportunity for the Government of National Unity (GNU) to translate its promises into tangible actions. We would look forward to an MTBPS that foregrounds human rights realisation for marginalised communities with interventions that redress poverty, inequality, and unemployment receiving sufficient investment to achieve this.

Characteristics of a Human Rights foregrounded MTBPS:

  1. Participatory Human Rights Impact Assessments applied to all budget decisions to enable the State to better understand, assess and address any adverse effects these decisions may have on the constitutionally protected human rights of people in this country.
  2. Proposals of alternative ways of using the government’s balance sheet to halt and reverse budget cuts on social spending.
  3. Gender-responsive allocations to redress the disproportionately gendered impact of budget cuts to social spending.
  4. Reversal of budget cuts to social spending areas such as health infrastructure and public employment programmes that were proposed in the main Budget.
  5. Urgent investment in capacity building and other interventions to overcome chronic underspending that undermines the realisation of human rights.
  6. Meaningful reforms to debt and taxation to wield the redistributive capacity of our fiscal policy.

Following the lock up, the BJC will be hosting a Twitter Space at 20:00 on 30 October 2024 to reflect on the MTBPS’s implications on South Africans. 

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For media queries contact:

Pearl Nicodemus | nicodemus@section27.org.za | 082 298 2636

Gillian Pillay | pillay@section27.org.za | 082 772 0052

 

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