There is no such a thing as a child marriage budget. Child marriage is a complex issue, involves multi-sectorial approach, thus impacting on so many sectors. Over time when child protection actors perceive child marriage, the Ministry of Gender comes as a reference. Observed as a gender issue, actors thoughtfully divert their advocacy efforts in the very Ministry!
When analysing budgets at a recent budget advocacy training held by Girls Not Brides Uganda / Joy for Children Uganda, conscientiously realised that we may be fiddling about, child marriage budgets are all over sectors. While linking budgets attached to child marriage programs from other sectors/ministry budgets, it is important to reflect value additions to the country in reallocation unspent funds from a given sector..
Where as it may be easier to locate specific budgeted funds that may be diverted to child marriage programs, it is important for CSO’s working on ending child marriage to build evidence cases, certain statistics must be on your finger tips, know your house hold size. We must quantify and evaluate how much moneys government could save if unutilised funds in a given sector are diverted to child marriage programs; how many teenage mothers we are saving from dying when funds are reallocated from say Agriculture sector to programs on ending child marriage. It is on the other hand more difficult to engage government if your are not knowledgeable on the subject matter!
Its is also crucial that when analysing and monitoring budgets, we don’t stop half way, keen observation from the Sector trail to Key Output description should be taken note of. Half way analysis may be misleading and may in one way or the other provide a false assumption of allocated funds to your advocacy ask. While analysing the National Budget for FY 2019/2020 approved as 221,349,078,342 under MoGLSD; the program titled Social Protection for Vulnerable Groups, subprogram on; Youth and Children Affairs Policies; the key output description states as Guidelines, Laws, Regulations and Standards on Vulnerable Groups, and however described and approved as General Staff Salaries approved at 404,043,488
Budget advocacy does not only call for value for money for a given sector on child marriage, but also that funds allocated to a given sector contributing to ending child marriage are enough to carryout the kind of work intended. When keenly analysing the education component of the Arua approved district budget estimates FY 2019/2020 during the training, Anyara Cope School(p/s) was allocated 5,478,000 UGX Annual, approximately 456,500 UGX($121) a quarter to run school related activities. How then do children especially girls have access to friendly leaning environments on such a school budget? Are these funds enough to hire school senior women teachers? How are teachers motivated to conduct their job descriptions on such a budget? Well the answer is, CSO’s need to wake up and be part of the budget processes to implementation.
It is essential to to know the content of your budgets as resources are free. Know and utilize your budgets at http://budget.go.ug. There are so many alternatives to be part of the national and local budget process
- Be part of the Budget conferences at district level
- Attend Local government workshops
- Budget consultative workshops
- Sector working group consultations
- Inter-ministerial consultation
