REPORT: "National, Federal & Provincial Budget Analysis from a Child Rights Perspective 2012-2013"

After the 18^th amendment and decentralization it has become the responsibility of the provincial Governments to ensure the rights of children as guaranteed in the Convention on the Rights of children Now the provincial Governments are liable to ensure the “SURVIVAL” of the children (Like issues of development, health facility, security of their identity, registration, name, social security and standard of living etc.)  "DEVELOPMENT" (Like issues of Family relationing, Good Parenting, Birth registration, right to be part of a family, family care ,Education, information of rest world.) "PROTECTION" (Like issue of illicit transfer from one place to another, interference with privacy, family, home, maltreatment, Alternate care, Danger of Disability economic exploitation Protection from illicit use of narcotic drugs sexual exploitation, child prostitution and child pornography, right of social reintegration issues of Juvenile Justice etc.)  and meaningful "PARTICIPATION" in the decision making, the decision related to children.

Then the promised Millennium Development Goals Like; Achievement of primary education/schooling, Reduce Infant Mortality Rate,   Improve Maternal Health , Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria, Tuberculosis and Other Diseases etc.

But to ensure and to promote all these rights of the children the budgetary allocations and funds are basically the need. The recently published report “National, Federal & Provincial Budget Analysis from a Child Rights Perspective 2012-2013” depicts that scarce and  very limited funding allocations are made both on national and provincial level

The Report reveals that the child focused expenditures for the year 2012-2013 as a percentage of GNP on Education is 0.622% , Child Focused Health 0.107%, and child focused social welfare expenditures 0.020%. In total 0.75% are the expenditures of our Gross National Product (These expenditures are of both Provincial & Federal) and separately 2.32% of GNP is to be expensed out in the shape of subsidies and grants.

Its shows the overall situation of Child Rights is not even satisfactory but if we talk about the situation of Punjab it seems obviously worst, According to data shown here The total expenditure on the Education are 3.23% , Health expenditure are only 0.214% and social welfare 0.053%. In a nutshell overall child focused budget is 3.590 percent of total expenditure in Punjab.

The report is mind blowing although there is need to go in depth how these allocations are further classified and how this small financial input is affecting us as a nation, but this report is good effort of ChildrenFirst, Save the Children & CRM Pakistan.

The Provincial and National Assemblies have abolished, the caretaker Governments are in, this is the election year, I am unable to comprehend why the prime minister of Pakistan last year announced it Year of Child Rights in Pakistan, In May we are going for polls, and we hope that elections and democratic process will bring the change but don’t forget to keep in mind before stamping the ballot how these politician keeps ignoring the rights of children and How they expense out the public money for their own sake and what are they investing for our future/ for our children, Through Public awareness on these issues and with a contiuos knocks on the doors of policy makers we can realize them there is loads of need to work for our future genrations and If they realized it or even showed their little political will, then we will be able to say 2013.is Year of Child Rights.