Projects

Budget and Human Rights

Support: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (IBP)

In this project, INESC aims at promoting the debate on public budget, rights and inequalities as a way of building awareness and influencing managers and policy-makers toward strengthening the government’s commitment with public budget, so as to grant rights in a gradual and measurable way. Therefore, the accompaniment of and influence on tax policies are crucial to build a tax structure that is fairer and more progressive. Moreover, the project aims at improving the “Budget and Rights” methodology. This methodology was developed by INESC and is focused on analyzing the budget in the light of Human Rights, and reducing inequalities (notably race and gender inequalities).

Budget transparency at local level

Support: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (IBP)

The project is mainly targeted at producing a study on budget transparency at sub-national level in Brazil. A survey was carried out this year comprising 27 Brazilian capital cities. The survey disclosed that most of these still have a lot to do to achieve excellence as regards the budgetary cycle transparency. The methodology employed was divided into two parts: a) a direct search of information at each capital’s government websites; and, b) use of questionnaires to get acquainted to the opinion of professionals from several fields of work regarding the transparency of their capital’s budgetary cycle.

ELBAG Project Coordinator

Support: ActionAid

This project supports the public rendering of accounts and transparency in Guatemala and Nicaragua, through: mobilization toward collective action; economic literacy, access to information; introduction to advocacy tools and methodologies; and, establishment of links with local authorities and non-state actors. Having that in mind, the project objective was defined as: “Groups of the civil society in Guatemala and Nicaragua mobilized and trained to monitor governmental budgets, understand economic policies and influence on the local governments’ decision-making processes”.

Budget, Public Policies and Parliament in the light of racial inequalities

Support: Ford Foundation.

The development of this project supports the Brazilian society’s fight against racial inequalities and racism. It bears the objective of deepening actions focused on: underrepresentation of diversity in the society, in the Brazilian Parliament, resources distribution, outlining and elaboration of public policies, and in the definition of laws. All these actions aim at fighting racial inequalities and racism.

Race and Gender in Public Security in the Light of Budget Analysis

Support: Cfemea and ONU Mulheres

This project aims at analyzing the political interference on public security policies emphasizing the main program developed by the government in this field: the National Program of Public Security with Citizenship (Pronasci in Portuguese). By analyzing the Pronasci, INESC gets an overview on the budget and expenditures structure of the Program, besides clearly understanding what is financed – on which kind of action the government is investing. To that end, INESC analyzes the Program's budget in the racial and gender lights.

Budget, rights and environment in the scope of public policies to the Brazilian Amazonian region and of the South-American regional integration

Support: Heinrich Böll Foundation

This project is focused on the South-American regional integration. The main effort developed is the tracking of social actors, intentions, links and processes that make up the current dynamics of restructuring, modernization and expansion of capitalism in the South-American Amazon and the Andes. The partnership works around five main topics and their links: financing, mega-projects, energy, natural resources, and climate changes. The project intends to strengthen the capacity of organizations and social movements that advocate for the development of sustainability in the Amazon, and influence the decisions and scope of public policies, as well as the current regional integration process in the South-American Amazonian region.

Work with public budget and monitoring of actions in the Brazilian National Congress

Support: Climateworks Fundation

The Project is focused on the work with public budget and on monitoring actions at the National Congress. The objective is to accompany the public financing and private investments to projects and programs in the Amazon region, notably in activities involving the use of land and forests, committed to an economy of low emissions of carbon, notably granting and respecting the rights of indigenous and traditional peoples and peasant communities.

Strengthening the rights of Children and Adolescents

Support: National Council of the Children’s and Adolescents’ Rights (Conanda) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

The project aims at monitoring the bills that directly or indirectly affect the lives of the Brazilian children and adolescents, in order to ensure that public policies do grant rights, and impair the concretization of any attempt to violate the rights achieved. The idea is to have the project gathering several social actors of the Rights Grant System (SGD, in Portuguese) in the consistent monitoring of legislative activities, favoring cross-sector public policies. Another goal of the Children in the Parliament is to provide information to the civil society in order to strengthen social control.

"Onda: adolescentes em movimento pelos direitos”

Support: Kindernothilfe

The project aims at introducing the topic of human rights and public budget at schools in the Federal District. The schools are located in different cities of the Federal District, and there is even one rural school. Currently, there are eight schools – most of which in regions of greater social exclusion – and the CAJE (Specialized Juvenile Care Center) school. The project aims at ensuring the involvement of children and adolescents in the debate on rights and citizenship, observing their links to the public budget, in order to strengthen the youth’s capacity of working to achieve their rights and monitor the public policies focused on youngsters.