Case study Money down the drain A country allocates 1.5% of its budget to the sanitation sector. This allocation has decreased over the past ten years. 75% of the money it allocates to sanitation subsidizes waterborne sanitation (i.e. sewerage pipes), but poor households in informal settlements rely on on-site sanitation (e.g. pit latrines). Does this raise red flags from a human rights perspective? The government may, in fact, be discriminating against households in informal settlements. The International Budget Partnership has a series of resources that explain how international human rights standards like progressive realisation, non-discrimination, and maximum available resources can help answer this question: http://www.internationalbudget.org/ publications/escrarticle2/. In depth What is gender budgeting? Gender budgeting is a particular type of budget analysis used to assess the impact of government revenue and expenditure on women, men, girls and boys. For example, in the area of health, men and women have similar needs in respect to influenza and malaria. However, women have greater needs than men in terms of reproductive health. Gender budgeting is a new and evolving way to visualise and address the discriminatory effects of resource decisions. There are helpful resources available at: www.gender-budgets.org. Photo: San Malen Primary Health Unit in Pujehn, Bo district, Sierra Leone (2013) by H6 Partners on flickr (CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0) 45