Child Poverty in Mozambique. A Situation and Trend ... - Unicef

Government OP Commitment
- National OP committed to hold a technical
workshop with a view to developing a new
definition of poverty
- Inform civil society regarding the development
of regulations for the Law on Local State Organs
and encourage participation
- Promote increased involvement of civil society
in M&E of public policy performance at provincial
level
RAP Observation
- Subsequent meetings between the Government
and G20 took place at national level, though there
was no dialogue at provincial level
- Community leaders and authorities had not been
informed about this process
- As yet civil society was not contacted. There is no
mechanism for disseminating information about
the monitoring of public policy in the province
Source: G20 Maputo Province, 2005
Overall, the OPs and the associated RAPs have made a particularly positive step
towards promoting civil society participation in and scrutiny of Government policy
and performance, thereby strengthening the “accountability balance” towards
domestic actors and putting children’s issues on the agenda. However, they have
also highlighted the need to build analytical capacity amongst the diverse array
of civil society groups in order that they better translate their concerns into viable
contributions in the OP dialogue (GoM and PAP, 2006).
(ii) Mechanisms for resource allocation
The budget cycle in any given year can be divided into three broad phases: (i)
appropriation for the coming year; (ii) execution of funds in the present year and; (iii)
reporting, auditing and evaluation for the previous year (and often for earlier years as
well) and for the first half of the present year. Appropriation includes the formulation
and approval of the State Budget (known in Portuguese as the Orçamento do Estado,
or ‘OE’), which is produced on an annual basis, and the nascent Medium-Term Fiscal
Framework (known in Portuguese as Cenário Fiscal de Médio Prazo, or ‘CFMP’),
which projects the overall resource envelope for the next three years.
At sectoral level, the planning and budgeting process entails participation in the
production of the national level plans and budgets as well as specific sector
instruments. The latter are particularly important in sectors receiving large amounts
of aid and in which donors have adopted a joint Sector Wide Approach (SWAp) with
pooling of much of their support in Common or Basket Funds (education, health,
agriculture, roads, water and HIV/AIDS). The planning and budgeting process for
year n + 1 in these sectors is typically conducted later in the year using different
methodologies when compared to the national documents that go before the Council
of Ministers and Parliament (see the full planning and budgeting cycle in Annex II).
(iii) Analysis of linkages between policy, planning, budgeting and implementation
The figure in Annex III can be thought of as the Government’s ideal single central
process for planning and budgeting. While children’s rights are well featured in
PARPA II, it should be noted that the linkages between priority actions and the budget
envelope foreseen remain weak. For example, the budget envelope for the Ministry
of Women and Social Action (responsible for co-ordinating the national response to
the orphan crisis created by the HIV/AIDS pandemic) is not expected to increase
significantly over the period 2006 to 2009, remaining at below one per cent of
budgeted resources in medium-term projections (GoM, 2006a).
CHILDHOOD POVERTY IN MOZAMBIQUE: A SITUATION AND TRENDS ANALYSIS
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