How public debt and austerity are reshaping children’s lives across Burkina Faso, Madagascar, Malawi and Mali
Across Burkina Faso, Madagascar, Malawi and Mali, children are bearing the heaviest costs of decisions made in distant boardrooms: debt deals, austerity conditions and fiscal trade-offs that empty classrooms, shutter clinics and push young lives into hazardous work. This report puts their stories, and the structural forces behind them, at the centre of global economic debate.
Public debt across sub-Saharan Africa has risen sharply over the past two decades. Under pressure from international creditors to meet strict fiscal targets, governments in the four countries studied have cut spending on education, health and social protection. These very services determine whether a child grows up with opportunity or is forced into labour to help their family survive. These choices are not inevitable. They are political.
“The world and the children who are our present and future desperately need a global financial system that is fair and just, transparent, accountable and responsible, while also being efficient and effective.” — Prof. Attiya Waris, UN Independent Expert on Foreign Debt and Human Rights; Professor of Fiscal Law and Policy, University of Nairobi
Drawing on participatory fieldwork with more than 250 children, caregivers and frontline workers, combined with budget and policy analysis across all four countries, this report traces the direct line between macroeconomic decisions and children’s daily lives: the classrooms without teachers, the clinics running out of medicines before month’s end, the girls kept home to cook and care while their siblings head to fields or mines.
Balancing a Nation’s Books on Children’s Backs makes the case that fiscal stability and children’s rights are not competing goals. It presents a child-centred policy agenda, spanning sovereign debt restructuring, progressive tax reform and protected social budgets, rooted in the voices of the children themselves.
The report calls on governments, international financial institutions and donors to:
- Make child rights impact assessments mandatory for all fiscal decisions, before policies are approved, not after damage is done.
- Protect spending on education, health, nutrition and child protection as legally guaranteed floors in national budget laws.
- Renegotiate IMF and World Bank wage-bill ceilings that demonstrably prevent governments from hiring teachers and health workers.
- Shift tax systems away from regressive consumption taxes and towards progressive taxation of wealth, high incomes and corporate profits.
- Restructure sovereign debt so that the fiscal space created is directed explicitly into child-critical services.
- End conditionalities that force cuts to social budgets; and honour long-standing commitments to Official Development Assistance.