Economic inequality and human rights impact assessments of economic reforms

ABSTRACT

For over a decade, activists and scholars have sounded alarms over the extreme and growing economic inequalities in the world. In 2020, Forbes reported that there were 2095 billionaires in the world, while the World Bank recorded that 3.5 billion people lived on less than the poverty line of $5.50 per day. Such inequalities prevent the full realisation of human rights, undermine democracy and threaten peace. Economic inequalities are not inevitable however. They are the result of policy choices. As governments are obligated to respect, protect and fulfil human rights, they must take steps to ensure that their actions are consistent with their human rights obligations. Human rights impact assessment is an evidence-based method to aid governments in considering the potential human rights effects of policy options. The UN Independent Expert on Debt and Human Rights recently issued Guiding Principles on Human Rights Impact Assessment of Economic Reforms. This article reviews the Guiding Principles and argues for including a Guiding Principle on economic inequality in order to ensure that governments consider the impact of economic reforms on income and wealth inequality as critical causes of human rights violations.

KEYWORDS:

• Economic inequality
• vertical inequality
• SDG 10
• human rights impact assessment
• economic reforms

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank the editors of this special issue and an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor

Gillian MacNaughton, JD, DPhil, is Associate Professor of Human Rights in the School for Global Inclusion and Social Development; a Senior Fellow with the Center for Peace, Democracy and Development; a faculty affiliate with the PhD Programme in Global Governance and Human Security; and a faculty affiliate with the Minor in Human Rights in the College of Liberal Arts, all at the University of Massachusetts Boston. She is also an affiliated researcher with the Research Programme on Economic and Social Rights in the Human Rights Institute at the University of Connecticut. MacNaughton works on economic and social rights, primarily the rights to health, education and decent work. She is also interested in the relationship of economic and social rights to equality rights, and human rights-based approaches to social justice. She is co-editor with Diane F. Frey of Economic and Social Rights in a Neoliberal World (Cambridge University Press 2018). MacNaughton’s research has been funded by the World Health Organization and the Law and Society Association, and she has consulted for WHO, UNDP, UNICEF and the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health.

Notes

1 Micah White, ‘Opinion: I Co-Founded Occupy Wall Street. Now I’m headed to Davos. Why?’, The Guardian, January 18, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/18/occupy-wall-street-davos (accessed February 24, 2020).

2 Ibid.; see also Martha F. Davis, ‘Occupy Wall Street and International Human Rights’, Fordham Urban Law Journal 39, no. 34 (2012): 931–58; Simon Thorpe, ‘Rights, Constitution and Radical Democracy in Occupy Wall Street and Occupy London’, Birkbeck Law Review 1, no. 2 (2013): 225–80; M. Patrick Yingling, ‘Civil Disobediance to Overcome Corruption: The Case of Occupy Wall Street’, Indiana Journal of Law & Social Equality 4, no. 2 (2016): 121–34.

3 Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013); Anthony Atkinson, Inequality: What Can be Done? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015).

4 World Inequality Lab, https://wid.world/world-inequality-lab/ (accessed February 24, 2020).

5 Facundo Alvaredo, Lucas Chanel, Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, World Inequality Report 2018 (World Inequality Lab), https://wir2018.wid.world/files/download/wir2018-summary-english.pdf (accessed February 25, 2020).

6 Richard Wilkinson, The Impact of Inequality: How to Make Sick Societies Healthier (Abingdon: Routledge, 2005); Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better (London: Allen Lane, 2009).

7 Oxfam, ‘Press Release: World’s Billionaires Have More Wealth than 4.6 Billion People’, January 20, 2020, https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/worlds-billionaires-have-more-wealth-46-billion-people (accessed March 3, 2020).

8 Diane Elson, ‘Gender Justice, Human Rights, and Neoliberal Economic Policies’, in Gender Justice, Development, and Rights, ed. Maxine Molyneux and Shahra Razavi (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 2002), 78–114, 81; David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 23–6; Gillian MacNaughton and Diane F. Frey, ‘Introduction’, in Economic and Social Rights in a Neoliberal World, ed. Gillian MacNaughton and Diane F. Frey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 1–23, 6.

9 ‘Forbes Publishes 34th Annual List of Global Billionaires’, Forbes, April 7, 2020, https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbespr/2020/04/07/forbes-publishes-34th-annual-list-of-global-billionaires/#5ec2604f3edf (accessed May 23, 2020).

10 World Bank, Piecing Together the Poverty Puzzle (Washington, DC: World Bank Group, 2018), 7. The World Bank has not updated its data on the number of people living below $5.50 since this report. See World Bank, Povcalnet, http://iresearch.worldbank.org/PovcalNet/povDuplicateWB.aspx (accessed May 23, 2020).

11 Lawrence Mishel and Julia Wolfe, ‘CEO Compensation has Grown 940% Since 1978: Typical Worker Compensation has risen only 12% During that Time’ (Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute, August 14, 2019), 4.

12 Ibid.

13 Ibid., 3.

14 Ibid., 1

15 Chuck Collins, US Billionaire Wealth Surges to $584 Billion, or 20%, Since the Beginning of the Pandemic (Washington, DC: Institute for Policy Studies, June 18, 2020), https://ips-dc.org/us-billionaire-wealth-584-billion-20-percent-pandemic/ (accessed August 6, 2020).

16 United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Beyond Income, Beyond Averages, Beyond Today: Inequalities in Human Development in the 21st Century – Human Development Report 2019 (Pedro Conceição, lead author) (New York: UNDP, 2019), 5–11.

17 Ibid., 11.

18 Ibid.

19 International Labour Organization, Global Wage Report 2016/2017: Wage Inequality in the Workplace (Geneva: International Labour Office, 2016); UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), Inequality in a Rapidly Changing World: World Social Report 2020 (New York: United Nations, 2020); UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), Inequality Matters: Report of the World Social Situation 2013 (New York: United Nations, 2013); UNESCO, Challenging Inequalities: Pathways to a Just World, Social Science Report 2016 (Paris: UNESCO, 2016); see also UNDP, Humanity Divided: Confronting Inequality in Developing Countries (New York: UNDP, 2013).

20 UNDP, Inequalities in Human Development, chapter 3 (income and wealth) and chapter 4 (gender).

21 World Bank, Taking on Inequality: Poverty and Shared Prosperity 2016 (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2016); International Monetary Fund (IMF), ‘IMF’s Work on Inequality’, https://www.imf.org/external/np/fad/inequality/ (accessed May 27, 2020).

22 IMF, ‘IMF’s Work on Inequality’.

23 UNGA, Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, UN Doc. A/RES/70/1 (October 21, 2015), 14.

24 Ibid.

25 See for example Philip Alston and Nikki Reisch, Tax, Inequality and Human Rights (New York: Oxford University Press 2019); Rodrigo Uprimny Yepes and Sergio Chaparro Hernádez, ‘Inequality, Human Rights, and Social Rights: Tensions and Complementarities’, Humanity 10, no. 3 (2019): 376–94; Radhika Balakrishnan and James Heintz, ‘Human Rights in an Unequal World: Structural Inequalities and the Imperative for Global Cooperation’, Humanity 10, no. 3 (2019): 395–403; Samuel Moyn, Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2018); Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky, ‘Economic Inequality, Debt Crisis and Human Rights’, The Yale Journal of International Law Online 41, no. 2 (2016): 177–99; Center for Economic and Social Rights, ‘From Disparity to Dignity: Tackling Economic Inequality through the Sustainable Development Goals’ (2016), https://www.cesr.org/sites/default/files/disparity_to_dignity_SDG10.pdf (accessed Mary 25, 2020); Samuel Moyn, ‘A Powerless Companion: Human Rights in the Age of Neoliberalism’, Law & Contemporary Problems 77, no. 4 (2014): 147–69; Gillian MacNaughton, ‘Beyond a Minimum Threshold: The Right to Social Equality’, in The State of Economic and Social Human Rights: A Global Overview, ed. Lanse Minkler (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press 2013); Radhika Balakrishnan and Diane Elson, eds., Economic Policy and Human Rights: Holding Governments to Account (London: Zed Books, 2011).

26 The Expert Group Meeting on SDG 10 was one of a series of consultations that took place in preparation for the July 2019 session of the UN High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, which conducted an in-depth review of SDGs 4, 8, 10, 13, 16 and 17. SDG Knowledge Hub, https://sdg.iisd.org/events/expert-group-meeting-on-sdg-10/ (accessed May 24, 2020).

27 Michelle Bachelet, ‘Keynote Statement by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet’, Expert Meeting on Reducing Inequalities: SDG 10 Progress and Prospects (Geneva, April 2, 2019).

28 See for example Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), ‘Concluding Observations: Bolivia 2008’, UN Doc E/C.12/BOL/CO/2 (August 8, 2008), paras 14 and 27(a); CESCR, ‘Concluding Observations: Brazil 2009’, UN Doc E/C.12/BRA/CO/2 (June 12, 2009), para. 10; CESCR, ‘Concluding Observations: China 2014’, UN Doc E/C.12/CHN/CO/2 (June 13, 2014), para. 48; CESCR, ‘Concluding Observations: Costa Rica 2016’, UN Doc E/C.12/CRI/CO/5 (October 21, 2016), paras 14–5.

29 CESCR, ‘The Pledge to Leave No One Behind: The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’, Statement by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, UN Doc. E/C.12/2019/1 (April 5, 2019), para. 5.

30 Philip Alston, ‘Report of the Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights’, UN Doc. A/HRC/29/31 (May 27, 2015); Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky, ‘Report of the Independent Expert on the Effects of Foreign Debt and Other Related International Financial Obligations of States on the Full Enjoyment of Human Rights, Particularly Economic, Social and Cultural Rights’, UN Doc. A/HRC/31/60 (January 12, 2016). See also Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona, ‘Report of the Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights’, UN Doc. A/HRC/26/28 (May 22, 2014); Olivier De Schutter, ‘Tackling Extreme Poverty in Times of Crisis: Key Challenges Facing the Fight Against Poverty and Priorities for the Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights’ (May 1, 2020).

31 Bachelet, ‘Keynote Statement 2019’.

32 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) (1966), https://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CESCR.aspx (accessed February 29, 2020), art. 2(1); Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, ‘General Comment 3: The Nature of the States Parties Obligations (Art 2, par. 1)’ (December 14, 1990), para. 2, https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/15/treatybodyexternal/Download.aspx?symbolno=INT%2fCESCR%2fGEC%2f4758&Lang=en (accessed March 1, 2020).

33 Navanethem Pillay, ‘Report of the High Commissioner for Human Rights on the Implementation of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights’ UN Doc. E/2009/90 (June 8, 2009), para. 35.

34 Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky, Guiding Principles on Human Rights Impact Assessment: Report of the Independent Expert on the Effects of Foreign Debt and Other Related Financial Obligations of States on the Full Enjoyment of Human Rights, Particularly Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, UN Doc. A/HRC/40/57 (December 19, 2018).

35 Ibid., para. 2.

36 Alston, UN HRC Report 2015, para. 7; Ignacio Saiz and Kate Donald, ‘Tackling Inequality Through the Sustainable Development Goals: Human Rights in Practice’, International Journal of Human Rights 21, no. 8 (2017): 1029–49, 1031.

37 Radhika Balakrishnan, James Heintz, and Diane Elson, Rethinking Economic Policy for Social Justice: The Radical Potential of Human Rights (Abingdon: Routledge 2016), 32.

38 Ibid.; Saiz and Donald, ‘Tackling Inequality’, 1031.

39 The Gini Index is a measure of inequality between 0 (total equality – everyone has the same income or wealth) and 1 (total inequality – one person has all the income or wealth). Although the Gini Index is frequently used by economists, it is not easily understood by the general public or by policymakers, Alvaredo et al, World Inequality Report 2018, 27. People do not intuitively understand the difference between a Gini of 0.24 (most equal country – Slovenia) and 0.62 (most unequal country – South Africa). OECD, Income Inequality, https://data.oecd.org/inequality/income-inequality.htm (accessed May 25, 2020). The Palma ratio is more easily understandable, and other similar ratios of income or wealth deciles – such as comparisons of income or wealth deciles to social outcomes – are also useful for measuring and communicating relevant information on changes in vertical inequalities to policymakers and the general public.

40 Oxfam, ‘Time to Care: Unpaid and Underpaid work and the Global Inequality Crisis’ (Boston: Oxfam, January 2020), 9, https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/620928/bp-time-to-care-inequality-200120-en.pdf (accessed March 3, 2020).

41 Ibid., 8.

42 Ibid., 8.

43 Ibid.,19

44 Alvaredo et al, World Inequality Report 2018, 9.

45 Ibid., 9–10.

46 Ibid., 9.

47 Ibid., 10.

48 Ibid., 9

49 UNDP, Human Development Report 2019, 30.

50 Ibid., 30.

51 Ibid., 7.

52 Ibid., 42, 51.

53 Ibid., 52.

54 DESA, Inequality Matters, 63.

55 Ibid., 66.

56 Ibid., 64.

57 Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, The Inner Level: How More Equal Societies Reduce Stress, Restore Sanity and Improve Everyone’s Wellbeing (New York: Penguin Press, 2019), 41–67.

58 DESA, Inequality Matters, 70.

59 Bohoslavsky, ‘Economic Inequality, Debt Crisis’, 183.

60 DESA, Inequality Matters, 70; Balakrishnan, Heintz, and Elson, Rethinking Economic Policy, 43.

61 Ibid., 72.

62 UNGA, The 2030 Agenda, 21, 21 (targets 10.2 and 10.3).

63 Ibid., 21 (targets 10.5, 10.6, 10.7, 10.b, 10.c).

64 Edward Anderson, ‘Equality as a Global Goal’, Ethics and International Affairs 30, no. 2 (2016): 189–200, 194; Saiz and Donald, ‘Tackling Inequality’, 1032; Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, ‘Keeping Out Extreme Inequality from the SDG Agenda – The Politics of Indicators’, Global Policy 10, supp. 1 (2019): 61–9, 61.

65 UNGA, The 2030 Agenda, 21 (target 10.1).

66 Fukuda-Parr, ‘Keeping Out Extreme Inequality’, 61.

67 UNGA, The 2030 Agenda, 21 (target 10.4).

68 See, for example, Anderson, ‘Equality as a Global Goal’; Saiz and Donald, ‘Tackling Inequality’; Fukuda-Parr, ‘Keeping Out Extreme Inequality’; Gillian MacNaughton, ‘Vertical Inequalities: Are the SDGs and Human Rights Up to the Challenges?’ Journal of International Human Rights 21, no. 8 (2017): 1050–72; Faiza Shaheen, ‘Inequality Within and Among Countries’, in International Norms, Normative Change and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, ed. Noha Shawki (Landham, MD: Lexington Books, 2016), 99–113; Katja Feistein and Bettina Mahlert, ‘The Potential for Tackling Inequalitiy in the Sustainable Development Goals’, Third World Quarterly 37, no. 12 (2016): 2139–55; Kate Donald, ‘Will Inequality Get Left Behind in the 2030 Agenda?’ in Spotlight on Sustainable Development 2016, Report by the Reflection Group on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, 80–6, https://www.2030spotlight.org/sites/default/files/contentpix/spotlight/Agenda-2030-en_web_accessible.pdf (accessed May 25, 2020).

69 Bachelet, ‘Keynote Statement 2019’.

70 Ibid.

71 Inter-Agency and Expert Group on SDG Indicators, Global Indicator Framework for the Sustainable Development Goals and Targets of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, UN Doc. A/RES/71/313, as amended by UN Docs, E/C.3/2018/2, E/CN.3/2019/2, E/CN.3/2020/2 (2020), at 10, https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/indicators/indicators-list/.

72 Charter of the United Nations (1945), https://www.un.org/en/sections/un-charter/un-charter-full-text/, (accessed February 29, 2020), art1(3); see also art 55.

73 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/index.html, art. 2.

74 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) (1966), https://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CESCR.aspx, art. 2; International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) (1966), https://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CCPR.aspx, art. 2.

75 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965), https://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CEDAW.aspx; Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979), https://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CEDAW.aspx.

76 See for example Johannes Morsink, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Origins, Drafting and Intent (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1999), 45 (‘nondiscrimination and equality are two sides of the same coin’); Paul Hunt, Reclaiming Social Rights: International and Comparative Perspectives (Aldershot: Dartmouth, 1996), 92 (‘these two principles are closely related: they are reciprocal, two sides of the same coin’).

77 Gillian MacNaughton, ‘Equality Rights Beyond Neoliberal Constraints’, in Economic and Social Rights in a Neoliberal World, ed. Gillian MacNaughton and Diane F. Frey (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 103–23.

78 Alston, UN HRC Report 2015, para. 55 (the right to equality needs to be given greater attention so that it is able to develop notions of distributive equality); Moyn, Not Enough, 10 (challenging human rights advocates to supplement sufficiency with distributive equality in theory and practice); Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, ‘It’s About Values: Human Rights Norms and Tolerance for Inequality’, OpenGlobalRights, https://www.openglobalrights.org/its-about-values-human-rights-norms-and-tolerance-for-inequality/ (‘What is needed now is a more coherent articulation of human rights norms and inequality as injustice, which is currently underdeveloped if not entirely absent.')

79 See for example Alston, ‘UN HRC Report 2015’, para. 54; Balakkrishnan, Heintz, and Elson, Rethinking Economic Policy, 47; Uprimny Yepes and Chaparro Hernández, ‘Inequality, Human Rights’, 382.

80 Alston ‘UN HRC Report 2015’, para. 54 (‘At present, there is no explicitly stated right to equality, as such under international human rights law.’).

81 Exceptions include, for example, Danilo Türk, ‘The Realization of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: Final Report Submitted by Mr. Danilo Türk, Special Rapporteur’, UN Doc. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1992/16 (July 3, 1992), paras 76–84; Asbjørn Eide, ‘Preparatory Document on the Relationship Between the Enjoyment of Human Rights, in Particular Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and Income Distribution, Prepared by Mr. Asbjørn Eide in Accordance with Sub-Commission Resolution 1993/40’, UN Doc. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1994/21 (July 5, 1994); José Bengoa, ‘The Relationship Between the Enjoyment of Human Rights, in Particular Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and Income Distribution: Poverty, Income Distribution and Globalization: A Challenge for Human Rights’, UN Doc. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1998/8 (June 10, 1998).

82 Moyn, ‘A Powerless Companion’; Mary Nolan, ‘Human Rights and Market Fundamentalism in the Long 1970s’, in Toward a New Moral World Order? Menschenrechtspolitik und Völkerrecht seit 1945, ed. Norbert Frei and Annette Weinke (Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2014), 172–81; MacNaughton and Frey, ‘Introduction’.

83 Sepúlveda Carmona, ‘UN HRC Report 2014’, paras 36–53; Alston, ‘UN HRC Report 2015’, para. 26; Bohoslavsky, ‘UN HRC Report 2016’, para. 14; Bachelet, ‘Keynote Statement 2019’; Balakrishnan, Heintz, and Elson, Rethinking Economic Policy, 39–42; Saiz and Donald, ‘Tackling Inequality’, 1031–2; Alston and Reisch, Tax, Inequality, 24; Daniel Brinks, Julia Dehm and Karen Engle, ‘Introduction: Human Rights and Economic Inequality’, Humanity 10, no. 3 (2020): 363–75.

84 Balakrishnan, Heintz, and Elson, Rethinking Economic Policy, 48.

85 Bohoslavsky, ‘Economic Inequality, Debt’, 177.

86 Ibid.

87 CESCR, ‘The Pledge 2019’, para. 5.

88 The Harmonized Guidelines for reporting to the UN treaty bodies have called for reporting on the Gini coefficient since at least 2009. Compilation of Guidelines on the Form and Content of Reports to be Submitted by the States Parties to the International Treaties, Report of the Secretary General, UN Doc. HRI/GEN/2/Rev.6 (June 3, 2009).

89 Balakrishnan, Heintz, and Elson, Rethinking Economic Policy, 48; Bohoslavsky, ‘Economic Inequality, Debt’, 177–8.

90 ICESCR, art. 2(1).

91 Paul Hunt, ‘Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Right of Everyone to the Enjoyment of the Highest Attainable Standard of Physical and Mental Health’, UN Doc. A/62/214 (August 8, 2007), para. 37.

92 Pillay, Report of the High Commissioner 2009, para. 35.

93 Hunt, ‘UNGA Report 2007’, para. 40; Olivier De Schutter, ‘Guiding Principles on Human Rights Impact Assessment of Trade and Investment Agreements’, Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier De Schutter, UN Doc. A/HRC/19/59/Add.5 (December 19, 2011), Principle 4.

94 Hunt, ‘UNGA Report 2007’, para. 40; Gauthier De Beco, ‘Human Rights Impact Assessment’, Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights 27, no. 2 (2009): 139–66, 147.

95 Kofi Annan, ‘Report of the Secretary General: Question of the Realization in All Countries of the Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Study of Special Problems which the Developing Countries Face in their Efforts to Achieve these Human Rights’, UN Doc. E.CN.4/1334 (January 2, 1979), para. 314.

96 Simon Walker, ‘Human Rights Impact Assessment: Emerging Practice and Challenges’, in Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in International Law: Contemporary Issues and Challenges, ed. Eibe Riedel, Gilles Giacca, and Christophe Golay (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 391–414.

97 CESCR, ‘General Comment 2: International Technical Assistance Measures (Art. 22)’, UN Doc. E/1990/23, annex III at 86, February 2, 1990, para. 8(b).

98 Lawrence Gostin and Jonathan M. Mann, ‘Towards the Development of a Human Rights Impact Assessment for the Formulation and Evaluation of Public Health Policies’, Health and Human Rights Journal 1, no. 1 (1994), 58–80; Lawrence Gostin and Zita Lazzarini, ‘Human Rights Impact Assessment’, in Human Rights and Public Health in the AIDS Pandemic (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 57–67.

99 Katarina Tomasevski, ‘Background Paper submitted by Ms. Katarina Tomasevski, Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education of the Commission on Human Rights’, Day of General Discussion: Right to Education (Articles 13 and 14 of the Covenant), Geneva, October 7, 1998, para. 10.

100 Hunt, ‘UN GA Report 2007’, paras 33–44; see also Paul Hunt and Gillian MacNaughton, ‘Impact Assessments, Poverty and Human Rights: A Case Study Using the Right to the Highest Attainable Standard of Health’, Health and Human Rights Working Paper Series No. 6, World Health Organization and UNESCO (2006), https://www.who.int/hhr/Series_6_Impact%20Assessments_Hunt_MacNaughton1.pdf (accessed March 7, 2020).

101 De Schutter, ‘Guiding Principles’.

102 Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky, ‘Developing Guiding Principles for Assessing the Human Rights Impact of Economic Reform Policies’, Report of the Independent Expert on the Effects of Debt and Other Related Financial Obligations of States on the Full Enjoyment of All Human Rights, Particularly Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, UN Doc. A/HRC/37/54 (December 20, 2017).

103 Hunt, ‘UNGA Report 2007’, para. 33; see also De Schutter, ‘Guiding Principles’, 5 (Principle I: The duty to prepare human rights impact assessments of trade and investment agreements).

104 Hunt, ‘UNGA Report 2007’, para. 44.

105 Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC), ‘General Comment 5: General Measures of Implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child’ (Art. 4, 42, and 44, para. 6), UN Doc. CRC?GC/2003/5(2003), para. 45 (emphasis added).

106 CESCR, ‘Conclusions and Recommendations, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’, UN Doc. E/C.12/1/Add.19 (1997), para. 33. See also CESCR, ‘Concluding Observations: South Africa’, UN Doc E/C.12/ZAF/CO/1 (29 November 2018), para. 16; CESCR, ‘Concluding Observations: Canada’, UN Doc E/C.12/CAN/CO/6 (23 March 2016), para. 54; CESCR, ‘Concluding Observations: China’, UN Doc. E/C.12/CHN/CO/2 (13 June 2014), para. 12; CESCR, ‘Concluding Observations: Austria’, UN Doc E/C.12/AUT/CO/4 (13 December 2013), para. 11; CESCR, ‘Concluding Observations: Costa Rica’, UN Doc E/C.12/CRI/CO/4 (4 January 2008), para. 48; CESCR, ‘Concluding Observations: Ecuador’, UN Doc. E/C.12/1/Add.100 (7 June 2004), para. 55; CESCR, ‘Concluding Observations: Germany’, UN Doc E/C.12/1/Add.68 (2001), para. 32.

107 CESCR, ‘Public Debt, austerity measures and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights’, Statement by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, UN Doc. E/C.12/2016/1 (July 22, 2016), para. 11.

108 See for example Hunt, ‘UNGA Report 2007’, para. 41; De Schutter, ‘Guiding Principles’, 14; Walker, ‘Human Rights Impact Assessments’, 401; Saskia Bakker, Marieke Van Den Berg, Deniz Düzenli, and Marike Radstaake, ‘Human Rights Impact Assessment in Practice: The Case of the Health Rights of Women Assessment Instrument (HeRWAI)’, Journal of Human Rights Practice 1, no. 3 (2009): 436–58, 444; Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR), ‘Assessing Austerity: Monitoring the Human Rights Impacts of Fiscal Consolidation’, Briefing February 2018, 32, https://www.cesr.org/sites/default/files/Austerity-Report-Online2018.FINAL_.pdf (accessed March 7, 2020).

109 See for example De Schutter, ‘Guiding Principles’, Principle 5(a). In many cases, this will involve setting out the human rights obligations of the State. However, if the State has not ratified the necessary instrument, the normative content of the right may still be used to carry out the assessment. For example, although the United States has not ratified the ICESCR, an HRIA may be done in the United States using the content of the right to health as the human rights standards to demonstrate the extent to which a proposed policy would violate the right to health as set forth in the UDHR upon which all UN members are obliged to report in the Universal Periodic Review. As an advocacy and mobilization tool, the HRIA could still be very effective.

110 See for example Bohoslavsky, ‘Economic Inequality, Debt’, 177–8; Alston, ‘UN HRC Report 2015’, para. 16.

111 Human Rights Council (HRC), ‘Mandate of the Independent Expert on the Effects of Foreign Debt and Other Related International Financial Obligations of States on the Full Enjoyment of All Human Rights, Particularly Economic, Social and Cultural Rights’, Resolution Adopted by the Human Rights Council on 23 Mach 2017’, UN Doc. A/HRC/RES/34/3 (April 6, 2017), para. 13.

112 The HRC resolution does not include any of these words: inequalities, inequality, equal, unequal, or equality. Further, it does not address the concept of vertical inequality in other terms – such as disparity between rich and poor.

113 Bohoslavsky, ‘UN HRC Report 2017’, para. 72.

114 Ibid., paras. 57, 62.

115 Ibid., para. 78(c)(i).

116 Ibid., para. 34.

117 Ibid., para. 34; see Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky, ‘Report of the Independent Expert on the Effects of Foreign Debt and Other Related International Financial Obligations of States on the Full Enjoyment of Human Rights, Particularly Economic, Social and Cultural Rights’, UN Doc. A/HRC/31/60 (January 12, 2016).

118 Bohoslavsky, ‘UN HRC Report 2016’, para. 37.

119 Ibid., para. 56.

120 Ibid., para. 56.

121 Bohoslavsky, Guiding Principles, Principle 2, 5.

122 Ibid.

123 Bohoslavsky, Guiding Principles, Principle 3, 5.

124 Ibid., 6–10.

125 Bohoslavsky, Guiding Principles, Principle 11, 11.

126 Balakrishnan, Heintz and Elson, Rethinking Economic Policy, 48; Bohoslavsky, ‘Economic Inequality, Debt’, 177–8; Alston, ‘UN HRC Report 2015’, para. 16.

127 Bohoslavsky, Guiding Principles, Principle 11, 11.

128 Ibid., Commentary, para. 11(2), 11.

129 Ibid., Commentary 11(2) and 11(3), 12 (emphasis added).

130 Bohoslavsky, ‘UN HRC Report 2016’, paras 58, 66 and 68.

131 Human Rights Council, ‘Resolution Adopted by the Human Rights Council on 21 March 2019’, UN Doc. A/HRC/RES/40/8 (April 5, 2019).

132 Bohoslavsky, ‘UN HRC Report 2017’, para. 76.

133 Bohoslavsky, Guiding Principles, 4 (Principle 1, Commentary 1(2)).

134 Bachelet, ‘Keynote Statement on Reducing Inequalities 2019’.

135 MacNaughton, ‘Equality Rights Beyond Neoliberal Constraints’, 116–8.

136 Alston, ‘UN HRC Report 2015’, para. 48.

137 Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky, ‘COVID-19: Urgent Appeal for a Human Rights Response to the Economic Recession’, Report of the Independent Expert on the Effects of Foreign Debt and Other Related International Financial Obligations of States on the Full Enjoyment of All Human Rights, Particularly Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Geneva, OHCHR, April 15, 2020.