CESR participated at the opening of UN Human Rights Council's 13th session on 1 March 2010, for the high-level panel discussion on the impact of global economic and financial crises on realization of human rights. The panel aimed to keep the issues of the financial and economic crisis on the human rights agenda, and ensured that the Council will make a formal contribution to the Working Group of the General Assembly on follow-up to the outcome of the June 2009 UN Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and its Impact on Development.
During this high level panel discussion, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay described as the need for an ???urgent shift??? to ensure that economic stimulus packages and rescue operations do not just salvage the financial system and restore economic growth, but directly address how individuals are affected, especially in their access to employment and social services. ILO Director-General Juan Somavia asked the key question:
???How come there is money to rescue big banks and support economic recovery, but when it comes to job recovery, we don???t have the money ??? we are told to wait another five years???. As fiscal constraints begin to emerge, there is a risk of backsliding to the same old recessionary policies of the past.???
South Centre Executive Director Martin Khor urged governments facing tighter budgets ??? which imply a trade-off about what to cut ??? that the trade-off should ???always side with human rights: protect jobs and social services rather than narrow commercial interests.??? The crisis was yet another wake-up call that the current international financial architecture is prone to socially devastating crises and suffers from a ???deflationary bias??? whereby many countries are pressured by international financial markets and institutions to pursue recessionary policies when faced with fiscal and balance-of-payments difficulties. This is not compatible with the duties to protect and fulfil social and economic rights. Against pressures for a return to ???business as usual,??? it was suggested that the many proposals for reforming the international financial architecture to support development and social justice could be strengthened if articulated in terms of international human rights obligations.
In the same vein, former Secretary-General of Amnesty International Irene Khan emphasized that human rights constitute the ???ethical benchmark??? or ???moral compass??? for testing the validity and effectiveness of any stimulus packages and other short- or long-term measures adopted by governments in response to the crisis. She also argued for change within the human rights movement, given that ???the tendency of the human rights movement has been mostly to concentrate on monitoring violations of ESC rights ??? in other words, the aspect of ???respect??? ??? such forced evictions or institutionalized discrimination in employment, education, or housing.??? Comparatively little attention has been given to assessing the impact of public policy on human rights. ???This is partly because it is more difficult to pin down who is accountable for what,??? she said. But some groups, such as the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR), were beginning to analyse how human rights can guide economic policies, using multidisciplinary tools and methodologies.
CESR co-sponsored a side-event to discuss the lessons learned from the crisis, in collaboration with NGLS, and ESCR-Net on 4 March.
Jo??o Ernesto Christ??folo, a government representative from Brazil (which together with Egypt took the lead on this Human Rights Council initiative) opened the meeting, insisting that bringing in the human rights dimension must not only be about assessing impacts, but also shaping appropriate responses to the crisis.
Senior UNCTAD economist Richard Kozul-Wright emphasized that the underlying causes of the current crisis were rooted in a dominant policy paradigm of ???market fundamentalism,??? reflected in widespread liberalization, deregulation and privatization policies ??? affecting not only the economy but other spheres of life, including health, education, or post-disaster reconstruction. The resulting ???boom and bust??? cycles of the last 10 or 20 years were an expression of the fragility of the system, characterized by the unsustainable accumulation of debt ??? notably to compensate for a deficiency in global aggregate demand caused in large part by a sharp growth in inequalities and rising shares of national incomes going to profits at the expense of wages. This policy orientation meant a ???capture of state??? that defended the rights of certain groups (financiers, corporations) at the expense of other groups. Human rights advocates, he said, thus have to be aware that behind market fundamentalism lies a ???rights-based??? agenda focusing on a specific category of rights, namely property rights (whether expressed in terms of low taxes for the rich, the right to make windfall profits through socially harmful speculation, or intellectual property rights), over and above other categories of rights. The challenge for the human rights community was how to rethink the role of the State and build a countervailing movement rooted in an alternative ethic based on social justice, solidarity and fairness.
He suggested a range of measures that many commentators have suggested that governments can do ??? even in the midst of the crisis ??? to change course. These include investing in a ???social protection floor,??? making full employment an explicit macroeconomic objective, and re-regulating finance to discourage risky short-term speculation and reward long-term investments in productive employment and other social goals. While countries can use their existing policy space to pursue these objectives much more forcefully, many countries face limitations on what they can achieve on their own.
The global economic crisis had heightened the importance of the duty of international assistance and cooperation, grounded in the UN Charter and human rights instruments such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Irene Khan stressed that this duty, while legally well founded, is contested politically. Donor countries have a responsibility to respect, protect and fulfil economic and social rights beyond their jurisdiction. Various participants insisted that it is not simply a matter of providing more aid as a form of charity. There is an implication that the aid, trade, investment and foreign policies of more powerful countries ???do no harm??? in other economically weaker countries. When donors ??? or countries with dominant positions in international financial institutions ??? promote or condone conditionalities which in effect force recipient governments to implement policies that cause avoidable human rights retrogressions (whether related to the right to work, food, social protection, health care and education), these more powerful countries could be said to be in violation of their international human rights obligations.
In this respect, CESR Research Director Sally-Anne Way presented at the side event the results of an international NGO survey that undertook a human rights analysis of government responses to the economic crisis in a report entitled ???Bringing Human Rights to Bear in Times of Crisis.??? She emphasized that the report emerged out of a rising concern amongst human rights organizations about the impacts of the food, fuel, housing, climate, water, care and economic crises on the realization of human rights, especially economic and social rights, and the fact that some governments have begun using the economic crisis as an excuse to further abdicate their human rights obligations.
She reiterated that human rights place legal obligations on governments to protect their citizens from harm, as well as to promote their well-being. The report therefore reminds governments, as primary duty-bearers of human rights obligations, are called on under international law, of their duties to respect, protect and fulfill human rights ??? and reiterates that meeting these duties is all the more important in times of crisis. Sally-Anne Way concluded that we need to move beyond the debate between a minimal State and a maximal State towards a rights-fulfilling State that respects, protects and fulfils economic, social and cultural rights as well as civil and political rights.