Political and economic malaise continues to besiege the eurozone, with Greece???s new government struggling to balance the demands of its creditors with the those of its own people, while Spain and Cyprus become the fourth and fifth countries to request bailout support from their neighbors. Four years into the global economic crisis, an austerity drive that has served only to exacerbate the situation and inflict seemingly endless hardship on ordinary people continues apace in both Europe and much of the rest of the world.
While different countries and regions have been affected in different ways, the successive waves of the global economic crisis have led to an austerity-driven ???Great Regression??? in human rights around the world. Massive and persistent unemployment, rising levels of hunger, homelessness and food riots, deprivations in access to adequate health and education, greater income inequality, significant cuts in basic social protections, growing xenophobia and discrimination, sharp increases in suicide rates across Europe, and mounting social disintegration have emerged from the wreckage, undermining not just the realization of human rights, but their very recognition as fundamental norms to guide economic and social policy. Austerity seems to have permeated the core of economic policy-making in many countries across the world, which has reversed counter-cyclical crisis responses in 2009 and 2010 by cutting back through 2011 and into 2012, even in the midst of economic malaise. Cuts have been widespread, including de-funding health, education and other social services, reducing grants to employment services, and in some cases reducing social protection, unemployment insurance and older persons??? pensions. These programs are taken as mere collateral damage in the quest for economic recovery, rather than what they are???fundamental human rights to which everyone is entitled on the basis of their inherent dignity. While broad swaths of society are affected by austerity measures, evidence shows that women, children, older persons, ethnic minorities, immigrants, people with disabilities and people living in poverty suffer disproportionately. The enjoyment of human rights, in other words, has all too often become the foremost casualty of the ???age of austerity.???
Despite evidence to the contrary, several myths plague mainstream debates over the enduring human consequences of the global financial and economic crisis. This briefing challenges seven widespread yet misguided perceptions about economic policy in times of crisis, and suggests human rights-centered economic policy alternatives for governments to urgently consider in order to address the dark flipside of public budget shortfalls???a deepening economic and social rights deficit.
Economic policy is public policy and therefore subject to international human rights law. Human rights norms, standards and principles provide a programmatic framework and operational redlines for economic policy-making. Investing in people in line with international human rights law and principles is not only legally compelling and morally right; it can also work to pull our economies out of the trappings of ever deeper, austerity-driven recessions???what Nobel laureate Amartya Sen has called a ???spiralling catastrophe.???