INTERNATIONAL LAW & MANAGEMENT REVIEW VOLUME1 1 virtues of southern European nations. If Southern Europe cannot meet the minimum standards of social and economic rights, then they require help from richer European countries. The European Union is not only an economic community, but is, first and foremost, a community based on the fundamental rights of all member nations. As such, other European countries are obligated to assist the poorer nations. A population needs to have a reasonable minimum of economic and social rights; an economic crisis undermines the state's financial ability to fully implement those standards. It does so by forcing a state into paying off its public debt. If a state is obliged to repay its public debt, it will be less capable of providing the reasonable minimum standard of economic and social rights.6 During a financial crisis, states are still obliged to uphold individual economic and social rights.7 Despite the growing attention paid to the financial crisis, there has been little examination of its impact on the enjoyment of socio-economic rights. As such, there is not much written about the relationship between an economic crisis and human rights, particularly from the perspective of human rights law. 8 The majority of the literature treats human rights and financial or economic crises as separate notions. The literature focuses solely on either the lack of success of specific lenders and financial instruments or it focuses solely on human rights violations. The literature generally fails to study the common features between the human rights violations and the crises-and their attendant socio-economic problems. This article examines the relationship between the economic crisis and socio-economic rights from the perspective of a state's human rights obligations. Further, the article enhances the discussion on how to adequately secure socio-economic rights during times of economic crisis. The article does so by asking two main questions: 6 Mary Dowell-Jones and David Kinley, Minding the Gap: Global Financeand Human Rights, Ethics and InternationalAffairs, Vol. 25, No. 2,184 (201 l)(citing Rita Roca and Francesca Manta, Values Added: The Challenge of Integrating Human Rights into the FinancialSector, 14, Danish Institute for Human Rights, (2010)). 7 The Castan Centre of Human Rights notes, "it does not follow that from additional sites of responsibility comes a corresponding reduction of the State's liability in respect of human rights protection and promotion." R Chambers, D Kinley and S Joseph, Submission to the UN Office of the High Commissioner's review of the UN's Human Rights Norms for Corporations 'Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Related Business Enterprises with Regards to Human Rights' the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, http://www.law.monash.edu.au/castancentre/publications/ohchr-sub-final.pdf (last visited June 30, 2013). 8 Only a few articles have been so far published on this topic. See Ignazio Saiz, Rights in Recession? Challengesfor Economic and Social Rights Enforcement in Times of Crisis, Journal of Human Rights Practice, Volume 1, Issue 2, 277-293; Felipe G6mez Isa, The reversibility of economic, social and cultural rights in crisiscontexts, (El Tiempo de los Derechos, Working Papers 2011) available at http://e-archivo.uc3m.es/bitstreami/handle/10016/10137/wp37.pdfsequence= 1. C; Raj Kumar, Human Rights Crisis of Public Health Policy: Comparative Perspectives on the Protection and Promotion of Economic and Social Rights, 52 Indian Journal of International Law, 351-87, 2012; Rachael Loma Johnstone; Aoalheibur Amundad6ttir, Defending Economic, Social and CulturalRights in Iceland's FinancialCrisis, 3 The Yearbook of Polar Law, 455-77 (2011).