A/HRC/11/9 page 16 59. One of the key choices in designing conditions is determining how they will be enforced. While some States establish rigid penalties for non-compliance, in others, conditionalities are not enforced and non-compliance does not result in benefit cuts. The exclusion of an individual or a household from a CTP because of failure to satisfy the imposed conditions raises strong human rights concerns. Non-compliance with conditionalities should assist programme officials in identifying and acting upon problems. For example, in some countries girls are not going to school (a condition of the CTPs) because they are sexually harassed, pregnant women are not going to health clinics because the quality of service is very low or the clinics are too far away. In such cases, the CTP should have a mechanism in place to help families that are not complying with the conditionalities, without any punitive outcome. This is particularly the case when female heads of households are in charge of ensuring that the conditions are met (see paragraph 66 below). 60. Enforcing rigid conditionalities (e.g. expelling families from the CTP for failure to comply the condition) may mean that the poorest are punished. States must ensure that whatever policy they implement, the final result will not violate the right of individuals to at least a minimum essential level of human rights. F. The current economic crisis, cash transfer programmes and human rights 61. The Human Rights Council, in its resolution S-10/1, invited all relevant special procedures to consider the impacts of the current economic and financial crises on the enjoyment of human rights. While the international community is still assessing the impact of the crisis, it is clear that the poor are disproportionately affected, and that the crisis will push more people into poverty. 62. At the time of writing, countries were in the process of deciding which policies to adopt in order to mitigate the social impacts of the crisis, including responses to wage and savings losses, reduction of remittances, increased prices of basic food, fuel, essential drugs, home foreclosures and limited access to credit. Stimulus packages announced in some countries tend to include cash transfer initiatives and expansion of social security schemes for example strengthening unemployment benefits (e.g. Canada, France, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America), increased cash transfer programmes (e.g. Brazil, Canada, Chile, France, Italy, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, Philippines, Republic of Korea and Thailand), child benefits (e.g. Australia, Germany, Mexico, South Africa and Spain) and old age pensions (e.g. Argentina and China). 63. The majority of developing countries face a contracted fiscal space, limiting government spending and investment in social services. There are risks that official development assistance (ODA) may decrease too. However, evidence from previous crises, especially from the Asian crisis in the late 1990s, shows that crises periods are not the moment when social expenditures should be cut.16 On the contrary, it should be used as an opportunity to redress imbalances and set up comprehensive social security systems, of which cash transfer programmes are only one element. 16 Ariel Fiszbein, Norber Schady, Conditional Cash Transfers, reducing present and future poverty, World Bank Policy Research Report, 2009, p. 197.