maximum available resources for the implementation of economic, social and cultural rights", and it recommended that it "intensify its efforts, in coordination with its Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies, to address global tax abuse".145 Nor is the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights isolated in this regard. A few months after the cited recommendation was addressed to the United Kingdom, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women recommended that Switzerland "Undertake independent, participatory and periodic impact assessments of the extraterritorial effects of its financial secrecy and corporate tax policies on women’s rights and substantive equality, and ensure that such assessments are conducted in an impartial manner with public disclosure of the methodology and finding".146 The recommendation was prompted by a report147 presented by a coalition of non-governmental organisations and a human rights clinic, showing how cross-border tax abuse by corporations and individuals (in various forms including "controversial profit-shifting, fraudulent under-reporting of the value of taxable transactions, and the use of off-shore accounts to hide taxable income"148 ) have an impact on the ability for developing countries to protect and fulfil women's rights. As the report explained: The loss of revenues to cross-border tax abuse contributes to the underfunding of essential services, institutions, and infrastructure on which women depend, from health care and education to public courts and transportation systems, as well as programs designed specifically to protect and promote women’s rights. Inadequate spending on social services often takes a heavy toll on women in particular, as they typically bear the burden of care-giving and performing unpaid work when public institutions fall short.149 Extraterritorial obligations in the area of economic, social and cultural rights include a number of components.150 Establishing a regulatory framework that ensures that poor countries shall not be deprived of the resources needed to finance their development, by clamping down on tax havens and by ensuring that corporations shall not commit tax abuse, is one particularly important component. But other forms of support -- more direct, less structural -- are equally pertinent to recall in this context. 3. International support When domestic resources are insufficient to allow a State party to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights to meet its obligations, it should seek to attract support from outside the country. Among the external resources that could be mobilized are the resources from foreign direct investment (that the government could seek to attract to the country, as a means to create employment, to transfer technologies, and to raise the standards of living),151 and the resources that the international community could contribute through development cooperation or through the provision 145 Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Concluding Observations on the sixth periodic report of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UN doc. E/C.12/GBR/CO/6, 14 July 2016), paras. 16-17 (emphasis added). 146 Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, Concluding Observations on the combined fourth and fifth reports of Switzerland (CEDAW/C/CHE/CO/4-5) (18 November 2016), para. 41. 147 Alliance Sud, Centre for Economic and Social Rights, Global Justice Clinic of New York University School of Law, Public Eye and Tax Justice Network, Swiss Responsibility for the Extraterritorial Impacts of Tax Abuse on Women's Rights, 2 November 2016, available at: http://chrgj.org/wpcontent/uploads/2016/12/switzerland_cedaw_submission_2nov201628.pdf (last consulted on 20 Dec. 2016). 148 Id., at 1. 149 Id., at 2. 150 The Maastricht Principles on Extraterritorial Obligations of States in the Area of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, seek to bring together the rather disparate contributions from judicial and non-judicial bodies to this fast-developing area of human rights law. They were endorsed on 28 September 2011 by a range of non-governmental organisations and human rights experts, including mandate-holders within the Special Procedures established by the Human Rights Council. See Olivier De Schutter, et al., "Commentary to the Maastricht Principles on Extraterritorial Obligations of States in the area of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights", Human Rights Quarterly, vol. 34 (2012): 1084-1171. 151 See above, text corresponding to notes 117-119 (on the factors that attract foreign direct investment) and to notes 95-110 (on the specific case of natural resources). 32