Calls for human rights impact assessments have not been limited to trade and investment agreements.
Several human rights monitoring bodies have advised states to undertake human rights impact
assessments on other resource mobilisation policies. For example, they have called on states to assess the
impact of their domestic tax policies as well as the spill-over effects their tax policies impose on other
countries, in addition to the impact of austerity measures and other adjustment programmes.243
In 2017, the CESCR made its views clear regarding trade and investment agreements and human rights
impact assessments in a General Comment. According to the Committee:
‘States Parties should identify any potential conflict between their obligations under the Covenant
and trade or investment treaties, and refrain from entering into such treaties where such conflicts
are found to exist, as required under the principle of the binding character of treaties. The
conclusion of such treaties should therefore be preceded by human rights impact assessments,
taking into account both the positive and negative human rights impacts of trade and investment
treaties, including their contribution to the realisation of the right to development. Such impacts
on human rights of the implementation of the agreements should be regularly assessed, to allow
for the adoption of any corrective measures that may be required. The interpretation of trade and
investment treaties currently in force should take into account the human rights obligations of the
State, consistent with Article 103 of the Charter of the United Nations and with the specific nature of
human rights obligations. States parties cannot derogate from the obligations under the Covenant in
trade and investment treaties they may conclude. They are encouraged to insert, in future treaties,
a provision explicitly referring to their human rights obligations, and to ensure that mechanisms
for the settlement of investor-State disputes take human rights into account in the interpretation of
investment treaties or of investment chapters in trade agreements.’244
Human rights impact assessments are also an important accountability tool. By explicitly clarifying what
can be expected from a particular resource mobilisation policy, errors, omissions and actors involved
can be more clearly identified if the expected resources are not mobilised or when human rights are
affected.
A major limitation of human rights impact assessment methodologies is that they most often seek to assess
potential human rights impacts of specific resource mobilisation policies, rather than consider whether
these policies are best suited for countries seeking to comply with obligations to mobilise maximum
available resources for human rights. On a positive side, one special procedure noted that emerging
methodologies make it possible to monitor whether maximum available resources are being directed to
economic, social and cultural rights, declaring such assessments should focus on whether all available
resources are being mobilised, as well as on whether they are being used effectively.245
243 See, eg, Concluding Observations UK E/C.12/GBR/CO/6 (2016), para 17; and ‘Report of the Independent Expert on
foreign debt, Cephas Lumina’ (Mission to Greece) (2014) A/HRC/25/50/Add.1, para 92.
244 CESCR General Comment No 24, para 13 (footnotes omitted).
245 ‘Report of the Special Rapporteur on water and sanitation, Catarina de Albuquerque’ (2011) UN Doc A/66/255.
December 2017 The Obligation to Mobilise Resources: Bridging Human Rights, Sustainable Development Goals, and Economic and Fiscal Policies
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