Expenditures must be efficient Wasting funds amounts to a failure to use the maximum of available resources. Funds can be wasted in a number of ways, including: • The government may pay more than it should for goods and services, or it may get poor quality for the funds spent. • Waste also occurs when the government buys unnecessary items or items that are not useful for meeting priority needs. (See case study on The Use of Maximum Available Resources: Expenditures on non-essential items.) • The government may decide that certain goods and services are needed to address a problem, while sound research points to other goods and services as more appropriate. • When a department or agency receives its funding near the end of the fiscal year, it may spend it quickly, without sufficient thought. The CESCR has said that a failure to spend funds efficiently may amount to a failure to comply with MAR. However, some expenditures that could be required from a human rights perspective—for example, for developing and maintaining health clinics in remote rural areas—might be considered an “inefficient” use of resources by some economists. Such clinics would be expensive to develop and maintain; more people would likely benefit if a similar amount of money were spent in a more densely-populated urban area. Because a larger number of people would potentially benefit, some economists would consider the latter a more “efficient” use of funds. It is important for human rights advocates to understand the different uses economists make of the word “efficient,” be clear about which of those uses are human rights-“friendly” and which are not, and argue against “efficient” expenditures that do not advance, and may even undercut, human rights by failing, for example, to ensure that the rights of marginalized groups are respected.