economic rights by neo-liberal ‘necessities’. 94 Moving towards such a position risks representing the rights themselves as market imperatives.95 If commensurability were to be conceded, the task of proportionality analysis would only become more difficult. It would be immensely difficult to accurately identify and measure in terms of economic statistics the ‘benefit’ of an isolated policy that reduced rights protection. Even if this were possible, appraising this would be an unenviable task. In reality, without such figures (whether as a result of the State being either unable or unwilling to provide them) the CESCR would be left having to rely on a heavily subjective and rhetorical assessment of the benefit of reducing rights protection. Given the prevalence of highly subjective rhetoric in this arena, including the neo-liberal rallying call ‘There Is No Alternative’, reliance on a necessity test seems to do little to examine the relative importance of decision-making factors. The other stage of the CESCR’s test for permissible crisis measures requires that measures enacted by States are temporary. The problem of becoming ‘stuck’ in a temporary state of emergency has been well critiqued by others and those problems apply here also. 96 In addition, the fact that a violation was temporary is not, in a meaningful sense, sufficient to justify the action and such an approach would move towards a human rights’ ‘law of averages’. B. General threats to socio-economic rights If the new approach of the 2012 Letter is employed by the CESCR when assessing States’ compliance with their obligations, there may be a number effects on socio-economic rights generally. The introduction of a pseudo derogation test in the ICESCR context is a new development that has the potential to blur the doctrinal distinctions between the ICESCR and its counterpart the ICCPR. The individual ICESCR rights are already qualified in a manner that ICCPR rights are not (i.e. through the mechanism of progressive realisation). Notwithstanding the many commonalities between the two sets of rights, the incorporation of a liberal derogations regime into the already relatively flexible ICESCR would result in two sets of flexibilities; both progressive realisation and derogation. As well as blurring the doctrinal distinctions between the Covenants, the Letter threatens to further entrench tired stereotypes about the supposed differences in the ‘nature’ of the rights. The CESCR developing a focus on economic emergencies while the Human Rights Committee primarily focuses on non-economic emergencies is problematic.97 It reinforces the traditional message that only socio-economic rights have economic consequences (and thus that economic emergencies are only relevant to those rights). By contrast the ‘security’ dimension of socio-economic rights is neglected in this binary divide, leaving the regime unable to deal with the issues of security and instability that can cause and result from Paul O’Connell, ‘On Reconciling Irreconcilables: Neo-Liberal Globalisation and Human Rights’ (2007) 7 Human Rights Law Review 483, 484. 94 Joe J Wills, ‘The World Turned Upside Down? Neo-Liberalism, Socioeconomic Rights, and Hegemony’ (2014) 27 Leiden Journal of International Law 11, 28. 95 Oren Gross, ‘Chaos and Rules: Should Responses to Violent Crises Always Be Constitutional?’ (2003) 112 The Yale Law Journal 1011, 1073 et seq; Greene, ‘Separating Normalcy from Emergency’ (n 68) 1765. The spectre of ‘permanent austerity’ might also be an example of this. 96 The Human Rights Committee notes the examples of ‘a natural catastrophe, a mass demonstration including instances of violence, or a major industrial accident’; Human Rights Committee, General Comment 29: States Of Emergency (Article 4) (n 70), para 5. 97 12