A/70/275 grounded on contemporary understandings of sovereignty, legitimacy and human rights. Sustainable debt portfolios and debt restructuring agreements should include growth and repayment capacity, but should also take into account their impact on the implementation of economic, social and cultural rights of the sovereign debtor’s population. An examination of this fundamental claim should, in turn, shed some light on the principles of legitimacy and pacta sunt servanda in the debt field. 63. A comprehensive understanding of the pacta sunt servanda principle would not introduce legal uncertainty. Not only because there are wellestablished rules for interpreting conflicting international norms in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, including a helpful guide elaborated by the International Law Commission, 42 but also, above all, because denying or not facing the existence of a normative conflict is, in fact, what provokes deep uncertainty. If financial obligations and human rights are considered to be mutually exclusive obligations, without the possibility of dialogue between them, one prevailing over the other depending on political and economic factors, without attaching any importance to what a systematically integrated international law has to say in this regard, there will be continuing uncertainty. 64. This is also a crucial reason, in the view of the Independent Expert, for establishing a multilateral legal framework on sovereign debt restructuring processes that would authoritatively identify and interpret the rules. This framework would also contribute to reducing legal uncertainties in this field. 65. In the present report, the Independent Expert aims to contribute to the ongoing discussions by providing nuanced views on how the principles of legitimacy, sustainability (both recently identified by the Ad Hoc Committee on Sovereign Debt Restructuring Processes) and human rights law can influence the contemporary understanding of the principle of pacta sunt servanda in the context of debt crises. __________________ 42 18/18 See A/CN.4/L.702. 15-12541