A/HRC/31/60 widening the income and wealth gap and making highly inefficient use of financial resources.105 4. Other measures 68. Apart from more direct actions against inequality, States should have a focus on measures with strong medium- and long-term effects. Investment in education and the development of skills should be of highest priority, as it has robust and significant positive impacts on equality of opportunity, social mobility and long-term growth.100 Furthermore, ensuring equal, affordable access to the courts and legal advice and representation, the establishment of low-cost dispute settlement mechanisms, a robust legislation on political parties financing and promoting a pluralistic mass media system, and strong consumer protection mechanisms should be on the agenda. 69. Finally, States and the international community should explore further avenues for reforming parts of their legal systems that appear to have a tendency towards unduly favouring capital owners and the wealthy.106 Making adjustments to existing structures might be an efficient way for achieving necessary change without facing a similar degree of resistance than introducing, for example, new taxes. 5. Crisis response 70. It cannot be stressed too often that any response to financial crises, in particular sovereign debt crises, must fully comply with human rights law. In her report, the former Independent Expert on human rights and extreme poverty, Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona, has already provided very detailed recommendations for such human rights compliant crises responses. 107 This report therefore focuses on highlighting only very few important aspects of relevance in the context of inequalities and financial crises. Fiscal stability and GDP may not be the sole targets of adjustment and may not overrule, suspend or dilute existing human rights obligations and responsibilities. Preserving economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to work social security, health, housing and education must be ensured.108 Socioeconomic inequalities must be fully taken into account when implementing crises response measures. While certain spending cuts may be temporarily necessary, the States concerned must always respect the boundaries set by the duty of non-retrogression. They must ensure, to the extent possible, that social spending is affected last and the least. Rather, the States concerned should strongly focus on finding and creating progressive ways of increasing revenues. The protection of vulnerable groups must have the highest priority, calling, for example, for exemptions from cuts or even the implementation of new social protection programmes. The recent experiences of Iceland evidence that this approach is realistic and can yield fruitful results.109 105 106 107 108 109 See A. Nieto Ramos, El efecto de las pensiones sobre la desiguadad de ingresos en Colombia (Bogotá, Universidad de los Andes, 2014). See also “Política fiscal y derechos humanos en las Américas” (footnote 16), p. 21. See S-L Hsu, “The rise and rise of the one per cent: considering legal causes of wealth inequality”, Emory Law Journal Online, vol. 64, pp. 2043-2072 (2015). See A/HRC/17/34. See the end-of-mission statement of the Independent Expert of his mission to Greece, December 8 2015, available from www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx? NewsID=16852&LangID=E. See the report of the Independent Expert on his mission to Iceland (A/HRC/28/59/Add.1). 21