A/HRC/31/60 resources that a State can reasonably generate through adequate, appropriate and fair taxation of individuals and corporations or through the levying of tariffs. 14. In addition, it should be noted that article 2 (1) of the Covenant explicitly refers to those resources that can be made available through international assistance and cooperation, in particular economic and technical assistance. It also extends to an obligation to create an international enabling environment conducive to the universal fulfilment of human rights. This international terrain includes bilateral and multilateral trade, investment, taxation, finance, environmental protection and development cooperation. In other words, human rights law requires a certain degree of redistribution of resources and support based on available capacities within and among nations. This encompasses an organization of the local and global economies that prevents and eradicates extreme poverty. 17 Violations of this principle are pervasive: With 795 million people worldwide being undernourished, at least one out of nine persons on Earth is currently excluded from enjoying essential minimum levels of the right to food.18 The United Nations Human Settlements Programme has estimated that close to one billion people currently do not have adequate housing but instead often live in informal settlements in developing countries. 19 Inequalities within and among nations are an important contributing factor to these unsettling outcomes. Inequality is both a cause and a symptom of massive violations of economic, social and cultural rights. 15. Economic inequality also matters from a human rights perspective when it translates into other types of inequalities. The enjoyment of human rights does not depend only on access to goods and services reflecting the minimum needed for survival; an individual’s access to resources relative to others is also of crucial importance. Data suggests that high levels of relative inequality may have substantial negative effects on the practice of human rights. It has been observed that low-income households in a very unequal society may do worse than households with the identical income in a more equal society. 20 This pattern is obvious in numerous areas, including legal representation, education, political influence, health, housing and social discrimination that can escalate into conflict. 16. To illustrate, a poor domestic worker may not be able to sue his or her employer to challenge an unfair unilaterally imposed pay cut, both because labour rights may not be institutionalized in the State and because legal representation is not affordable. Continuing to work in unfair conditions or quitting the job may be the only viable options, which is a choice that can beget oppression, particularly when market conditions of high unemployment make replacing employees rather easy. 17. Likewise, people in poverty may not be able to afford higher education because of prohibitively high tuition fees, the need to work for immediate income and the inability to 17 18 19 20 6 See principle 29 of the Maastricht Principles on Extraterritorial Obligations of States in the Area of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. See Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), The State of Food Insecurity in the World, Meeting the 2015 international hunger targets: taking stock of uneven progress (Rome, 2015), p. 8. FAO employs a narrow definition of undernourishment, which has faced heavy criticism for masking the magnitude of the hunger problem, see F.M. Lappé et al., “How we count hunger matters”, Ethics and International Affairs, vol. 27 No. 3 (2013), pp. 251-259. See http://mirror.unhabitat.org/content.asp?cid=11848&catid=746&typeid=24&subMenuId=0. See R. Balakrishnan, J. Heintz and D. Elson, “What does inequality have to do with human rights?”, Political Economy Research Institute, Working Paper Series No. 392 (2015). See also R. Wilkinson and K. Pickett, The Spirit Level: Why More Equality Societies Almost Always Do Better (New York, Bloomsbury Press, 2009).