capita, as a proxy for the resources available to the country. While this may be questioned, as such a measure of capacity fails to take to take into account factors other than GDP per capita that influence such a capacity, this simplification may not make a significant difference in fact. Cingranelli and Richards found from their empirical analysis that using other indicators of the ability to fulfil economic and social rights, beyond GDP per capita, such as foreign direct investment, portfolio investment, official development assistance, or foreign debt (the latter obviously affecting negatively the ability to fulfil economic and social rights), does not result in a change of ranking between countries. Indeed, econometric studies have concluded that GDP per capita may be taken to be an adequate proxy for the various factors that could be anticipated to affect the ability of the country to move towards the fulfilment of economic and social rights.210 There is at least no doubt that GDP per capita is a more appropriate measure of capacity to fulfil economic, social and cultural rights than public revenue, since the latter depends on policy choices (concerning in particular the rates of taxation) that cannot be relied upon by governments to justify a weaker performance in the fulfilment of economic and social rights. But as the authors themselves acknowledge,211 just like public revenue depends on budgetary choices made by States (and thus contestable), a low GDP per capita could be the result of poor macroeconomic policy choices by governments, or of the mismanagement by a government of the country's economy. Indeed, some cases of mismanagement could be such that they could amount to a violation of the obligations imposed on the State by the Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Covenant, where the failure to take appropriate policy measures impedes the realization of economic and social rights. The model is incomplete, also in that it does not allow to distinguish between the different reasons why a country scores poorly on the proposed measure of economic and social rights fulfilment -- either because of a relatively poor ratio between its achievements on certain outcome indicators and the resources it could mobilize to improve such indicators further, or compared to what, historically, countries at a similar level of development could achieve. But this would seem to matter. For instance, even with an identical GDP per capita, the ability of countries to perform well on socio-economic indicators related to health or child malnutrition (as measured by stunting rates) may differ widely in the presence of epidemics or where climatic conditions affect the quality of harvests ; access to water and sanitation may be more difficult to achieve in countries with a population dispersed over a large territory, than in countries where the population is concentrated in certain areas ; and certain social or cultural norms, such as those that reduce the mobility of women or their decision-making power within the household,212 may be difficult to transform in the short run. In assessing whether a country is setting its priorities adequately, such constraints cannot be ignored. Indeed, that is what makes the use of indicators in development studies different from their use to promote human rights accountability: while there are many reasons why socio-economic indicators are poor in certain countries -- including natural calamities, lack of resources, or constraints imposed by the international environment --, the allegation that human rights violations have occurred, potentially leading to a finding of responsibility, presupposes that the State is in a position to improve such outcomes, in other terms, that the deprivations are the result of a lack of political will. The 1997 210 Cingranelli and Richards, "Measuring Government Effort to Respect Economic and Social Human Rights: A Peer Benchmark", cited above note 207, at 225-6 (referring to David Richards, Ronald D. Gelleny, and David H. Sacko, "Money with a Mean Streak? Foreign Economic Penetration and Government Respect for Human Rights in Developing Countries", International Studies Quarterly, vol. 45(2) (2001): 219-239). 211 Fukuda-Parr, et al., Measuring the Progressive Realization of Human Rights Obligations: An Index of Economic and Social Rights Fulfilment, cited above note 203, at 13 ; and Fukuda-Parr, et al., Fulfilling Social and Economic Rights, cited above note 208, at 54 (noting that "per capita GDP at any given time is not a fully exogenous measure of resource availability, since a low per capita GDP can result from poor macroeconomic policy choices by a state", yet adding that "SERF Index findings are virtually the same" under an approach that, to overcome this endogeneity problem, would rely on "a country's predicted rather than actual per capita GDP"). 212 It has been shown that women's empowerment can significantly affect the educational, nutritional and health outcomes for children: see Lisa C. Smith and Lawrence Haddad, Explaining child malnutrition in developing countries: A cross-country analysis. Research Report 111 (Washington, D.C.: International Food Policy Research Institute, 2000); Mark M. Pitt, Shahidur Khandker, Omar H. Chowdhury, and Daniel L. Millimet, "Credit programs for the poor and the health status of children in rural Bangladesh", International Economic Review, vol. 44(1) (2003): 87–118. 45