especially severe impacts on women who -- in the current division of gender roles that is still dominant in most regions of the world -- have traditionally been assuming the burden of caring for infants, children and the elderly, and have been fetching firewood or water to meet the household needs.37 Fourthly, although the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights itself is silent about such a requirement, the principle of participation is relevant to assessing whether the budgetary choices made by States comply with its prescriptions. Such a right to participation follows from the right to selfdetermination, defined in both the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights as the right of peoples to freely dispose of their natural wealth and resources. This implies that "a State’s population has a right to enjoy a fair share of the financial and social benefits that natural resources can bring. This requires ensuring participation, access to information and high standards of transparency and accountability in decisionmaking about the use of natural resources".38 The Committee has made it clear that the requirement of participation goes beyond the exploitation of natural resources, however. For instance, where retrogressive measures are adopted in the area of social security, it considers it relevant to ask whether such measures were taken with the "genuine participation of affected groups in examining the proposed measures and alternatives",39 and where a State cannot ensure a minimum level of protection against all risks and contingencies of life, it is recommended that it "select a core group of social risks and contingencies", based on "a wide process of consultation".40 The duty of non-retrogression, the priority to be given to the fulfilment of core obligations, the requirements of non-discrimination and of participation: these are important norms, all highly relevant to assessing the budgetary choices of States. They are what might be called the "constitutional background norms" that should guide such choices. But they still are expressed at a high level of generality, and they hardly suffice to provide monitoring bodies with a methodology allowing them, except in relatively extreme cases, to decide whether, in making these choices, States have, or have not, complied with the duty of progressive realization of Covenant rights. There is a duty, for instance, to ensure protection of at least the "minimum essential levels" of the rights of the Covenant, and this "core obligation" is presumed to apply to all States, whatever their level of development. But even such a presumption cannot be absolute: "[i]n order for a State party to be able to attribute its failure to meet at least its minimum core obligations to a lack of available resources it must demonstrate that every effort has been made to use all resources that are at its disposition in an effort to satisfy, as a matter of priority, those minimum obligations".41 Moreover, how these different constitutional background norms relate to one another remains unclear. For instance, may retrogressive measures be adopted for the sake of achieving greater equality? May such measures be adopted to ensure intergenerational equity, for instance where they are justified by the need to reduce the weight of the public debt? Finally, but perhaps most importantly, these background norms betray a bias towards the preservation of the statu quo: perhaps because the doctrine of the Committee has developed in order to provide courts with guidance as to how they could apply the Covenant rights, they favor the protection of the existing entitlements, which courts are better equipped to ensure, above the need to design and implement redistributive policies. In contrast to the preservation of existing levels of rights enjoyment, which the limitation clause of Article 4 of the Covenant or the non-retrogression doctrine are designed to ensure, redistributive policies require that tradeoffs be made between the better-off and the worseoff within society. Here judges feel less comfortable. Indeed, much as it is difficult for courts to impose that a State discharges "positive duties" towards its population where such obligations are 37 See Report of the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Magdalena Sepulveda Carmona, presented at the sixty-eighth session of the General Assembly, A/68/293 (9 August 2013). 38 Report of the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Magdalena Sepulveda Carmona, presented at the 26th session of the Human Rights Council (A/HRC/26/28) (22 May 2014), para. 18. 39 General Comment No. 19 (2007): The right to social security (E/C.12/GC/19), para. 42. 40 Id., para. 59. 41 General Comment No. 3 (1990): The nature of States parties' obligations (E/1991/3), para. 10. 9