law, which is the essential precondition for achieving the SDGs. These are critical tools to enhance resources available for human rights compliance. While attention to the issue of mobilisation of resources has been driven mainly by those human rights bodies whose mandates include economic, social and cultural rights, the issue of resource mobilisation is at the core of the realisation of all human rights (civil, political, economic, social and cultural). As such, the present publication would be a useful tool for all human rights mechanisms and essential for those mandated with an explicit request to consider the SDGs in their work. The objective of the report is threefold: • to detail the constituent elements of states’ obligation to mobilise resources for the realisation of human rights, with a view to strengthening the application of the obligation, and identifying aspects of the obligation that human rights mechanisms might usefully clarify in the future; • to inform the work of legal practitioners and civil society organisations (CSOs) charged with monitoring, counselling or litigating functions in the area of resource mobilisation; and • to provide a useful resource to appraise the renewed international development agenda defined by the SDGs. Implementing the 2030 Agenda will require the greatest attention to the human rights obligation to mobilise resources. This is particularly the case for SDG 1, on poverty eradication; SDG 16, on promoting peace and access to justice, particularly promoting the rule of law at the national and international levels, thus combating illicit financial flows; and SDG 17, on revitalising the global partnership for sustainable development. In discussions concerning resource mobilisation in the context of the SDGs, a human rights-based approach can usefully provide not only a legal grounding and articulation of policies with a specific focus on the poorest and most vulnerable, but also arguments that are politically and ideologically neutral, which can be of robust value in discussions about economic policy. The obligation to mobilise resources: legal basis and guiding principles The first chapter of this report examines the legal basis, related obligations and guiding principles of the obligation to mobilise resources as they have been interpreted by treaty bodies and special procedures. While many aspects of the obligation to mobilise resources have been clearly established, other aspects remain underexplored and ill-defined. In fact, the report identifies a number of areas in which the work of academic writers and practitioners provides a much more progressive, coherent and comprehensive picture of the obligation to mobilise resources that could assist human rights monitoring bodies to move forward. Special procedures and treaty bodies have interpreted the obligation to mobilise resources alongside the main features and core principles of human rights theory. First, they have based the obligation to mobilise resources on states’ obligations to take steps for the realisation of human rights; obligation 10 The Obligation to Mobilise Resources: Bridging Human Rights, Sustainable Development Goals, and Economic and Fiscal Policies   December 2017