Review of Nolan A., O’Connell R., Harvey C. (eds.), Human Rights and Public Finance: Budgets and the Promotion of Economic and Social Rights (Oxford and Portland, Hart Publishing, 2013) (original) (raw)

Socio-Economic Rights & Budget Analysis: Some Notes on Available Resources, ‘Progressivity’ and Non-Retrogression

Human Rights in Ireland, 2014

Structural adjustment and austerity have been implemented in recent years in Ireland in keeping with right-wing thinking, coming in the form of a 2:1 ratio of cuts in services to tax increases (themselves often regressive in nature). Levels of poverty and inequality have deepened. Socio-economic protections have been resolutely subordinated by the state’s loyalty to financial institutions and the imperatives of transnational capital. There has been no departure from the race to the bottom for foreign investment in which Ireland is engaged, with the diversion of resources to corporate tax reduction measures continuing in various guises. In the face of such market hegemony, what can international human rights discourse offer when it comes to social justice advocacy and budget analysis?

Budget Analysis as a Tool to Monitor Economic and Social Rights

Journal of Human Rights Practice

This policy and practice note investigates budget analysis as a potential method for human rights practitioners to adopt and implement in their ongoing work. It uses expert interviews, detailed reviews of prior budget analyses, and academic literature to identify the strengths and weaknesses of budget analysis as a method. Budget analysis is a powerful tool for human rights activists. Budgets represent a key piece of evidence for practitioners to hold governments accountable to their obligations to increasingly and effectively generate, allocate, and expend resources for economic and social rights-related programmes. However, there are important issues to consider before conducting a budget analysis, including available expertise and institutional interest in investment, the ability to monitor state allocation over time, and how to work closely with governments. There are also clear limitations to budget analysis as a method, including lack of credible and accessible data, its effectiveness as a monitoring mechanism, and how it can further entrench the assumption that economic and social rights are not on an equal footing with civil and political rights. Despite these issues and limitations, budget analysis should be considered an important, and viable, method for practitioners to consider using in their advocacy efforts.

Budget Analysis as a Tool to Monitor Economic and Social Rights: Where the Rubber of International Commitment Meets the Road of Government Policy

Journal of Human Rights Practice, 2017

This policy and practice note investigates budget analysis as a potential method for human rights practitioners to adopt and implement in their ongoing work. It uses expert interviews, detailed reviews of prior budget analyses, and academic literature to identify the strengths and weaknesses of budget analysis as a method. Budget analysis is a powerful tool for human rights activists. Budgets represent a key piece of evidence for practitioners to hold governments accountable to their obligations to increasingly and effectively generate, allocate, and expend resources for economic and social rights-related programmes. However, there are important issues to consider before conducting a budget analysis, including available expertise and institutional interest in investment, the ability to monitor state allocation over time, and how to work closely with governments. There are also clear limitations to budget analysis as a method, including lack of credible and accessible data, its effectiveness as a monitoring mechanism, and how it can further entrench the assumption that economic and social rights are not on an equal footing with civil and political rights. Despite these issues and limitations, budget analysis should be considered an important, and viable, method for practitioners to consider using in their advocacy efforts.

The Fiscal Objection to Social Welfare Rights – A Closer Look

Rights, Balancing and Proportionality, 2013

"Though it has been repeatedly asserted that theoretical arguments against recognition of social and economic (SE) rights have been effectively answered, they tend to resurface in implicit fashion in legal doctrine. The purpose of this paper is to trace one such argument – that SE rights cost money. In a series of cases, governments argued that accepting the petitioner’s claim would require the government to revisit the public fisc and to alter public priorities. The constitutional and philosophical basis for this objection is that, since the courts are not accountable to the public, they should refrain from delving into such matters. Quite often, however, courts reacted to this argument with a sense of scorn, declaring that “rights cost money”. It is noted, however, that these cases involve civil and political (CP) rights, such as equality, bodily integrity and property. Where social and economic rights are involved, the court is much more cautious. There are grey area cases, as well. For example, the court is less than consistent in its attitude towards the fiscal argument against the application of a child, or a group of children’s, right to education. A doctrinal and normative analysis of the court’s approach to the fiscal argument against social and economic rights, its development and appreciation, is at the center of this paper. "

Contesting Austerity: Genealogies of Human Rights Discourse

MPIL Research Paper Series, 2020

The dominant understanding of the role of human rights in the context of austerity induced by sovereign debt crises has shifted markedly over time. It reflects, and may have influenced, the genealogies of human rights law in the postwar era. Four different paradigms emerge. During the 1970s, the decade preceding the debt crisis of the 1980s, the idea of austerity as a response to debt crises was contested by the basic (human) needs approach and by the proposal of a New International Economic Order. Both strands of thought showed some affinity with human rights law, although not without ambiguity, understanding self-determination as a structural requirement for ESC rights enjoyment. Counterintuitively, though, the debt crisis beginning in the 1980s silenced, rather than provoked, any form of human rights-based critique. The IMF managed to shift the focus of the debate from human needs to human capital, in line with the emerging Washington Consensus. When the Iron Curtain fell, sovereign debt restructuring became more generous, but debtor states had to pay with ever more intrusive forms of austerity, including structural conditions such as respect for civil and political rights. This “governance paradigm” of human rights was countered by a transformative paradigm of human rights in which civil society articulated its critique of austerity. The IFIs avoided the issue of human rights, but reacted by adding “social” components to austerity that aligned with their focus on efficiency and growth and further entrenched sufficiency. The impact of austerity on the European periphery led to lots of human rights litigation, but a number of structural obstacles prevented its success. Instead, the crisis aftermath saw enormous progress in the political recognition of human rights as a relevant standard for austerity. This has given rise to a new political paradigm of human rights. While this genealogy shows the contingency of human rights discourse in relation to austerity, it reveals their potential for challenging economic expertise and empowering progressive views, provided human rights are used to politicize, not to depoliticize, distributive questions. The limits of human rights discourse are the limits of our imagination.

Economics for Human Rights

CEFAGE-UE Working Papers, 2011

The Subprime Crash that started capitalism's latest crisis was mainly a proxy for an inexistent housing policy which would benefit many impoverished middle class families. Housing being clearly recognized as a human right, the behaviour of markets and its critical consequences could lead us to say that the Subprime Crash is above all the dramatic and global expression of the incapacity of markets to meet human rights. More than that, it could also be the demonstration of the counterproductive effects of the neglect of human rights by the market and by economics itself, the crisis being a result of this neglect. Human rights are assuredly one of the most influential and fruitful concepts of modern times in the human quest for dignity. Economics has developed a considerable amount of tools especially designed to overcome, or at least mitigate, scarcity, probably the most tormenting spectre that haunts the deprived. Human rights and economics, thus, have contributed immensely to free human kind, human rights from fear and economics from want. Despite this convergence it seems that economics regards human rights as competing rather than as completing. I have argued that mainstream economics discourse is often contradictory with promoting human rights. What are the changes economics must undergo in order to promote human rights? These changes will be examined in four aspects concerning specific economic, social and cultural human rights. First, on the right to work, second on the right to social security, third on cultural freedom, and finally on substantive democracy.

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Reflections on the Socio-Economic Rights Debate

B. G. Flóvenz, D. Þ. Björgvinsson, G. D. Guðmundsdóttir and O. M. Arnardóttir, eds., Ragnarsbók [Festschrift for Ragnar Aðalsteinsson] (Reykjavík, Mannréttinda-skrifstofa Íslands and Hið íslenska bókmenntafélag, 2009), pp. 453-484 , 2009