COVID-19 Recovering Rights: Topic Seven | Income Support to Protect Rights
Main Takeaways Urgent measures are necessary to provide sufficient income to millions of people who cannot work due to pandemicrelated restrictions, so that they can still meet their basic needs. Many of these workers lack social and labor protections. Basic income schemes vary in type, design and implementation. Those...
Read MoreEgypt Social Project Indicators
To offer a multidimensional view of socioeconomic well being, Egypt’s Social Progress Indicators (ESPI) measure six topics: health; education; labour; urbanization; food, water, and agricultural land; and economic policy as a determinant of social progress. By incorporating gender analysis across these six topics, ESPI also highlights the gender gaps...
Read MoreAssessing Austerity: Monitoring the human rights impacts of fiscal consolidation
In the decade since the 2008 global economic crisis, fiscal austerity has become the new normal. In the name of fiscal discipline, governments in more than two-thirds of countries throughout the world have enacted drastic austerity measures like severe public expenditure cuts, regressive tax changes, and labor market and...
Read MoreHuman Rights in Times of Austerity (Brazil)
One year into Brazil’s 20-year constitutional cap on public spending, the Center for Social and Economic Rights, the Instituto de Estudos Socioeconômicos (INESC) and Oxfam Brazil have presented new empirical findings to the Brazilian Congress that illustrate austerity’s already severe impact on basic social and economic rights in the...
Read MoreDefending Dignity: A Manual for National Human Rights Institutions on Monitoring Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
The Asia Pacific Forum of National Human Rights Institutions (APF) and the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR) are pleased to present Defending Dignity: A Manual for National Human Rights Institutions on Monitoring Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Despite significant economic growth in recent decades, poverty levels in...
Read MoreRedistributing Unpaid Care Work – Why Tax Matters for Women’s Rights
Globally, women perform the great majority of unpaid care work. This unjust distribution of labour has profound impacts on women’s human rights and is both a product and a driver of gender inequality. Despite the obligations of the State to ensure economic policies are non-discriminatory and prioritize human rights,...
Read MoreFrom Disparity to Dignity: tackling economic inequality through the Sustainable Development Goals
The briefing explores a critical set of redistributive policies – in the areas of social protection, health, education and taxation – that are key to tackling economic inequality from a human rights perspective. It also explains the equally crucial ‘pre-distributive’ policies – actions governments should take to ensure the...
Read MoreOPERA in Practice: strengthening implementation of strategic litigation in South Africa
Opera in Practice: Strengthening Implementation of Strategic Litigation in South Africa is a case study reflecting the Center for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Legal Resources Center’s collaborative efforts to monitor, and hold the government accountable for, the implementation of court orders in the Madzodzo v Department...
Read MoreThe OPERA Framework (Assessing compliance with the obligation to fulfill economic, social and cultural rights)
To increase accountability for failures to fulfill economic, social and cultural rights (ESC rights), it is necessary to uncover the shortcomings in a state’s social and economic policies that lead to large scale deprivations. This serves to expose as a preventable injustice what may otherwise be seen as an...
Read MoreAssessing Fiscal Policies from a Human Rights Perspective: Methodological case study on the use of available resources to realize economic, social and cultural rights in Guatemala
In 2009 the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR) and the Instituto Centroamericano de Estudios Fiscales (ICEFI) produced a report titled Rights or Privileges? Fiscal commitment to the rights to health, education and food in Guatemala. A collaboration between an international human rights organization and a Central American...
Read MoreThe Gendered Costs of Austerity: assessing the IMF’s role in budget cuts which threaten women’s rights
This briefing paper provides a brief assessment of the changing role of the International Monetary Fund (IMF or the Fund) with regards to one key fiscal consolidation measure: contractions in public expenditure. The briefing explores the Fund’s positive and negative influence over public expenditure decisions, and further explains how...
Read MoreSeeking Accountability for Women’s Rights through the Sustainable Development Goals
While the SDGs are a significant improvement over the Millennium Development Goals, including in their commitments to gender equality and women’s rights, there is no major advance when it comes to accountability: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development provides only for a weak and voluntary process of “follow-up and...
Read MorePolítica Fiscal para la Igualdad y los Derechos: Mapeo de debates, iniciativas y actores de la Región Andina
La política fiscal tiene un rol central en la superación de las desigualdades socio-económicas y el cumplimiento de los derechos humanos. Su potencial rol redistributivo convierte a esta política en una herramienta única para lograr un modelo de desarrollo que tenga como ejes centrales la igualdad, los derechos humanos...
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