States' Human Rights Obligations to Finance Public Services: A Focus on Education and Health

This legal brief highlights States' legal obligations under international and African human rights law to finance public education and healthcare as part of their duties to fulfil economic, social and cultural rights. It analyses the principles of maximum available resources, progressive realisation and non-retrogression, emphasising that austerity, debt burdens and regressive tax systems cannot justify underinvestment in public services. The brief also stresses that both domestic resource mobilisation and international cooperation are necessary, and presents practical pathways, such as progressive taxation, ending harmful tax incentives and reforming the international financial architecture to ensure adequate, equitable and rights-based financing for public services.

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Prioritising People in Fiscal Policy: Challenging Austerity, Reclaiming Public Services and Upholding Human Rights in Kenya

This report examines the social and human rights impacts of austerity and debt-driven fiscal policies in Kenya, with a particular focus on the health and education sectors. It demonstrates how loan conditionalities and budget cuts have undermined Kenya’s constitutional and human rights obligation to finance public services, thereby weakening their public provision, limiting access to them, fostering their privatisation and shifting costs onto households. The analysis underscores the urgent need for fiscal reforms that prioritise people over debt repayment and austerity by strengthening domestic resource mobilisation through progressive tax systems and adopting a rights-based debt management approach. In response, the report proposes alternatives rooted in tax and debt justice, aimed at expanding fiscal space and strengthening the state’s capacity to finance public services in a manner that upholds human rights, equity and social justice for all.

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Prioritising People in Fiscal Policy: Challenging Austerity, Reclaiming Public Services and Upholding Human Rights in Ghana

This report examines the social and human rights impacts of austerity and debt-driven fiscal policies in Ghana, with a particular focus on the health and education sectors. It demonstrates how loan conditionalities and budget cuts have undermined Ghana’s human rights obligation to finance public services, thereby weakening their public provision, limiting access to them, fostering their privatisation and shifting costs onto households. The analysis underscores the urgent need for fiscal reforms that prioritise people over debt repayment and austerity by strengthening domestic resource mobilisation through progressive tax systems and adopting a rights-based debt management approach. In response, the report proposes alternatives rooted in tax and debt justice, aimed at expanding fiscal space and strengthening the state’s capacity to finance public services in a manner that upholds human rights, equity and social justice for all.

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