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Intro -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- Table of Abbreviations -- Acknowledgements -- 1. Introduction -- 2. The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: Theory and Problems -- A. Issues of Legal Quality -- B. Layers of Obligation in the ICESCR -- i. Aspects of Immediate Obligation -- ii. Minimum Core Content/Minimum Threshold -- iii. Obligations to Respect/Protect/Fulfil -- C. Residual Problems -- D. Conclusion -- 3. Article 2(1) ICESCR: Economic Parameters of State Obligations -- A. 'to take steps ... by all appropriate means, including particularly the adoption of legislative measures' -- B. 'to the maximum of its available resources' -- C. 'to achieve progressively the full realization of the rights' -- D. Towards a More Comprehensive Paradigm of State Obligations -- E. Conclusion -- 4. CESCR Practice- An Economic Deficit? -- A. Defining the Parameters of Available Resources -- i. Hong Kong's Financial Reserves -- ii. The Covenant and Congo's Catastrophe -- B. Globalisation and Developing Countries -- i. Trade Liberalisation: Mexico and NAFTA -- ii. Argentina: Structural Reform and Financial Crisis -- C. Corruption -- D. The Minimum Wage -- E. Future Directions for the Covenant in Advanced Economies -- i. European Unemployment -- ii. Welfare Reform -- F. Conclusion -- 5. Contextualising the Covenant: Aspects of the Evolving Global Economic Framework -- A. Trans-National Corporations and the Global Re-Organisation of Production -- B. The Deregulation of Financial Markets -- C. Conclusion -- 6. Future Directions for the Covenant? -- A. Structural Reform -- i. Reform Possibilities Within the Existing Committee Structure -- ii. Enhancing Co-operation with the Specialised Agencies -- iii. An Optional Protocol to the ICESCR -- iv. More Radical Reform Options -- B. Methodological Reform.

AbstractDespite the devastating social consequences of the ongoing financial crisis, human rights law has been virtually invisible in debates on reforming the governance of international finance. While human rights lawyers tend to lack grounding in the basics of finance, financiers tend to be too engrossed in quantitative methodologies to see the value of a more qualitative, human rights focus. This gap could potentially be bridged by using human rights‐based analysis to enrich our understanding of the dynamics of tail risk. A human rights‐based understanding of institutional power dynamics and social aspects of risk could help shed light on the way the inherited social and institutional architecture of different states shapes the dynamics of risk in global financial markets.

The workings of global finance are like that part of the iceberg beneath the waterline – vast, unseen and, for many, unknown. The interaction of global finance with human rights is especially opaque. The globalization of each phenomenon has occurred very largely independently of the other. Even the recent surge in interest in the global economy and human rights has been heavily focused on the real economy and on what (non-banking) corporations do and how they behave. The particular dimension of interactions between finance and human rights has, by and large, been a blank space. In this article we seek to bridge the gap in understanding, perspective, and practice between the two fields by investigating actual and potential linkages in respect of four specific features of global finance – two financial products: bonds and derivatives; and two financial processes: risk management and procyclicality. These have been chosen as an illustrative sample of the complex and diverse ways in which the global financial system interacts with human rights. Although these products and processes played an important role in the recent global financial crisis, and although the interface between global finance and human rights is extensive, they have not so far featured on the human rights agenda or been the subject of detailed human rights critique. As such they provide an overview of the types of human rights issues in the financial sector that have so far been hidden from view. The paper therefore constructs an argument as to why the bridging of the gap is important and provides pointers as to how it can be done.