A/HRC/29/31 30. Studies have demonstrated the negative effect of income inequality upon the right to education.53 A 2014 study published by OECD showed that “increased income disparities depress skills development among individuals with poorer parental education background, both in terms of the quantity of education attained (e.g. years of schooling), and in terms of its quality (i.e. skill proficiency)” and that “higher inequality lowers the opportunities of education (and social mobility) of disadvantaged individuals in the society, an effect that dominates the potentially positive impacts through incentives”.54 Another study showed that the youngest children in Ecuador, irrespective of wealth quintile or education of their parents, performed broadly as well as their comparators, but that, as they got older, only those children in the top half of the wealth distribution and with highly educated parents maintained their performance relative to their comparators. 55 31. Economic inequalities also have an impact on the realization of the right to water. In a 2012 report, the Secretary-General cited an analysis of data from 35 countries in subSaharan Africa that found that access to improved sources of water varied from 94 per cent among the richest 20 per cent in urban areas to 34 per cent among the poorest 20 per cent in rural areas (see A/67/394, para. 29). In another study, it was found that the “rate of progress in access to water and sanitation is very uneven among wealth quintiles in many countries, with the poorest two quintiles frequently experiencing lack of improvement while other quintiles experience significant advances”.56 32. It is clear therefore that the most impoverished suffer the most extreme effects of inequality for a variety of reasons. In part, this is because their influence and capacity to exercise rights is diminished relatively, even if not absolutely, as others become wealthier and gain greater political and economic power, and in part because they are more vulnerable to the harms associated with social unrest, crime and violence. III. International community’s response to inequality 33. In 1999, the authors of a major study concluded that while global inequality was a major problem, it had been largely neglected by traditional investigations into world order. They argued that processes of globalization were exacerbating inequalities both within and among States and eroding the capacity of traditional institutions to manage the resulting threats.57 But it took well over another decade for the challenge of inequalities to appear high on the list of the international community’s priority concerns. In the outcome document of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, entitled “The future we want”, world leaders reaffirmed the need to achieve sustainable development by reducing inequalities. They considered that it was essential to generate decent jobs and incomes that decreased disparities in standards of living (see General Assembly resolution 66/288, annex, paras. 4 and 30). 53 54 55 56 57 12 See, for example, Melamed and Samman, “Equity”, p. 6. See Cingano, “Trends” (footnote 6 above), paras. 2 and 46. See World Bank, World Development Report 2006, p. 35. See Inga T. Winkler, Margaret L. Satterthwaite and Catarina de Albuquerque, “Measuring what we treasure and treasuring what we measure: post-2015 monitoring for the promotion of equality in the water, sanitation, and hygiene sector”, Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper Series, Working Paper No. 14-48 (New York University School of Law, 2014), p. 39. Available from http://ssrn.com/abstract=2498064. Andrew Hurrell and Ngaire Woods, eds., Inequality, Globalization, and World Politics (Oxford University Press, 1999).