A/HRC/29/31 Continuous Benefit Programme and the Family Allowance, jointly contributed to a significant fall in Gini inequality between 1995 and 2004. 62 The Human Rights Council should thus insist on explicit recognition by key actors that there is a human right to social protection. At present, the right to social security and the right to an adequate standard of living, proclaimed so proudly in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and subsequently often reaffirmed in binding treaty obligations, are ignored or even challenged by the policies advocated by many of the key actors involved in addressing the plight of the hundreds of millions of persons living in extreme poverty. Many leading international organizations and financial institutions still avoid recognizing those rights in their policies and programmes (see A/69/297, para. 51). E. Implementing fiscal policies to reduce inequality 52. States should reduce inequality by adopting taxation policies that are instrumental to achieving that aim. While preparations for the Third International Conference on Financing for Development Conference, to be held in 2015, and the post-2015 development agenda have brought fiscal policies to prominence in international development debates, the basic principle that tax and development policies go together was already recognized over half a century ago in the Declaration on Social Progress and Development, in which the General Assembly called for the achievement of equitable distribution of national income, utilizing, inter alia, the fiscal system and government spending as an instrument for the equitable distribution and redistribution of income in order to promote social progress (art. 16 (c)). 53. There is greater awareness of this principle today, as reflected, for example, in the Secretary-General’s observation that progressive tax policies can play an important role in addressing inequality and poverty and in his exhortation that Governments consider a combination of progressive income taxes and highly redistributive transfers to decrease income inequality and its impact on social development (see A/67/394, para. 56). It cannot be said, however, that current policies in the human rights area have come anywhere near recognizing the fact that tax policy is, in many respects, human rights policy. The regressive or progressive nature of a State’s tax structure, and the groups and purposes for which it gives exemptions or deductions, shapes the allocation of income and assets across the population, and thereby affects levels of inequality and human rights enjoyment.63 Appropriate redistributive measures through taxation and other fiscal policies must be seen as an integral part of a commitment to ensuring full respect for human rights across the entire society. Even IMF now acknowledges that “extreme caution about redistribution — and thus inaction — is unlikely to be appropriate in many cases”. It also acknowledges that “on average, across countries and over time, the things that governments have typically done to redistribute do not seem to have led to bad growth outcomes, unless they were extreme” and that “the resulting narrowing of inequality helped support faster and more durable growth, apart from ethical, political, or broader social considerations”.64 62 63 64 Fabio Veras Soares and others, “Cash transfer programmes in Brazil: impacts on inequality and poverty”, International Poverty Centre Working Paper No. 21 (UNDP, 2006). International financial institutions should consider human rights obligations and impact when setting conditions and policies in the area of fiscal policy and, in particular, promote progressive rather than regressive taxation and ensure that all States are granted space to conduct counter-cyclical fiscal policies. See the 2014 report of the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights to the Human Rights Council (A/HRC/26/28 and Corr.1, paras. 38 and 82 (a)). See Jonathan D. Ostry, Andrew Berg and Charalambos G. Tsangarides, “Redistribution, inequality, and growth”, IMF Staff Discussion Note (2014), p. 26. 17