A/HRC/12/WG.2/TF/2 page 15 V. CONCLUSIONS 57. The task force is aware that its work is set in a new context of a historically unprecedented global financial crisis and enhanced urgency to mitigate global climate change. Both of these issues affect the priorities the task force identified for the implementation of the right to development. 58. The financial crisis has major consequences for the right to development. Each country and groups of people within countries face different consequences of the shocks created by the crisis in the form of capital flight, falling commodity prices for exports, shrinking export markets and rapidly falling remittances, all of which have direct and indirect effects on poor households and the ability of Governments to fulfil their obligations. While high-income countries are implementing counter-cyclical policies and stimulus plans, poor countries do not have the resources or the policy space to adopt similar approaches. States thus face an altogether new challenge today of taking individual and collective action for the right to development at the national and international levels. From the perspective of the right to development, the task force, to meet this challenge, believes that States should: (a) Refrain from imposing policies that impede the right to development; (b) Maintain and increase development assistance and other resource flows; (c) Refrain from trade protectionism; (d) Maintain priority agendas such as climate change and gender equity; (e) Take effective measures to prevent the recurrence of financial crises and to strengthen the effectiveness of global financial and economic governance. 59. Increasingly compelling scientific evidence and a better understanding of economic implications have moved the issue of climate change to the forefront of the international agenda. As the effects of climate change are already being felt globally, in particular by the most vulnerable countries and populations, an integrated international approach to addressing the challenges is crucial. Climate change poses a potentially permanent and serious threat to human development and prosperity, with implications for water and food security, agriculture, human health, biodiversity, migration, global trade and security. The serious implications of climate change for the realization of the right to development must be addressed as the task force continues to examine global partnerships and refine the criteria. A. Global partnerships 1. African Peer Review Mechanism 60. The task force continues to view the African Peer Review Mechanism as an effective mechanism under NEPAD for a voluntary, independent, south-south peer review of the development agenda of African countries and the capacity of the Mechanism to provide implementable criteria for measuring development progress of African countries, which overlap several dimensions of the right to development. In this regard, the current process of revising the Mechanism assessment questionnaire in order to downsize it and make it a more efficient and