A/HRC/17/37 D. Session III: Debt, debt relief and economic reform 77. This session began with three panel presentations, addressing: the issues of debt relief, conditionality and debt sustainability; the integration of human rights into poverty reduction strategies; and coherence between debt and trade policies and related obligations of States. In the first presentation, the speaker highlighted the fact that heavy debt burdens undermined the rights of States to self determination as elaborated in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights as these entailed a ceding of sovereignty to international financial institutions. 78. In the second presentation, the speaker lamented the absence of a key human rights element – empowerment of the poor – in poverty reduction strategies. Empowerment in relation to poverty required that steps be taken both immediately and over the long term towards changing systems and structures so that the poor were assured of access to and control over resources, which included economic assets as well as opportunities for education, health and other requisites for human development and well-being. The speaker stressed that from a human rights perspective, the principles of accountability, transparency and participation should be key pillars of poverty reduction strategies. 79. The third presentation reflected the concern that human rights continued to play a secondary role in matters related to trade and economic policy, and the speaker raised the question of how possible it was to achieve coherence, given the normative and institutional fragmentation in international law. The speaker mentioned three potential points of convergence between human rights and economic policy: revisiting trade-offs in economic policy to ensure that they respected human rights; regulating markets to protect human rights; and addressing redistribution to ensure equity and prevent impoverishment. 80. In the discussions that followed, participants stated that the guidelines should address more clearly the issue of illegitimacy or odiousness of debt, provide concrete indicators for evaluating economic policies and debt management against human rights criteria, and ensure that debt arrangements do not have negative effects on the implementation of human rights. E. Session IV: Loan negotiation, contraction, management and use – the relevance of human rights principles 81. In this session the focus was on the role of human rights impact assessments and the role of parliaments and civil society in ensuring transparency and accountability in loan contraction, use of loan funds and debt management. 82. A panellist described a human rights impact assessment as “a systematic process that aims to measure the impact of an activity or project on human rights”. Recalling resolution 11/5 of the Human Rights Council which called upon debtors and creditors, particularly international financial institutions, to consider preparing human rights impact assessments for development projects, Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers and loan agreements, the speaker noted that the value of a human rights impact assessment lay in the fact that it was based on international standards that were legally binding either as treaty commitments or as customary international law. 83. Concerning the role of parliaments, it was observed that parliaments often did not provide checks and balances or effective oversight of loan negotiations and debt management. It was noted that while in most countries there were usually parliamentary committees with responsibility to scrutinize government expenditure, such committees often had limited or no role in ensuring transparency and accountability in loan agreements, 15