A/HRC/4/10 page 8 15. The Bretton Woods institutions underline the opportunities offered by the new tool to both borrowers and creditors to better manage foreign debt. The institutions point out that the new system provides borrowing countries with the information needed to maintain debt at a sustainable level, to develop and strengthen debt management capacity and to reduce vulnerability to exogenous shocks. Creditors and donors, for their part, are given clear signals to consider additional grants or highly concessional loans if the tool shows a risk of debt distress.6 16. The new framework is undoubtedly a substantial improvement compared to the previous concept, but can still be criticized for various reasons: first, as several civil society groups rightly point out, the approach relies heavily on subjective World Bank analytical tools and projections that have often been overoptimistic in the past.7 More importantly, the new framework still regards the ability to service debt as the core objective and main criteria for sustainability. As pointed out in his earlier reports, the independent expert rather advocates a definition of sustainability that also considers the country’s ability to achieve its poverty reduction goals and human rights obligations. In this context, the level of debt payments a country can afford while still meeting MDGs should clearly be considered in the analysis. 17. In addition and complementary to the analysis provided by the World Bank/IMF debt sustainability framework, a foreign debt peer review mechanism could be set up in order to provide alternative views on a country’s debt situation. This mechanism could provide a global view on debt available to all stakeholders and act as a forum for policy dialogue and crisis resolution. The participation of local human rights institutions could also contribute valuable inputs on the impact of external debt on human rights, and on financial requirements and conditions necessary to ensure that minimum human rights standards are protected in the country. This participatory approach would improve transparency and accountability of the external financing policy of concerned countries and creditors, and would thus be more coherent with core human rights principles. The creation of this mechanism would in most cases require capacity-building measures in order to be operational, in particular with regards to the capacity of the public sector and civil society to conduct own assessments on debt sustainability (see E/CN.4/2006/46). D. Impact of debt relief operations on poverty and human rights 18. The following paragraphs outline some general remarks on the overall impacts of debt relief on the achievement of human rights while considering in particular MDG as a well defined and measurable subset of economic, social and cultural rights. 19. The projected full benefit of HIPC and MDRI, that is to say, the total amount of debt that will ultimately be cancelled, will be around US$ 100 billion. In the absence of these initiatives, this significant amount of resources would have been paid back to creditors over a period of about 40 years, which means that the annual savings on debt service by participating countries can be estimated at about US$ 2.25 billion on average over the same period. However, this magnitude of resources does not automatically and directly translate into poverty reduction or human rights related expenditure. Rather, debt relief operations do enhance the concerned governments’ “fiscal space” which, in turn, adequate policy decisions provided, can be used - or partly used - for increased public spending in areas linked to human rights obligations.