A/HRC/43/45 United Nations General Assembly Distr.: General 3 January 2020 Original: English Human Rights Council Forty-third session 24 February–20 March 2020 Agenda item 3 Promotion and protection of all human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to development Private debt and human rights Report of the Independent Expert on the effects of foreign debt and other related international financial obligations of States on the full enjoyment of human rights, particularly economic, social and cultural rights Summary The purpose of the present report is to assist in understanding – and also to unravel, denounce and offer recommendations to tackle – human rights violations in the context of private debt, focusing specifically on individual and household debt offered by a range of lending actors, whether operating in formal or informal settings. There are two drivers of the rising private indebtedness: first, the flourishing supply side of finance, with deregulation and increasing financialization being its facilitating instruments; second, the reconfiguration of many human needs for social reproduction that become unmet financial needs paralleled by a colossal failure of the State to ensure economic, social and cultural rights for all. The Independent Expert on the effects of foreign debt and other related international financial obligations of States on the full enjoyment of human rights, particularly economic, social and cultural rights, Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky, studies the negative human rights implications of microcredit, health, education and housing-related debts, abusive collection practices, including the criminalization of debtors, consumers and migration-related debts, and debt bondage. Private debt can be both a cause and a consequence of human rights violations. GE.20-00054(E) 