A/HRC/44/40 largely unmoved by exhortations. As a result, 230 years after Thomas Paine made a compelling case for societies to protect everyone against sickness, disability, unemployment, and old age,130 four billion people, over half of the world’s population, enjoy no such minimal level of support.131 This is an extraordinary indictment of the global fight against extreme poverty. 73. Five reasons stand out for this failure. First is the absence of an essential normative foundation. The OECD, World Bank, and IMF, for example, steadfastly avoid relating their efforts in any way to the existence of a human right to social protection. It remains, at best, just another policy option. Second, very few governments have accorded priority to social protection, at least until massive protests prompt deeper reflection. 132 Third, the key institutional actor, the IMF, has adopted a lukewarm and heavily qualified stance towards social protection, despite a flurry of studies and protestations. Fourth, the neoliberal policy prescriptions that shape the overall approach of the international financial and economic regimes are simply incompatible with according priority to social protection. Fifth, austerity policies, which have dominated much of the landscape since 2010 and are likely to enjoy a new post-COVID-19 resurgence, leave little room for social protection.133 74. The time has come to take social protection seriously, both as a human right and as a genuinely indispensable element of any poverty elimination strategy. E. Center the role of government 75. Just as the privatization agenda has gained excessive prominence in the SDG context, so too can philanthropy jeopardize governments’ capacity to set priorities, provide funding, and implement programs. Some 2,000 billionaires now hold more wealth than 60 percent of the global population, and many are worth more than the GDP of entire countries. 134 While some have made vital contributions to well-being and amplified the voices of people in poverty, the overall situation presents serious challenges. 76. Billionaires are able to amass such fortunes thanks to policies that tax labor more than capital and facilitate tax avoidance or minimization. As tax rates fall, often after intensive lobbying, and funding for crucial services like education and healthcare declines, governments rely more on private giving.135 Such contributions are then rewarded from the public purse through tax incentives.136 Some give in areas where they had previously pressed for government cuts, shifting social support from the public to the private arena. 137 The result is a weakened public system, an empowered role for the wealthiest, and rights bearers dependent on “generosity” and handouts. 138 Despite claims of greater private sector efficiency, there is little efficient about tens of thousands of foundations, each with duplicate staff and overhead, competing to identify and implement worthwhile projects.139 77. Philanthropy is less likely to expose and tackle unjust underlying structures. Some philanthropists have profited from many of the very patterns driving poverty, including the 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 (2018); OECD, Implementing Social Protection Strategies (2019). Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man (1792). UN DESA, Promoting Inclusion through Social Protection, p. 9. Between 2010 and 2014, 122 countries reduced expenditure on social protection as a percentage of GDP. UN DESA, Promoting Inclusion through Social Protection, p. 9. The majority of OECD countries reduced their social spending between 2015 and 2018. OECD, Social spending (2020). Isabel Ortiz and Matthew Cummins, “Austerity: The New Normal, A Renewed Washington Consensus 2010-24,” Initiative for Policy Dialogue, October 2019; Amanda Shriwise, et al., “Universal Social Protection: Is It Just Talk?,” Sociology of Development, vol. 6 (2020), pp. 116, 122. Oxfam, “World’s billionaires have more wealth than 4.6 billion people,” 20 January 2020. Chiara Cordelli, “Reparative Justice and the Moral Limits of Discretionary Philanthropy,” in Rob Reich, et al., (eds.), Philanthropy in Democratic Societies (2016), p. 244. Alec MacGillis, “The Billionaires’ Loophole,” The New Yorker, 7 May 2016. David Callahan, The Givers: Wealth, Power, and Philanthropy in a New Gilded Age (2017), pp. 24143. Ryan Pevnick, “Philanthropy and Democratic Ideals,” in Reich, Philanthropy in Democratic Societies, p. 226. Callahan, Givers, p. 26. 17