A/HRC/40/57 12.8 Creditors and debtors should also engage in debt relief and restructuring negotiations with the aim of supporting the freeing up of fiscal space to safeguard the capacity of States to meet their human rights obligations. 12.9 Ensuring that the findings of impact assessments systematically play a role in debt restructuring reflects the shared responsibility of creditors and debtors for sovereign debt burdens. 12.10 The environmental assessment implies an analysis of the commitment of the country’s natural resources, mainly its strategic resources such as minerals and water. The social impact, the environmental remediation and the contribution to climate change must be established in the case of public debt payments based on the extraction of natural resources. 12.11 Lenders have an independent duty to ensure, to the best of their ability, that government officials are authorized under applicable domestic law to enter into the agreements and that the arrangement is otherwise consistent with such law. V. Other obligations of States, international financial institutions and private actors Principle 13 – International assistance and cooperation States have an obligation to provide international assistance and cooperation in order to facilitate the full realization of all rights. As part of their obligations with regard to international cooperation and assistance, States have an obligation to respect and protect the enjoyment of human rights of people outside their borders. This involves avoiding conduct that would foreseeably impair the enjoyment of human rights by persons living beyond their borders, contributing to the creation of an international environment that enables the fulfilment of human rights, 19 as well as conducting assessments of the extraterritorial impacts of laws, policies and practices. 20 Principle 14 – External influence and policy space States, international or regional financial institutions and other non-State and State actors should not exert undue external influence on other States so that they are able to take steps to design and implement economic programmes by using their policy space 21 in accordance with their human rights obligations, including when trying to cope with economic or financial crises. The systematic use of transparent and participatory human rights impact assessments in the design of economic reform programmes attached to international loans can serve to support debtor States in implementing a programme of crisis response free of undue external pressure and demonstrating national ownership that allows them to meet their human rights and environmental obligations. Commentary 14.1 Undue external influence means direct or indirect intervention in the economic affairs of a State through the use of economic and/or political measures seeking to influence States to adopt certain economic policies or to secure from them 19 20 21 14 Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, general comment No. 24 (2017), para. 37; and Maastricht Principles on Extraterritorial Obligations of States in the Area of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (2011). Guiding principles on extreme poverty and human rights (A/HRC/21/39), para. 92. See Sustainable Development Goal 17.15; Addis Ababa Action Agenda of the Third International Conference on Financing for Development, annex, sect. I, para. 9; and General Assembly resolution 25/2625.