A/HRC/40/57 advantages of any kind that undermine the ability of States to respect, protect and fulfil their human rights obligations. Economic measures can include both conditionalities attached to financial assistance programmes and implicit conditionalities informally urged by international or regional institutions. 14.2 States in difficulty following a debt crisis or other adverse economic event may temporarily lose access to some sources of funds. In these situations, the remaining lenders have a responsibility not to use their enhanced bargaining power to exercise influence on the borrower that could lead to human rights violations. Instead, lenders actually have an enhanced responsibility with regard to the human rights impacts of their loans and the conditions attached to them. 14.3 States should also be able to design and implement economic policies, including responses to financial and economic crises, in accordance with their human rights obligations. In doing so, they should be free from undue influence from corporations or those working to further their interests that seek to privilege corporate economic interests over, or otherwise disrupt, the realization of human rights or the environmental well-being necessary for such realization. States must take action to identify and prevent such conflicts of interest by developing a regulatory framework that ensures, among other things, that relevant interactions are transparent and accountable. Such a regulatory framework could include regulation regarding the financing of political parties and the prevention of corruption. 14.4. Host States should enact foreign investment laws in such a way that includes an obligation on investors to undertake human rights impact assessments through neutral entities in a transparent and inclusive manner. Host States and investors should undertake to use such assessments as a means of enhancing the sustainability and development impact of investments in such a way that is beneficial to all stakeholders, including investors. Principle 15 – Obligations of public creditors and donors International financial institutions, bilateral lenders and public donors should ensure that the terms of their transactions and their proposals for reform policies and conditionalities for financial support do not undermine the borrower/recipient State’s ability to respect, protect and fulfil its human rights obligations. 22 States, whether acting alone or within international financial institutions, as well as international financial institutions themselves, should not compel borrowing/receiving States to compromise satisfying their international human rights obligations or contribute to such compromise, either directly or indirectly. As a consequence, international financial institutions, bilateral lenders and other public donors, when granting a loan or giving policy advice in the context of economic reform measures, have an obligation to assess the human rights impact of those measures. Commentary 15.1 Human rights impact assessments should be a mandatory element in the design of all economic reform and adjustment programmes and avoid human rights violations. This applies also to programmes developed with international financial institutions, bilateral lenders and public donors in the context of debt management and financial assistance activities. All proposed measures and loan conditionalities should be subject to a human rights impact assessment. These should be prepared prior to the conclusion of the agreements and in time to influence the outcomes of the negotiations, and include an analysis of the impact of policies on commonly marginalized groups. In urgent situations at least, flexible instruments should be considered to allow for sufficient space to develop well-tailored adjustment 22 E/C.12/2016/1, para. 8. 15