A/HRC/7/9 page 8 the amount of international assistance provided in the form of loans - from the costs for fulfilling human rights. Nonetheless, it must be noted that, in most cases, grants for the needed amount are not available. 21. Therefore, the capacity to pay should not be assessed by primary financial parameters alone; there is a need to take into account the cost of avoiding violation of international human rights obligations as well. A sustainability framework that does not consider human rights obligations would fail to indicate if a certain debt level, particularly over the long term, can be justified in the light of the international legal framework. 22. An alternative framework, based on the Millennium Development Goals, has been suggested by a number of non-governmental organizations. The key concept for this framework is net available revenue, which is an estimation of potential Government revenues, for example, 20 per cent of domestic income. While the income earned by the poorest part of the population would not count as potential source of Government revenue, the amount of grants provided in the forms of development cooperation is included. This framework also counts the estimated costs of fulfilling human rights obligations. However, as described above, there is currently no generally recognized methodology for human rights costing and this model concerns only some selected economic, social and cultural rights in the context of the Millennium Development Goals. Other fixed costs, such as maintaining public administration, police services and basic infrastructure, are added to this amount. Thus, net available revenue can be calculated by subtracting the total amount of such costs for maintaining the human rights standards from the total amount of potential or gross available revenue. This framework suggests that from 20 to 50 per cent of the net available revenue could reasonably be used for debt service. According to this framework, the foreign debt of 70 countries could be considered excessive and hence should be cancelled. This would reduce the number of borrowing countries to about 40. 23. Over the medium and long term, the rules and mechanisms of international public finance need to be further improved to take into account the international human rights regime and of innovative analytical tools on debt sustainability. Such requirements should then be binding for all stakeholders, including Government and private donors, as well as the borrowing countries. C. Role of the Millennium Development Goals as interim targets 24. The usefulness of the Millennium Development Goals as benchmarks or thresholds for implementing economic reform policies and debt management was frequently discussed during the preparation of the draft general guidelines. 25. The Millennium Development Goals and human rights are manifestly different in nature. The Goals are highly aggregated development targets, which do not take into account disparities between regions and population groups or possible discrimination and marginalization in a country. As targets, they can be delayed or modified over time. They are also not explicit enough on the accountability of Governments for their obligations to rights holders. Furthermore, they emphasize development outcomes but do not pay the same attention to the need for a participatory and transparent process, which is extremely important from a human rights perspective and as a practical strategy to achieve development outcomes.