A/HRC/37/54 obligations. Such an exercise contributes to evidence-based policymaking as it provides an analytical basis for forecasting potential human rights impacts when choosing among policy options. Just as the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and European Central Bank have developed financial stress tests to model how financial institutions may respond to future financial stress, one could think of human rights impact assessments as social stress tests that, on the basis of evidence-based policymaking, help to assess the ability of a country’s social and economic infrastructure to respond to an economic crisis. 38 38. A human rights impact assessment makes potential human rights impacts of policy choices more visible and explicit to a wider population and their representatives, and makes policy choices and their consequences more explicit for policymakers. A human rightsbased approach, unlike other more technocratic approaches, provides normative guidance to policymakers about which choices they should make or avoid. 39. The human rights principles of interdependence and interrelatedness mean that the human rights impact assessment should focus on the full range of harms resulting from fiscal consolidation measures. It is most often the combination and accumulation of individual government decisions that cause the most damage if the decisions fall, one on top of the other, on the same population groups. 39 A human rights-based approach can help to identify how people confronting intersecting inequalities may be affected. Some of the analyses carried out have incorporated an explicit rights-based approach.40 40. Fiscal policymaking is complex and technocratic and, even at the best of times, it is often impenetrable to the general public unless governments make particular efforts to explain and involve the public in policy changes. That would “transform the seemingly technical arena of fiscal policy into a terrain of public scrutiny and democratic deliberation, making the ultimate path taken more legitimate and sustainable”.41 41. Particular attention to accountability in the human rights framework provides greater imperatives for the implementation of prevention, mitigation and redress measures than traditional social impact assessments. The emphasis of the human rights framework on access to remedy, both as a right in and of itself and as a component of accountability, indicates the need for stronger focus on remedy in a human rights impact assessment than what may be required or expected in other types of impact assessments. 42 42. A human rights impact assessment could also serve as a tool for advocacy and negotiation. While the most common approach for carrying out a human rights impact assessment may be within or accompanying a regulatory impact assessment carried out by a government, the process also makes the evidence available to those affected and their representatives so that they engage with the government. If done in advance of negotiations with international financial institutions or other debt renegotiation processes, the evidence base can provide governments with a stronger and more objective analysis that could strengthen its negotiations on areas that should be protected from reduction in government spending. 38 39 40 41 42 12 See Center for Economic and Social Rights, “Assessing austerity”. Howard Reed and Jonathan Portes, “Cumulative impact assessment: A research report by Landman Economics and the National Institute of Economic and Social Research for the Equality and Human Rights Commission”, Equality and Human Rights Commission Research Report 94 (United Kingdom, 2014). For the most recent data see, United Kingdom, Equality and Human Rights Commission, “Distributional results for the impact of tax and welfare reforms between 2010–17, modelled in the 2021/22 tax year”, Interim findings (November 2017). United Kingdom, Office of the Children’s Commissioner, An Adequate Standard of Living: A Child Rights Based Quantitative Analysis of Budgetary Decisions 2010–13, Final report (June 2013). See Center for Economic and Social Rights, “Assessing austerity”. Danish Institute for Human Rights, “Human rights impact assessment guidance and toolbox” (2016).