A/HRC/4/10 page 16 E. Sector reform policies regarding education and health 57. HIPC and MDR initiatives are intended to contribute to poverty reduction by freeing up resources for higher social spending. Additional resources made available through HIPC initiative were supposed to be allocated to priorities of the concerned countries’ poverty reduction strategies. 58. While underlining the difficulties encountered in measuring the incremental changes in government spending attributable to HIPC initiative, a 2005 evaluation of this debt relief initiative shows that Governments have increased expenditure on education, but they are spending the same or less on health, agriculture and transportation. A similar evaluation undertaken in 2003 had already pointed out that HIPC initiative’s emphasis had been on expenditure in the social services and mainly on education. 59. With regards to the education and health related MDGs the same evaluation concludes that 18 HIPC post-completion-point countries have made progress in reducing child mortality and modest progress in primary education. There has been no measurable change on infectious diseases and very little data is available concerning maternal health.25 60. Uganda is often cited as one of the biggest HIPC initiative successes, as all of its budget savings from debt relief were transferred to a “Poverty Action Fund”, which then allocated these funds according to priorities identified in the national Poverty Eradication Action Plan. As an effect, gross primary school enrolment in Uganda has increased from 2.6 million to 7.3 million pupils between 1997 and 2002. In general poverty incidence fell from 56 per cent in 1992 to 35 per cent in 2000.26 61. However, in most cases, the positive impacts of HIPC initiative on social sectors are not directly attributable to the additional resources provided though debt service savings but to the “secondary effect” that countries were required, in order to be eligible for the initiative, to complete and implement a country-owned poverty reduction strategy. These strategies channelled resources beyond the actual HIPC savings to social sectors. 62. Reform policy outlined in poverty strategies usually includes education and health sector reforms as these areas are key in the context of poverty reduction. The international financial institutions core conditionality now often includes a “floor” on current expenditure on health and education. Despite the fact that economic reform programmes do not usually directly refer to economic, social and cultural human rights, their objectives are, at least partly, congruent with State obligations regarding the right to health and the right to education. 63. The right to health can be defined as a right to the enjoyment of a variety of facilities and conditions which are incumbent on the State to provide for its citizens. The basic legal documents, such as article 12 of ICESCR and its interpretation contained in the general comment No. 14 (2000) of the Committee on Economic Social and Cultural Rights on the right to the highest attainable standard of health, assert that all States have minimum core obligations, intended to ensure that people are provided with the minimum conditions under which they can live in dignity; enjoy the basic living conditions needed to support their health and be free from