Overview

Much work has been done by the human rights community in recent years to respond to privatisation and its human rights impacts. However, much remains to be done to conceptualise the human rights understanding of public services, and States’ obligations in this regard, and to mobilise human rights tools and actors to support rights-aligned public services.

This is also a crucial time to address this issue. The COVID-19 pandemic and the social and economic crises it has triggered have exposed and exacerbated the inequalities generated by privatisation and have confirmed the importance of the equalising power of robust public services.

Building on from our work addressing the impacts of privatisation in the specific sectors of education, water and health, we seek in this area to:

1. Develop a cross-sectoral analysis of the effects of privatisation on human rights and what the human rights requirements are for services essential to the realisation of economic, social and cultural rights;

2. Build a coherent alternative narrative about ways to manage and deliver services in accordance with human rights and for the public interest; and

3. Understand whether and, if so, how human rights tools and mechanisms can address the negative impacts of privatisation.