is being done in the name of “non discrimination”. The principle of non discrimination in Human Rights law and practice admits and even requires affirmative action to achieve results, in terms of human capabilities, that ensure equal opportunities. In trade and investment law and international agreements, “non discrimination” means legal equality among unequals. Individuals and corporations, large or small, national or foreign, are deemed equal and governments are forbidden from applying affirmative action by, for example, imposing performance requirements on foreign investors or tilting procurement rules in favor of those who employ workers from vulnerable sectors. Further, foreign investors are empowered under those rules to sue the host country governments where they operate using mandatory international tribunals. Local investors, and particularly small and medium enterprises, are discriminated against, since they can only resort to local courts. The global financial and economic crisis of the last two years has had a disproportionate impact on developing countries, even when those had no responsibility at all in creating the crisis and on minorities within these countries. This is due to a variety of transfer mechanisms, such as a decline in volume and price of export commodities, less incoming tourism and a reduction in remittances by workers abroad, which in turn lead to increased indebtedness of many countries. Large debt overhang acts as an impediment to the fiscal capacity of governments to meet their human rights obligations. The consequences of such indebtedness and their impacts on the progressive realization of economic and social rights and the rights of minorities cannot be ignored. Human rights norms and principles are critical in guiding the assessment of borrowing that needs to be undertaken and the demands that should be met through grants rather than loans. Principles of accountability and transparency are especially essential pieces to developing an orderly, transparent and fully participatory debt audit process and workout mechanism, and to ensuring new lending is engaged in a responsible way, with appropriate social control. While debt cancellation for countries which had no hand in spawning the global economic crisis is a way to increase the fiscal space for governments to undertake spending without further borrowing there has been limited consideration of this option among the international responses to the crisis. Furthermore, the IMF continues to condition disbursement of debt relief funds on the reduction of fiscal deficits, despite a broad consensus on the need for fiscal stimulus actions to restore growth. As a result, several governments have been left with no room or freedom to engage in the countercyclical measures necessary to support economic and social rights and the rights of minorities. Public expenditure reductions, fiscal consolidation plans, public sector wage cuts, the phased elimination of subsidies, capping pension payments and postponing social benefits are just a few ways such restrictive fiscal measures are carried out, posing clear threats to the measures in favour of minorities. By preventing, rather than supporting, the type of countercyclical spending (and autonomous policy space) highly required in times of crisis, pro-cyclical conditionalities undermine minority rights. This context of deep, interlocking economic, social and environmental calamities worldwide hands us an historic opportunity and indeed a generational responsibility to rethink the manner in which decision-making in economic policy has so far occurred, not only to alleviate the impact of this financial crisis but to re-structure our broken global economy with concrete economic policies founded in human rights norms and principles. A minority rights policy response does not presuppose a certain type of economic system, nor preordain detailed fiscal or monetary policies in all contexts. Yet, human rights do provide a clear and