SPOTLIGHT ON AUSTERITY “I feel alone, like I’ve been left in the dark without anywhere to get help… I’m scared about what that will mean for my kids.” – Sarah When the UK government cut legal aid support in 2012, Sarah was left without the support she needed to fight a complex legal case regarding access to her children. She is one of countless millions affected worldwide by government austerity policies. Yet the sheer scale of austerity and the statistics surrounding it can blind us to the day-to-day toll it is having on the lives of individual people and families. Since the financial crisis of 2008, austerity has become a familiar term and experience for millions of people. This phenomenon – in which a government seeks to reduce a deficit in public finances, typically to reduce public debt – usually involves cuts to government spending, sometimes coupled with tax rises which often hit the poorest hardest by raising prices of basic necessities such as food. Austerity is a human rights issue. It affects people’s access to education, health, housing, social security and other economic and social rights. It also leads to abuses of civil and political rights, as governments respond to protests and other dissent in draconian ways or cut services that affect access to justice, such as legal aid. All too often, governments dismiss these rights and make decisions that put the greatest burden on those living in poverty while threatening the welfare of society as a whole. Austerity is a global issue. In 2017, widespread austerity measures were applied in countries from every region, particularly restricting people’s economic and social rights. In Europe, people took to the streets to protest against the detrimental effects of austerity measures in Greece, Serbia, Spain and the UK. In the case of the latter, research in England linked roughly 120,000 deaths to cuts to health and social care. Amnesty International is researching the impact of austerity policies on the protection and realization of socio-economic rights in selected countries. The next piece of research, to be published in the first half of 2018, focuses on the impact of austerity measures on the right to health in Spain. A nurse working in the Spanish public health system told Amnesty International: “We have all suffered because of the cuts: nurses, doctors, patients, families, everyone.” In Sub-Saharan Africa, subsidies for the poor and social welfare have all been cut at a time when consumption taxes such as Value Added Tax (VAT) have been increased, often hitting hardest those living in poverty. Countries including Botswana, Burundi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia and Togo continued to be “advised” by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to keep on implementing austerity measures – despite the IMF’s own admission in 2012 that such an approach is not always warranted and can undermine the economic growth needed to pay for services. In North Africa, Algeria’s response to the fall in oil prices saw its government implement deep spending cuts in its 2017 budget, combined with a rise in VAT from 2% to 19%. IMF lending policies also prompted the Egyptian government to raise the prices of essential goods and services. Amnesty International Report 2017/18 15