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Consider Liberia, which emerged from over a decade of violent civil war in 2003. The macroeconomictoolkit had been severely depleted, and a huge gap existed between the need for social spending andthe government revenues that could be generated. Resources for government spending predominantlycame from donor countries, with a very small role for policies to support domestic resource mobilization.The Government was required by the donors to meet a balanced budget requirement that drasticallynarrowed the scope for implementing fiscal policy—for example, using deficit financing to increasepublic spending when the 2008 financial crisis negatively impacted the economy through rapidly fallingcommodity prices. One instrument of monetary policy involves the buying and selling of government bondsto influence the money supply, but a well-functioning bond market did not exist. This not only restricted theability of the Government to borrow domestically, it also limited the scope of monetary policy. Monetarypolicy was further constrained by the use of the US dollar as the currency for many transactions.Part of the reconstruction effort in post-conflict situations must involve institutional developmentto allow countries to pursue independent macroeconomic policies—such as creating a functioningbond market or setting up an effective system for administering tax policies. Donors should also relaxconditionalities that bar a country from implementing its own macroeconomic policies. This kindof institutional development should explicitly incorporate gender equality as a goal and women’sparticipation as an essential part of efforts to rehabilitate macroeconomic policy-making. 130The lack of global coordination also affects theability of governments to mobilize the maximum ofavailable resources. Countries that act as tax havens,maintaining low tax rates, facilitate tax avoidanceand evasion. Multinational corporations use a varietyof accounting techniques, including ‘transfer pricing’,to suggest that their profits are accruing in tax havensand thereby to lower their overall contribution. 131Estimates of the annual tax revenue lost to developingcountries due to trade mispricing put it at between$98 and $106 billion, nearly $20 billion more thanthe annual capital costs needed to achieve universalwater and sanitation coverage by 2015. 132Trade agreements limit policy spacePolicy space is further limited by a growing numberof multilateral and bilateral trade agreements, whichincreasingly incorporate provisions involving foreigninvestment and services that protect the rights oftransnational business in ways that make it moredifficult to realize the rights of individuals. Since themid-1990s, over 200 regional trade agreements(RTAs) have been signed, with provisions coveringtrade in services and foreign investment that typicallyset limits on regulatory actions by governments andcreate barriers to the expansion of public services.These agreements sometimes involve sales ofstate assets and greater economic deregulation,based on the assumption that the private sector ismore efficient and better for growth. Many suchagreements require commercial interests to becompensated when public services are expandedinto new areas or when privatization is reversed.The liberalization of trade in services promoted bysuch trade agreements has particularly negativeimplications for unpaid work. 133 As services such aswater, health care or public transportation cometo rely on market-based user fees, an unequalstructure of access emerges with poor householdsmarginalized or excluded. This leads to women andgirls spending more time on daily livelihood activitiessuch as fetching clean water, cooking and caring forthe ill, young or frail elderly.Trade agreements have led to challenges tonational health policies by private investors in, forexample, Poland and Slovakia. 134 Elsewhere, asin the Plurinational State of Bolivia, governmentshave resisted attempts by private investors to suethem under the rules of trade agreements followingcontract cancellations. In 1999, the Governmentof the Plurinational State of Bolivia privatized themunicipal water system in Cochabamba, granting a40-year contract to Bechtel, a multinational basedin the United States. It subsequently cancelled thecontract in the face of widespread protest due tothe company’s failure to supply adequate water,especially to poor communities. Bechtel then suedfor compensation under a bilateral investment225