Development Finance & Tax Justice - Archive

Fair taxation can help in fighting inequality, realizing human rights, and ensuring the implementation of the sustainable development goals (SDGs). However, a succession of reports of tax dodging by multinational corporations have cast the spotlight on the need for reform of the international tax system. It has also become evident that international tax avoidance makes use of tax havens and the offshore secrecy system, which also facilitates capital flight and money laundering for criminal and terrorist purposes.

Recognizing the need [...]

The traditional models of interaction between public and private sectors, largely based on corporate regulation and public procurement, are relatively well understood and accepted. However, the most recent wave of economic globalization has been accompanied by a widened process of commodification with the effect that a widening range of goods and services are now being provided by market actors rather than states. At the same time, the classic models of public-private interaction have been challenged by the rise of new [...]

Organised by the CSO for FfD Group together with the Women’s Working Group on FfD

The AAAA is unequivocal in its “stress that efforts in international tax cooperation should be universal in approach and scope and should fully take into account the different needs and capacities of all countries”. At the same time, there are issues on the international tax co-operation agenda that are currently not advancing rapidly enough and thus risk placing mobilization of domestic resources at risk.

These [...]

Jointly organized by Civil Society Financing for Development Group including the Women’s Working Group on Financing for Development, Femnet, Forum for Women and Democracy, Womankind Worldwide in co-operation with inter alia Society for International Development, Global Policy Forum, Brot für die Welt, MISEREOR, Christian Aid, Social Watch and many more.

 

The pursuit of the 2030 Agenda requires UN Member States to provide the necessary regulatory and financial means, including the removal of structural barriers to social, economic, and [...]

By Bodo Ellmers

In the lead-up to the UN’s Financing for Development Forum that takes place virtually from April 12-15, the 2021 edition of the Financing for Sustainable Development Report has been released. The report is published by the so-called Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF), which comprises numerous UN entities, but also the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization. It is widely considered the most comprehensive source of data and analysis on development finance topics.

This [...]

Effective in the fight for transparency - against global tax fraud and illicit financial flows

Proposals from the UN-FACTI panel

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The Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, the Global Policy Forum and the Tax Justice Network invite you to an online discussion on the occasion of the publication of the final report of the UN High Level Panel on International Financial Accountability, Transparency and Integrity for Achieving the 2030 Agenda (FACTI-Panel). Lack of financial transparency encourages illicit financial flows and corruption worldwide [...]

Effective in the fight for transparency - against global tax fraud and illicit financial flows

Proposals from the UN-FACTI panel

March 1, 2021, 5:00 p.m.-7:00 p.m. (CET)

REGISTER NOW!

The Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, the Global Policy Forum and the Tax Justice Network invite you to an online discussion on the occasion of the publication of the final report of the UN High Level Panel on International Financial Accountability, Transparency and Integrity for Achieving the 2030 Agenda (FACTI-Panel). Lack of financial transparency encourages [...]

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the United Nations (UN) estimated that developing countries needed an extra US$ 2.5 trillion in external finance to cope with the consequences of the crisis. This vast sum is needed because additional spending needs – for example on health services and social protection – coincide with a simultaneous collapse of all traditional sources of development finance: tax revenue, export earnings, migrant remittances, foreign direct investment and, to a lesser extent, also official [...]

Lessons from the global COVID-19 crisis

This is the fifth edition of the report Spotlight on Sustainable Development. Since 2016, we have published this report annually to assess not only the implementation of the 2030 Agenda but also the structural obstacles in its realization.

When we started to plan for this year’s report in Autumn 2019, mass protests were shaking a growing number of countries in various regions of the world. In Ecuador, Brazil, Chile and Argentina, in Egypt, Lebanon [...]

By Barbara Adams and Roberto Bissio

versión en español

There is widespread speculation that if/when US President Trump addresses the UN General Assembly on 22 September — probably the only head of state to do so in person– he may warn of major cuts in financial contributions or even threaten to pull out of the UN.

Since he took office in January 2017, the USA has de-funded, withdrawn from, or denigrated several UN agencies and affiliated institutions.

The New York [...]

This briefing paper looks at the financing for development (FfD) work at the United Nations in 2020, an exceptional year due to outbreak of the global coronavirus crisis in the spring. Following this shock, FfD became a highly relevant issue on the UN agenda. The FfD process as originally scheduled was redesigned, with the FfD Forum originally scheduled for April cut down from four days of face-to-face meetings to a virtual session that lasted for just one hour. An official [...]

By Roberto Bissio

The numbers provided by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) about the assistance contributed by its members to developing countries are “inflated”, include “fictional figures”, suffer from “fundamental flaws of overcounting, incoherence and premature implementation of an unfinished system” and have therefore “become incoherent as a statistical quantity”, argues Simon Scott, former head of the statistical division of the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) in an article recently published by the Brookings Institution.

Official Development [...]

New York, 8 July 2019: “The world is off-track to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Most governments have failed to turn the transformational vision of the 2030 Agenda into real transformational policies. Even worse, xenophobia and authoritarianism are on the rise in a growing number of countries.”

“The implementation of the 2030 Agenda is not just a matter of better policies. It requires more holistic and more sweeping shifts in how power is vested, including through institutional and governance [...]

To coincide with the World Health Summit and the Grand Challenges Conference of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Berlin, Global Policy Forum, Brot fuer die Welt, medico international, and MISEREOR invite you to discuss the benefits, risks and side-effects of the WHO’s engagement with philanthropic foundations, and reflect on how the WHO can be strengthened in order to fulfill its responsibilities. Speakers will include representatives from the German Ministry of Health, the WHO (tbc) and international civil society.

by Jesse Griffiths

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are ambitious objectives: not only do they call for an end to poverty and hunger, they also recognise the need to fight inequality, including gender inequality, protect the environment, provide decent work, ensure sustainable consumption and production and achieve global peace. Unlike the Millennium Development Goals that preceded them, they apply equally to all nations.

It is already clear that we are not on track to meet the SDGs. For example, though [...]

The United Nations face a funding dilemma. On the one hand, member states continue to transfer new responsibilities to the UN system, not least in implementing the 2030 Agenda and their Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); on the other hand, they do not match these mandates with adequate resources.

Some see the way out of this financial mess in reinforced UN partnerships with private donors and their foundations. The UN Foundation (UNF) plays a special role here. It was established by [...]

A new briefing from Eurodad reveals how the increased promotion of public-private partnerships (PPPs) by the World Bank and others is having a disastrous impact on both developed and developing countries. From the hospital in Lesotho which has swallowed up a quarter of the country's health budget, to the motorways which nearly bankrupted the Portuguese government - we expose how PPPs are enriching the already wealthy whilst ripping off citizens.

European governments and the European Commission have been increasingly supporting a greater role for the private sector in their development cooperation. With new EU policies and instruments such as the European External Investment Plan, it was deemed important for CONCORD members to agree on a common position, common messages and priorities regarding the role of the private sector in contributing to sustainable development. To write this paper, CONCORD Europe's specific work stream on the private sector collaborated with all of [...]

The ECOSOC Forum on Financing for Development (FfD Forum) met four days at the UN headquarters in New York to review the promises made at the Addis Ababa Action Agenda and its predecessors (the 2002 Monterrey Consensus and the 2008 Doha Declaration on Financing for Development). The FdD Forum is also the place for diplomats to discuss the means of implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, but civil society is disappointed by the scarce results and the excessive [...]

The ECOSOC Forum on Financing for Development (FfD Forum) is dedicated to reviewing not only the fulfillment of the Addis Ababa Action Agenda and its predecessors (the 2002 Monterrey Consensus and the 2008 Doha Declaration on Financing for Development), but also the means of implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and feeding its results into the annual High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF).

During negotiation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, as well as the various [...]

The central substantive piece during the preparations for the 2017 FfD Forum has been the work of the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) and its report “Progress and prospects”.  However, during open briefings from the IATF on the report, Member States – mostly members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) – expressed frustration, wanting to understand the division of responsibilities among Task Force members in report preparations. They referenced the mandate of the IATF [...]

By Sarah Dayringer and Karen Judd

The United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres challenged participants at the 61st Commission on the Status of Women (CSW 61) in March 2017: “Do not let us at the UN off the hook. Keep our feet to the fire.” Many civil society organizations (CSOs) are doing just that –  calling for more from the CSW.

At CSW 61, Dalia Leinarte, Chair of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) said, “[l]inking the [...]

The second FfD Forum will be convened by the President of ECOSOC from 22 to 25 May 2017 at the United Nations Headquarters in New York.

Building on the inaugural FfD Forum, which devoted particular attention to setting up the monitoring framework for the follow-up to the Addis Ababa Action Agenda (Addis Agenda), the 2017 Forum is expected to provide impetus for the implementation of FfD outcomes and the delivery of means of implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable [...]

UN expert body takes new steps to prevent corporate tax abuses, but more is needed to ensure companies pay their fair share and stop depleting the resources needed to realize human rights.

This paper explores some of the links between tax- and gender justice at the global level by highlighting two central ways in which illicit financial flows and gender injustice are connected. First, through the effects of tax evasion and avoidance and secondly, through the role of financial secrecy jurisdictions and global networks of facilitators which enable illicit financial flows which result from trafficking in women. The paper argues that confronting and dismantling the global enablers and secrecy jurisdictions will be [...]