Development Finance & Tax Justice - Archive

The G20 Summit in Rome takes place amidst heightened debt crisis risks. According to latest World Bank figures, the debt stock of low income countries (LICs), the world´s poorest countries, surged by a staggering 12% in 2020, reaching a new record high. Poor countries transfer an increasing share of their tax revenues to creditors, to service their debts. The situation will further deteriorate when the G20´s Debt Service Suspension Initiative expires in end of 2021 in addition to the resumption [...]

As the pandemic exacerbates multiple crises in developing countries, Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) are a crucial option to help finance the COVID response and hasten an equitable and inclusive economic recovery. With the SDR distribution being proportional to IMF countries’ quotas, the new allocation of US$650 billion does not ensure sufficient SDRs go to developing countries. 

This is why many have been calling for an allocation in the order of US$3 trillion. Moreover, advanced economies are in less need [...]

This side-event at the UNCTAD XV Civil Society Forum discusses UNCTAD's work on debt crisis prevention and resolution. Participants are invited to identify UNCTAD's strengths and areas where there is room for growth, and express their expectations towards UNCTAD's work on debt on debt issues in the period following UNCTAD XV, an era in which global debt levels have reached record highs due to the Covid-19 crisis.

 

Participants: 

• Bodo Ellmers, Global Policy Forum (Moderator)
• Attiya Waris, UN Independent Expert [...]

Time to overcome contradictions and hypocrisy in the COVID-19 crisis

Policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic crisis have greatly exacerbated national and global inequalities. Blatant examples are the unfair distribution of care work, relying mainly on women and poorly remunerated if at all, and the global disparity in the distribution of vaccines.

So far more than 60 percent of people in high-income countries have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, but less than 2 percent [...]

Global debt levels have been surging constantly over the past decade, and the need to fight the COVID-19 crisis with running fiscal deficits and borrowing money has been a further shock to global economies. While central bank interventions have been keeping interest rates low in the global north, countries in the global south are particularly vulnerable to crisis because they owe large amounts of external debts. The risk of debt crisis is high and debt service costs are rising rapidly [...]

By Bhumika Mucchala (Senior Policy Researcher, Third World Network), and Christopher Hope (Policy Officer, Bretton Woods Project).

A summary of key issues emerging from recent high-level event on SDR recycling mechanisms, funds, and vehicles.

Read the blog on the eurodad website or the Spanish translation via www.latindadd.org

This virtual seminar will feature high-level policymakers and experts from Latin America, Africa, the UN, the IMF and the Vatican to discuss:

• What role can Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) play in global pandemic crisis response and recovery?
• How can SDR transfer mechanisms be designed to maximize impact for all countries that need support, while avoiding harm?
• Is there a role for global, regional and sub-regional development banks and/or new trust funds or vehicles in the mechanisms?
• What complementary policies and [...]

The UN Forum on Financing for Development (FfD) 2021 was the first FfD forum held as planned since the outbreak of the COVID-19 crisis. Accordingly, the expectations were high. Development finance is currently facing a triple challenge: to mitigate the humanitarian crisis, funds for an acute crisis response are needed – for example, to finance universal access to vaccines through the COVAX-facility, or for social protection measures. To mitigate the further divergence between countries, resources must be made available for [...]

Die Entwicklungsfinanzierung ist ein zentrales Thema in den Diskussionen über eine neue globale Entwicklungsagenda und die universellen Nachhaltigkeitsziele (Sustainable Development Goals, kurz SDGs) für die Zeit nach 2015. Im September 2014 haben die politischen Vorbereitungen für die vom 13.-16. Juli 2015 in Addis Abeba stattfindende dritte UN-Konferenz über Entwicklungsfinanzierung (UN Financing for Development Conference) begonnen. Auf der Tagesordnung der Konferenz steht eine breite Themenpalette: von der Mobilisierung nationaler Mittel für Entwicklungsfinanzierung in Entwicklungs- und Schwellenländern selbst über die öffentliche Entwicklungsfinanzierung [...]

International cooperation in tax matters has intensified in the last few years. Processes under the anti-BEPS framework at the OECD/G20 are proof of that. Nevertheless, countries in the global South that are suffering from the results of tax evasion and avoidance the most are still to a great deal marginalized and excluded from this. In some cases, countries in the global South are even suffering from a non-conducive global environment that limits their policy space in tax matters. For the [...]

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

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 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 [...]