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Oxfam President and former Minister of Finance of Guatemala Juan Alberto Fuentes Knight addresses the opening of the meeting. He was accompanied on the panel of the first session by (from left) John Christensen, Tax Justice Network; Shirley Pouget, International Bar Association Human Rights Institute; Ignacio Saiz, CESR; and Radhika Balakrishnan, Center for Womens Global Leadership at Rutgers University. |
“I am convinced that linking human rights to fiscal policy is highly important,” emphasized Juan Alberto Fuentes Knight, Oxfam chair and former Minister of Finance of Guatemala. “Human rights provide the possibility of reconstructing a broken social and fiscal compact.”
Two days of intense exchange yielded a number of concrete opportunities for collaborative research and advocacy, not least within the UN Financing for Development debate, the various regional economic and political integration processes and the budding movement to improve global governance of tax policy. A range of concrete ideas emerged for how to consolidate this growing platform for advancing human rights through tax and fiscal justice, such as making more effective use of domestic, regional and international human rights protection bodies to address tax injustice, convening tax law and human rights law practitioners for more constructive dialogue and building stronger alliances within the worker’s rights and women’s rights communities.
The meeting identified a range of challenges to more effectively bridging the long-standing gap between tax justice and human rights advocacy – from conceptual to methodological to legal to political. Yet, in the face of these obstacles, a spirit of promise at the profound potential of more proactive collaboration infused the strategy meeting.
“One of the greatest obstacles to the enjoyment of human rights…is the global fiscal system,” Magdalena Sepulveda of the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation shared. “We must create pressure to open a public and inclusive dialogue in which we can collectively seek the necessary reforms. I’m convinced that meetings like this one contribute in great measure to this end.”
For more information, contact:
- Niko Lusiani at nlusiani@cesr.org;
- Liz Nelson at Liz@taxjustice.net;
- Teresa Marshall at Teresa@globaltaxjustice.org;
- Imad Sabi at Imad.Sabi@oxfamnovib.nl;
- Rosa Maria Cañete at rmcanete@oxfamintermon.org;
- Jorge Luis Coronado Marroquin, at jorgecoronado@ice.co.cr
- Luis Moreno at luismoreno@latindadd.org
Related links:
- Video: Presentation by UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights Philip Alston
- Video: Special message from Attiya Waris, University of Nairobi, Kenya
- Video: Special message from Magdalena Sepulveda, CESR board member and member of the International Commission on the Reform of International Corporate Taxation
- Global Alliance for Tax Justice
- Tax Justice Network’s human rights page
- Red de Justicia Fiscal de Ámerica Latina y el Caribe
- Red Latinoamericana sobre Deuda, Desarrollo y Derechos
- Intermón Oxfam: Iguales
- Oxfam Novib