Financing development: NGO input for the UN meeting in 2015

Via Eurodad, a position paper  on Financing for Development, co-signed by TJN and over 130 other civil society organisations. The paper is entitled  UN Financing for Development negotiations: What outcomes should be agreed in Addis Ababa in 2015? and it seeks to provide input from civil society groups ahead of the Third UN Conference on Financing for Development (FfD) due in Addis Ababa in July 2015.  We reproduce the Executive Summary here and the main point that is most relevant to TJN:

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

2015 will be a landmark year for the global fight against poverty and for equitable and sustainable development, with three crucial summits in just six months. A central issue for all three summits is concrete proposals for reforms to international financial and trade systems so that they support the achievement of global sustainable development goals. Such reforms should be based on the right to development for all countries and ensuring economic and social rights for all. There are sufficient funds available to achieve human rights for all, end poverty and to achieve global sustainable development goals: but political decisions to change structures and systems are needed to make this possible. On these issues, the Third UN Conference on Financing for Development (FfD) in Addis Ababa in July will play a critical role.

This paper summarises our recommendations for concrete changes that could be made in Addis, under the six headings of the Monterrey Consensus, with a seventh chapter on other important issues:

1: Mobilizing domestic financial resources. Truly global cooperation is central to solving the problem of illicit financial flows and effectively combatting international tax avoidance and evasion. The lack of a common agenda for international cooperation in tax matters is costing all governments vast amounts of resources, which could have been allocated to sustainable development. Current global tax standards are being developed behind closed doors at the OECD while excluding 80% of the world’s countries from the decision-making processes. Our key recommendations are

• Establish a new intergovernmental body on international cooperation in tax matters and provide the resources necessary to allow the body to operate effectively.

• Ensure a comprehensive mandate for the new intergovernmental tax body, including base erosion and profit shifting, tax and investment treaties, tax incentives, taxation of extractive industries, beneficial ownership transparency, country by country reporting, and automatic exchange of information for tax purposes.

Read the rest of the position paper here.