Recruiting two new posts: strengthening our work on climate justice, equalities & human rights

A longstanding issue in tax policymaking is the tendency to treat questions as technical ones to be solved by tax professionals, leaving any social justice concerns to be dealt with ‘politically’ elsewhere. In practice, this claimed political neutrality has yielded consistently regressive policies and left structural inequalities intact.

Carbon tax policymaking could easily repeat these failures. We need to provide truly transformative solutions which set out positions and policy coherence that halt more of the loss and damage that the most marginalised people live through.

Our world is faced with the existential threat of extinction. Right now hundreds of millions of people are broken by generational poverty, systemic and structural inequalities, their human rights denied, and their well being ignored. Tax justice has a powerful contribution to make and to change how this story ends.

Tax has a determinative impact on both the wellbeing of citizens and societies broadly through support of human development. It raises revenue and acts as a redistributive tool. In so doing, it has an important means to curb the severest effects of inequality and of realising human rights, and opens a means of reparation for the colonial legacies curtailing economic and social inequalities. It also enables a robust process of representation within society so that political inequalities can be overcome (for example, to ensure that wealthy elites are subject to effective, progressive taxation). 

We are recruiting two posts to strengthen our work on climate justice and to further build human rights evidence to bring about a radical change through our research and international advocacy. These posts will contribute to a body of work across the social justice movement which attempts to shut the door on regressive solutions and on continued extraction. We want to investigate and propose a path forward where the pivotal role of tax tilts towards greater equality and rights, and mitigates against environmental loss and damage.

The focus of one post is to deliver peer reviewed research in in order to establish the technical feasibility of measures that address the dual crises jointly of climate and inequalities. The post also must advocate to ensure detailed consideration and understanding of the economic and social impact of carbon pricing proposals on inequalities, both within and between countries.

The focus of the second post is threefold: to serve as a continuation of work to build evidence and jurisprudence within United Nations legal framework treaty bodies; to support the work undertaken by Independent Experts and Special Rapporteurs; and to establish the central human rights and tax justice arguments for urgent tax policy reform. Both posts will use differing approaches to build a powerful narrative and build policy maker awareness of the political costs of failing to act.

More information on the posts:

• Senior Researcher – Advocate (Climate & Inequalities)
• Researcher-Advocate (Human Rights & Equalities)

Closing date for both posts: 9.00 am GMT, Monday 21 November 2022.