Event description
This event will begin with the online launch of the State of Tax Justice 2023 report, including global and country-level estimates of the scale of cross-border tax abuse by multinationals and by individuals with undeclared offshore wealth. This will provide the context to assess the critical ongoing, intergovernmental discussions on the potential for a framework for international tax cooperation under UN auspices – the costs of tax abuse are the potential benefits from a comprehensive UN solution.
Following this event, the stream will switch to a hybrid event hosted in Cartagena, Colombia, which will be the opening session of the civil society days of the first Latin American and Caribbean summit on ‘inclusive, sustainable, and equitable global taxation’. This major event, jointly led by Colombia, Chile and Brazil, represents a significant step towards a common position on tax cooperation at the regional level, and to inform participants’ engagement in the UN intergovernmental discussions on a new international framework for tax.
View the full speaker line up for the Cartagena event: Opening panel: the regional Summit in the context of global tax debates here
Speakers
Irene Ovonji-Odida is a lawyer and women’s rights activist. She was a Member of the High Level Panel on Illicit Financial Flows from Africa (Mbeki High Level Panel) and UN FACTI Panel. She is a member of the Independent Commission for Reform of International Corporate Tax (ICRICT), South Center Tax Initiative and the Pan African Lawyers Union task force on Illicit Financial Flows. She previously served in the East African Legislative Assembly, and was International Board Chair for ActionAid International and Chief Executive Officer of the Uganda Association of Women Lawyers.
Alex Cobham is an economist and chief executive of the Tax Justice Network. He is also a founding member of the steering group of the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation, and of the technical advisory group for the Fair Tax Mark. His work focuses on illicit financial flows, effective taxation for development, and inequality. He has been a researcher at Oxford University, Christian Aid, Save the Children, and the Center for Global Development, and has consulted widely, including for UNCTAD, the UN Economic Commission for Africa, DFID, and the World Bank. He recently published two books: The Uncounted (Polity Press), and Estimating Illicit Financial Flows: A Critical Guide to the Data, Methodologies, and Findings, with Petr Janský (Oxford University Press, open access).
Owen Tudor was elected as Deputy General Secretary of the ITUC in December 2018 and re-elected at its Fifth World Congress in Melbourne, Australia, November 2022.
Owen was recruited into the union movement in 1984 off a picket line and worked for the TUC UK, on youth, training, disability and social insurance issues before moving onto health and safety, disability and industrial injury compensation.
He founded the TUC’s weekly bulletin Risks, aimed at safety representatives, and acted for the TUC on the tripartite Industrial Injuries Advisory Council and Health and Safety Commission. He was also a founder member of the Social Security Advisory Committee and the Civil Justice Council, and sat on the board of the European Agency for Safety and Health, and on the EU Advisory Committee on Safety and Health.
In 2004 he became head of the European Union and International Relations Department at the TUC UK, covering international solidarity, trade and migration policy, labour standards, global supply chains and Brexit.
In addition, Owen has been a Director of the Ethical Trading Initiative, a Director of the Occupational and Environmental Diseases Association, and has held Trustee positions at the British Occupational Health Research Foundation, the Royal National Institute for Deaf people (RNID), and the Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Occupational Medicine.
He is a member of the UK Executive Committee of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, the Advisory Council of the Foreign Policy Centre and the Politics without Borders Advisory Board.
Alison Schultz
Research Fellow, Tax Justice Network
Alison is a financial economist interested in how the financial and the tax system can serve society. She studied economics, political economy and finance and worked as a researcher at University of Mannheim’s finance department. She has supported the work of civil society groups fighting for a fairer financial system and contributed to a political education project. At the Tax Justice Network, Alison works as a research fellow in the data team.