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Recommendations

Debt management, sustainability and justice

We fully endorse the outcome document of the Civil Society Organisations Southern-led Meeting on Debt, adopted in Bogota on 21 September 2023, and call on governments to take action and fulfil the demands of the Declaration.

Furthermore, we call on governments to:

  • Ensure immediate and unconditional debt cancellation of all unsustainable and illegitimate debts, to all countries in need, by all creditors.
  • Create a permanent multilateral sovereign debt resolution framework that, under the auspices of the United Nations, ensures the primacy of human rights over debt service and a rules-based approach to orderly, fair, transparent and durable debt crisis resolution, in a process convening all creditors.
  • Establish an automatic mechanism for a debt payment moratorium and a comprehensive, timely and orderly debt restructuring in the wake of catastrophic shocks.
  • Agree on common and binding principles on responsible borrowing and lending, and ensure compliance with them.
  • Agree on multidimensional vulnerability indicators and promote an open review as the approach to debt sustainability, under UN guidance and with civil society participation, in order to incorporate climate vulnerabilities, risks and impacts, and human rights and development impact assessments.
  • Launch genuine, participatory and inclusive debt transparency and accountability mechanisms and processes, allowing access to information about debt management and renegotiations, and including the establishment of a global public debt transparency registry, with mandatory rules that require all lenders and borrowers to disclose information on loans and other debt-creating instruments.
  • Launch participatory and transparent official debt audits to examine borrowing and lay the ground for suspension and cancellation of loans that: lack public consultation; indicate questionable or fraudulent practices; have resulted in violations of human rights; or have contributed to environmental destruction and the climate crisis.
  • Address the need for accountability, transparency and further regulation of credit rating agencies (CRA), including correction of the adverse impacts of CRAs on development finance and exploring the creation of publicly owned CRAs.

Climate and environment

We call on governments to:

  • Ensure the urgent delivery of new and additional, non-debt-creating climate finance, beyond the unfulfilled US$100 billion per year target, that is sufficient and responsive to the climate mitigation, adaptation, and loss and damage needs of the peoples and communities of the global south.
  • Agree on the cancellation of unsustainable and illegitimate debts generated by fossil fuel projects.
  • Introduce progressive green taxation, including to ensure a just energy transition.
  • Address the negative environmental, social and economic impacts of extractive industries, including by:
    • Curbing tax incentives granted to the extractives
      industries;
    • Making extractives companies pay their share in taxes
      and immediate costs of rehabilitation and rebuilding;
    • Using taxes for peoples’ needs, especially for
      the needs of communities affected by social and
      environmental damage; and
    • Protecting and upholding the rights of workers and
      women affected by mining, including their rights to
      defend their communities.

Tax and illicit financial flows

We call on governments to:

  • Negotiate and adopt a UN Convention on Tax as a new  global framework for international tax cooperation. The UN Convention on Tax should be designed with a view to ensuring a fair division of taxing rights between nation states and reducing illicit financial flows, including by stopping all forms of tax abuse by multinational corporations and the wealthy elites, as well as mobilising financing for governments to fulfil international goals, obligations and commitments, including those relating to human rights, environmental protection, equality and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.
  • Ensure that tax systems are progressive and serve to reduce inequalities within and between countries.
  • Introduce taxes on wealth to increase financing for public services, climate justice and a just energy transition, as well as to reduce inequalities within and between countries and help curb the continuing amassing of wealth, profits and power in the hands of an elite minority at the expense of the majority.
  • Eliminate tax incentives and subsidies that benefit wealthy individuals and corporations and exacerbate inequalities.
  • Tax the super-profits of corporations and individuals benefitting from times of crises by instituting windfall profit taxes.

Gender equality and women’s rights

We call on governments to:

  • Ensure that tax and fiscal policies recognise, reward, reduce, redistribute and reclaim unpaid care and domestic work, including by putting in place policies on care work.
  • Reduce unfair tax burdens on women and adopt progressive, redistributive and gender equal taxation – including new forms of taxation of capital and wealth – combined with less reliance on consumption taxes, including value added tax.
  • Remove gender bias and discrimination in tax policies to ensure that tax revenues are raised and spent in ways that promote gender equality.
  • Ensure adequate financing of gender-responsive and transformative public services that provide universal access and universal coverage, that are publicly funded, delivered, managed and governed in a transparent, participatory and accountable manner, and that are being delivered by public sector workers enjoying decent work.
  • Ensure adequate financing, policy and fiscal space to promote women’s rights and reduce inequalities, including by introducing gender budgeting and applying feminist taxation principles.
  • Ensure that financing mechanisms and debt management and resolution policies incorporate gender impact assessments systematically, putting gender equality and women’s rights over creditors’ claims.

Democracy, human rights and development effectiveness

We call on governments to:

  • Ensure an enabling environment and safe civic spaces for civil society engagement and full and informed participation in policy discussions, including access to
    transparent, comprehensive and accessible information.
  • Integrate independent Human Rights Impact Assessments (HRIA) into fiscal policy, debt management and economic reforms planning.
Economic Justice for all project in Ecuador

Taking action

Civil Society Organisations in the debt justice movement have a strong vision for turning inequalities around through a fairer global system. This vision is worked out through:

Advocacy

We intervene in international fora such as UN and International Financial Institutions meetings, meet one-on-one to talk debt-related issues with decision makers, share our research and aim to convince those with the power to make system changes. We organise campaigns, online and street actions to promote our calls and collaborate to strengthen the debt movements worldwide.

Awareness-raising

Who wants to hear about complex debt architecture? The realities of this unjust international financial system are hidden behind layers of complexity, dull accounting and poor transparency. We help the general public understand the glaring consequences of this foggy system. Getting attention to the issues through conventional and social media helps turn the tide in public opinion and put pressure on decision-makers.

Research and analysis

We bring together CSOs from across the world, share information, carry out joint actions, and raise stronger voices together. We also build connections with other sectors, showing the ways that debt justice can be transformative for achieving goals for poverty alleviation, gender justice, climate action and more.

Coordination

We bring together CSOs from across the world share information, carry out joint actions, and raise stronger voices together. We also build connections with other sectors, showing the ways that tax justice can be transformative for achieving goals for poverty alleviation, gender justice, climate action and more.