With TPS set to terminate, GJC files a Freedom of Information Lawsuit against DHS and USCIS

HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENT

With TPS set to terminate, GJC files a Freedom of Information Lawsuit against DHS and USCIS

National Immigration Project et al. v. DHS et al. (Haiti TPS FOIA)

On November 20, 2017, the Trump Administration terminated TPS for Haiti, stating that the conditions caused by the earthquake no longer exist. With TPS set to terminate in July 2019, the Global Justice Clinic, together with the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers’ Guild, filed a Freedom of Information lawsuit against DHS and United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement to obtain records documenting the reasons behind the government’s decision to terminate TPS for Haitians. The lawsuit was filed in January 2018 with the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, and NYU School of Law’s Immigrant Rights Clinic provided legal counsel.

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Temporary Protected Status (TPS) provides protection from deportation or removal and enables the beneficiary to apply for a work permit. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) designates countries for TPS if they are experiencing armed conflict, have suffered a natural disaster, or face other extraordinary yet temporary conditions that make them unable to safely repatriate their nationals living in the United States. DHS designated Haiti for TPS after the 2010 earthquake and subsequently extended it four times. As of November 2017 there were more than 50,000 Haitian people with TPS in the United States, out of a total population of 300,000 people from various countries with TPS.

January 25, 2018 Youssef Farhat Product

Center Briefs Top UN Women’s Rights Body on Tax, Tax Abuse, and Gender Equality

INEQUALITIES

Center briefs top UN Women’s Rights Body on Tax, Tax Abuse and Gender Equality

On November 10, 2017, the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, together with coalition partners the Center for Economic and Social Rights, the Tax Justice Network, IWRAW-AP, and Professor Kathleen Lahey of Queens University Faculty of Law, hosted a closed briefing on Tax Systems, Tax Abuse, and Women’s Rights in Geneva with the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women.

Report & briefing

This briefing came on the heels of the Paradise Papers leak, the latest in a long line of revelations of abusive tax practices through which wealthy individuals and corporations take advantage of a global network of financial secrecy jurisdictions to deprive states of public tax revenues essential to realizing human rights.

The briefing built on the CEDAW Committee’s pioneering work to hold states like Switzerland to account for the impacts of their tax and financial secrecy policies on women’s rights. Committee members were very engaged in the interactive discussion. The topics examined included how domestic and international tax policies and practices fundamentally affect women’s rights and substantive equality and implicate states’ treaty obligations under CEDAW; why the time is ripe to increase attention to the effects of systemic tax abuse on inequality; and how the CEDAW Committee can continue its leadership in this area.

Several of the organizations hosting this briefing co-authored a shadow report for the CEDAW Committee in 2016 on Switzerland’s financial secrecy policies and a similar submission to the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights concerning the United Kingdom’s tax policies and practices.

This post was originally published as a press release on November 10, 2017.

November 10, 2017 Youssef Farhat Uncategorized

At UN peer review, Haiti urged to ensure respect for human rights as it considers development of mining sector

CLIMATE AND ENVIRONMENT

At UN peer review, Haiti urged to ensure respect for human rights as it considers development of mining sector

In November 2016, the Global Justice Clinic and its Haitian partner, the Kolektif Jistis Min (KJM), attended Haiti’s Universal Periodic Review (UPR) before the United Nations Rights Council in Geneva, to urge states to address the human rights risks of mining in Haiti during the review.

This effort followed on a joint submission to the UPR process, co-authored by GJC and KJM, published in March of this year. Following the submission of the joint analysis and an updated factsheet on mining in Haiti, summarizing key points from the report, Byen Konte, Mal Kalkile? Human Rights and Environmental Risks of gold Mining in Haiti, two countries participating in the UPR process made recommendations to Haiti related to mining and the rights to water, food and a healthy environment.

Statement and Submission

November 30, 2016 Youssef Farhat Uncategorized

CEDAW calls Switzerland to account for effects of its tax policies on women’s rights

INEQUALITIES

CEDAW calls Switzerland to account for the effects of its tax policies on women’s rights

[The week of November 20, 2016], the UN’s top women’s rights body, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, made tax justice a women’s rights issue in its recommendations to renowned financial secrecy jurisdiction, Switzerland. Prompted by a coalition report and factsheet co-authored by the Global Justice Clinic, the Center for Economic and Social Rights, and partner organizations, the Committee called upon Switzerland to assess the impacts of its financial secrecy and corporate tax policies on women’s rights abroad.

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In its final report on Switzerland’s compliance with the CEDAW Convention, the Committee expressed concern about how the State’s current laws and policies on banking secrecy and corporate taxation adversely affect the ability of other governments, especially in developing countries, to mobilize the maximum available resources for the fulfillment of women’s rights. Switzerland, which ranks as the number one country for financial secrecy, plays an outsized role in preventing other governments from upholding their obligations under CEDAW and other human rights treaties. A coalition of human rights and tax justice advocates that brought this issue before the Committee—comprised of Alliance Sud, the Berne Declaration, the Center for Economic and Social Rights, the Global Justice Clinic, and the Tax Justice Network—warmly welcomed the Committee’s recommendation that Switzerland “undertake independent, participatory and periodic impact assessments of the extraterritorial effects of its financial secrecy and corporate tax policies on women’s rights and substantive equality.” Global Justice Clinic student, Lauren Flanagan, stated that “the Committee’s engagement with these issues represents an essential step toward ensuring that States are held accountable for the effects of their taxation policies on human rights beyond their own borders.”

As explained in the coalition factsheet and submission, taxation remains the most significant and reliable source of public revenue for States around the world. Each year, however, governments lose hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue as a result of corporations and wealthy individuals shifting their profits and assets to financial secrecy jurisdictions where they are taxed at low rates or not at all. Substantial revenue losses lead to budget shortfalls, which impede government efforts to fulfill human rights. When a state is unable to close the budget deficit, it is often women who feel the pinch the most. Cuts to essential services like healthcare and education exacerbate the feminization of poverty and further confine women to caregiving roles—phenomena which represent a major roadblock to achieving substantive equality.

CEDAW’s recommendations to Switzerland come at a time when there is growing momentum across human rights institutions and within civil society movements to address tax as a human rights issue. In June 2016 the UN Committee that presides over economic, social and cultural rights called on the UK to address the human rights impacts of its financial secrecy policies, while in May 2016 the UN Committee on children’s rights recognized the importance of combating tax evasion as a way to mobilize resources for fulfilling children’s rights. These developments also coincide with the growth of activism in opposition to abusive tax practices. A recent sit-in at a branch of BNP Paribas in protest against the bank’s involvement in offshore secrecy accounts held by French elites highlighted citizen concern over the social costs of enabling corporations and wealthy individuals to avoid paying their fair share.

Co-instructor of the Global Justice Clinic, Nikki Reisch, applauded “the emerging consensus that abusive tax practices and policies must be met with a zero-tolerance policy in order to truly vindicate human rights and to meet the targets laid down in the Sustainable Development Goals.” She added that “the Clinic recognizes the importance for both women’s rights and human rights more broadly, of continuing to build international pressure to combat tax abuses, and therefore remains committed to supporting research and advocacy efforts in the area of tax and human rights.”

This post was originally published as a press release on November 28, 2016.

November 28, 2016 Youssef Farhat Uncategorized

Human Rights and Tax in an Unequal World

INEQUALITIES

Conference on Human Rights and Tax in an Unequal World

Over 200 people gathered at NYU School of Law on September 22 and 23, 2016 to explore the intersections between tax law and human rights law. The event brought together leading practitioners and scholars from the fields of tax and human rights to discuss the ways in which tax policy can be viewed as a form of human rights policy, and how the international human rights framework might contribute to bringing greater equity and focus to the global tax regime.

The Center planned this conference with an aim to serve as the beginning of an ongoing interdisciplinary dialogue and lead to future exchanges and collaborative research and writing between tax and human rights scholars.

Conference materials

Keynote

Keynote address: Winnie Byanyima

Winne Byanyima, Executive Director, Oxfam International, kicked off a challenging and important dialogue about the human rights implications of tax policy and tax abuse, and the human rights imperatives to challenge and change the tax system at both the domestic and international levels.

Session 1

Are Human Rights Really Relevant to Tax?

Allison Christians (McGill University Faculty of Law)
Reuven Avi-Yonah (University of Michigan Law School)
Edward Kleinbard (USC Gould School of Law)
Mitchell Kane (NYU School of Law)

Session 2

The Human Rights Dimensions of Tax and Tax Abuse

Kathleen Lahey (Queen’s University Faculty of Law)
Ahmed Kayum (Columbia University)
Sandra Fredman (University of Oxford Faculty of Law)
Alex Cobham (Tax Justice Network)
Olivier De Schutter (U.N. Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights)

Keynote

Keynote address: Gabriel Zucman

Gabriel Zucman, an author and professor of Economics at UC Berkele, is best known for his studies of inequality with Thomas Piketty and his book, The Hidden Wealth of Nations: The Scourge of Tax Havens, laid bare the role of corporate income tax policy and offshore tax evasion in spiraling economic inequality, reminding human rights and tax scholars alike of their shared obligation to address the growing gap between the haves and have-nots

Session 3

Beyond “Spillover”: North-South Dimensions of Tax and Tax Abuse

Attiya Waris (University of Nairobi, Kenya)
Niko Lusiani (Center for Economic and Social Rights)
Steven Dean (Brooklyn Law School)
Mary Cosgrove (J. E. Cairnes School of Business & Economics)

Session 4

Private Actors and the Public Purse: The Roles of Corporations, Lawyers, Accountants in Tax Abuse

Dan Shaviro (NYU School of Law)
Joe Bankman (Stanford Law School)
Radhika Sarin (Oxfam GB)
Celine Braumann (NYU School of Law, LLM program)

Session 5

The Responsibilities of Governments: The Case of Transparency

Miranda Stewart (Australian National University)
Joshua Blank (NYU School of Law)
Arthur Cockfield (Queen’s University Faculty of Law)
Tracy Kaye (Seton Hall Law)
Alessandro Turina (IBFD)

Session 6

The Role of International Organizations: The Architecture of International Tax Reform

Michael Lennard (Chief, International Tax Cooperation and Trade, U.N. Financing for Development Office);
Erika Siu (NYU School of Law, Tax LLM program, ICRICT consultant)
Annet Wanyana Oguttu (University of South Africa)
Monica Iyer (NYU alum; independent consultant)
Matti Ylonen (Fulbright PhD student, Yale)

Session 7

Tackling Inequality: Synergies between Tax and Human Rights Agendas

Beverly Moran (Vanderbilt Law School)
Ricardo Martner (CEPAL)
Andre Smith (Delaware Law School)
Bridget J. Crawford (Elizabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University)
Carla Spivack (Oklahoma City University School of Law)
Daniel Hemel (University of Chicago)

September 25, 2016 Youssef Farhat Uncategorized

GJC Applauds UN Committee for Calling UK to Account Over Impact of Unjust Tax Laws

INEQUALITIES

GJC Applauds UN Committee for calling UK to account over impact of Unjust Tax Laws

Following a joint report issued by the Global Justice Clinic (GJC) , the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR), and the Tax Justice Network (TJN), the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has called on the single largest financial secrecy jurisdiction in the world—the United Kingdom and its Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies—to account for the human rights impacts of its unjust tax policies, both at home and abroad.

Submission & Communique

The Committee, which oversees compliance with the International Covenant on Economic and Social Rights, voiced concerns that the UK’s financial secrecy legislation and permissive rules on corporate tax are undermining the proper resourcing of human rights, thereby affecting the ability of other States to mobilize resources for the implementation of economic, social and cultural rights. In advance of the UK’s review at the Committee’s 58th Session in June, GJC, CESR and TJN co-authored a submission to the Committee concerning the UK’s responsibility for the impacts of cross-border tax abuse on economic, social and cultural rights.

The Committee’s message to the United Kingdom follows on the heels of another pioneering effort to hold tax havens to account. An earlier submission co-authored by GJC, CESR, TJN, and Berne Declaration asked the UN’s principal women’s rights body—the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW)—to hold Switzerland to account for the impacts of its financial secrecy and corporate tax policies on women’s rights and gender equality, especially in low and middle-income countries. CEDAW did so, calling on Switzerland to “provide information on the measures taken to ensure that [its] tax and financial secrecy policy does not contribute to largescale tax abuse in foreign countries, thereby negatively impacting on resources available to realize women’s rights in those countries.” Together, these recent initiatives by UN treaty bodies to scrutinize the tax policies and practices of member States illustrate the important role of human rights norms, principles and institutions, in reshaping the international tax regime.

“By facilitating tax abuse, the UK—like other financial secrecy jurisdictions such as Switzerland—is shirking its legal obligations to respect and protect human rights,” said Nikki Reisch of the Global Justice Clinic. “As a party to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the UN Charter, and other international agreements, the UK has committed to cooperate internationally to create an enabling environment for the fulfillment of economic, social and cultural rights. Its current conduct flies in the face of those commitments.”

July 6, 2016.

July 6, 2016 Youssef Farhat Uncategorized

Minimum Standards for Transfer: International Law Concerning Rendition in the Context of Counter-Terrorism

PREVENTION AND CONFLICT

Minimum Standards for Transfer: International Law Concerning Rendition in the Context of Counter-Terrorism

This Legal Advisory sets out the minimum baseline standard to be applied whenever the United States carries out the extraterritorial transfers, articulating threshold standards, substantive norms, and procedural requirements; and concludes with a discussion of human rights norms applicable to the United States’ use of diplomatic assurances.

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In January 2009, President Obama promulgated a number of Executive Orders that created several Task Forces to advise him on certain aspects of U.S. counter-terrorism policy. One of the key issues under review is the U.S. practice of rendition. Several bodies of international law binding on the United States set out rules relevant to the transfer of individuals outside the United States to U.S. territory or to the custody of another state in the context of counter-terrorism operations. International refugee law, international human rights law, and international humanitarian law apply extraterritorially and concurrently.

Examining human rights, refugee law, and humanitarian law norms together allows for the identification of a minimum baseline standard to be applied whenever the United States carries out the extraterritorial transfer of an individual within its effective control. The transfers to which this minimum standard applies include, for example, “renditions to justice” to the United States or a third state; renditions pursuant to an international arrest warrant or request for surrender by an international court; transfers carried out at the close of hostilities in the context of armed conflict (i.e. repatriations of prisoners of war or security detainees); and transfers across borders of individuals detained in the context of armed conflict.

This Legal Advisory sets out this minimum baseline standard, articulating threshold standards, substantive norms, and procedural requirements. As a threshold matter, formal transfer processes may not be intentionally bypassed and the United States must have a valid basis for apprehending an individual in contemplation of transfer. Substantively, the U.S. government may not transfer an individual to the custody of a state where he/she is at a real risk of: torture or ill-treatment; persecution; enforced disappearance; or arbitrary deprivation of life. Procedurally, an individual facing transfer must have the ability to challenge the basis for his deprivation of liberty in contemplation of transfer prior to transfer before an independent decision-maker. This challenge must allow the individual to contest the transfer on the basis of fear of being subject to any of the risks protected against by international law. This Legal Advisory concludes with a discussion of human rights norms applicable to the United States’ use of diplomatic assurances.

June 10, 2009 Youssef Farhat Product

On the Record: US Disclosures on Rendition, Secret Detention, and Coercive Interrogation

PREVENTION AND CONFLICT

On the Record: US Disclosures on Rendition, Secret Detention, and Coercive Interrogation

This report is a joint effort between the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice and Amnesty International, Cageprisoners, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Human Rights Watch, and Reprieve.

This report aims to shed light both on what has been revealed and what has been obscured by the U.S. government. It also seeks to demonstrate the enormous range of information that is in the public sphere about the nature and scope of the U.S. rendition, secret detention, and coercive interrogation activities. This exercise makes it increasingly evident that the threats of disclosure of “state secrets” and harm to national security are ill-founded, and that the real concern lies in the very fact that a program of this nature exists and continues to operate.

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According to the United States (U.S.) government, shortly after September 11, 2001, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was tasked with planning a “separate” program to begin secretly detaining and interrogating individuals outside of the United States. At that time, the CIA was also reportedly authorized to forcibly transfer individuals to foreign countries for interrogation in a practice commonly known as “rendition” or “extraordinary rendition.” Starting with the rendition of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi to Egypt in January 2002, and the detention and interrogation of Abu Zubaydah in March 2002,4 the U.S. post-9/11 rendition, secret detention, and coercive interrogation program has since swept up many individuals, the vast majority of whom are still unaccounted for by the United States.

Between 2001 and September 2006, information about CIA rendition, secret detention, and coercive interrogation operations emerged piecemeal. The U.S. government was the source of some of this information: officials discussed rendition in the media and on Capitol Hill, but gave only partial accounts; they announced the capture of individuals, but refused to disclose their whereabouts; and they informed the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the U.S. (the 9/11 Commission) that certain individuals were “currently in U.S. custody,” but refused to give the Commission the access it sought to the detainees themselves. The U.S. government also provided “statements” culled from interrogations on behalf of certain secret CIA detainees in the cases of United States v. Paracha and United States v. Moussaoui. Media, inter-governmental bodies (such as the Council of Europe and the United Nations (UN)), human rights organizations, and former detainees also provided comprehensive insights into the CIA’s activities.

In an effort to obtain further information from the U.S. government about its rendition, secret detention, and coercive interrogation activities, in 2004, 2006, and 2007, Amnesty International USA (AIUSA), the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), and the International Human Rights Clinic at NYU School of Law Center for Human Rights and Global Justice submitted Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to several U.S. agencies, including the CIA. Following a refusal to disclose the majority of the information sought, AIUSA, CCR, and NYU IHRC filed suit in June 2007 in federal court in the Southern District of New York. In spring 2008, the CIA admitted that it had more than 7,000 relevant documents, but sought a ruling that it did not need to disclose the vast majority of those documents, arguing, inter alia, that it cannot be compelled to disclose information it argues is properly classified. In response, on June 26, 2008, AIUSA, CCR, and NYU IHRC filed an opposition to the CIA’s motion for summary judgment and a memorandum of law in support of a cross-motion for partial summary judgment.

August 14, 2008 Youssef Farhat Product

Surviving the Darkness: Testimony from the U.S. “Black Sites”

PREVENTION AND CONFLICT

Surviving the Darkness: Testimony from the U.S. “Black Sites”

This report is a condensed version of the Declaration. It omits references to, and copies of, most exhibits to the Declaration but is otherwise unchanged. After more than eighteen months of being held “off the record” by the U.S. government, the Declaration and this report is Mohamed Bashmilah’s opportunity to tell his own story. Here, he puts back on the record the truth about the extensive human rights violations he and his family have suffered as a result of his enforced disappearance.

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On September 6, 2006, President George W. Bush acknowledged that the United States operates a program of secret detention in the “War on Terror.” In the same statement, President Bush indicated that fourteen of the individuals held in the program had been transferred to Guantánamo Bay and that “…there are now no terrorists in the CIA program.” President Bush did not disclose the fate and whereabouts of the other individuals known or believed to have been secretly detained at some point by the U.S. government, and he left open the possibility that the CIA program would be used again.

A number of the individuals known or suspected to have been held secretly by the United States are still missing. The fate and whereabouts of a smaller number is known as a result of the efforts of human rights organizations.

Since 2006, the International Human Rights Clinic at New York University School of Law has represented two such individuals—Yemeni nationals Mohammed Abdullah Saleh al-Asad and Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah. Their stories exemplify the nature and breadth of the U.S. system of detention in the “War on Terror,” as well as the treatment that individuals targeted in the “War on Terror” suffer.

December 2007.

December 24, 2007 Youssef Farhat Product

Off the Record: US Responsibility for Enforced Disappearances in the ‘War on Terror’

PREVENTION AND CONFLICT

Off the Record: US Responsibility for Enforced Disappearances in the ‘War on Terror’

Based on research by six major human rights groups—Amnesty International, Cageprisoners, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU School of Law, Human Rights Watch and Reprieve— this briefing paper identifies individuals believed to have been held at some point by the United States in secret sites, all of whom remain missing.

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On September 6, 2006, President George W. Bush revealed that the United States runs a system of secret detention in the “War on Terror,” but he did not disclose how many individuals were secretly detained. While only the U.S. government knows exactly who remains missing, Off the Record provides the most comprehensive list of these individuals, who are believed to have been subject to an enforced disappearance for which the United States bears responsibility.

This briefing paper provides information about detainees already identified as “disappeared” (for example, Ali Abdul-Hamid al-Fakhiri, commonly known as Ibn al-Shaykh alLibi) and names four missing detainees for the first time. It reveals the extent to which the United States illegally uses “proxy detention” to empty its secret sites and demonstrates that far from targeting the “worst of the worst,” the system sweeps up low-level detainees and even involves the detention of the wives and children of the “disappeared,” in violation of their human rights.

Off the Record also documents allegations concerning the treatment of detainees while in secret detention, including torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

The briefing paper is available in Arabic, Spanish and English.

June 7, 2007 Youssef Farhat Product