Profiling the Poor in the Dutch Welfare State

TECHNOLOGY AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Profiling the Poor in the Dutch Welfare State

Report on court hearing in litigation in the Netherlands about digital welfare fraud detection system (‘SyRI’)

On Tuesday, October 29, 2019, I attended a hearing before the District Court of The Hague (the Netherlands) in litigation by a coalition of Dutch civil society organizations challenging the Dutch government’s System Risk Indication (“SyRI”). The Digital Welfare State and Human Rights Project at NYU Law, which I direct, recently collaborated with the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights in preparing an amicus brief to the District Court. The Special Rapporteur became involved in this case because SyRI has exclusively been used to detect welfare fraud and other irregularities in poor neighborhoods in four Dutch cities and affects the right to social security and to privacy of the poorest members of Dutch society. This litigation may also set a highly relevant legal precedent with impact beyond Dutch borders in an area that has received relatively little judicial scrutiny to date.

SR Report

Amicus Brief

Lies, damn lies, and algorithms

What is SyRI? The formal answer can be found in legislation and implementing regulations from 2014. In order to coordinate government action against illicit use of government funds and benefits in the area of social security, tax benefits and labor law, Dutch law allows for the sharing of data between municipalities, welfare authorities, tax authorities and other relevant government authorities since 2014. A total of 17 categories of data held by government authorities may be shared in this context, from employment and tax data, to benefit data, health insurance data and enforcement data, among other categories of digitally stored information. Government authorities wishing to cooperate in a concrete SyRI project request the Minister for Social Affairs and Employment to use the SyRI tool by pooling and analyzing the relevant data from various authorities using an algorithmic risk model.

The Minister has outsourced the tasks of pooling and analyzing the data to a private foundation, somewhat unfortunately named ‘The Intelligence Agency (‘Inlichtingenbureau’). The Intelligence Agency pseudonymizes the data pool, analyzes the data using an algorithmic risk model and creates a file for those individuals (or corporations) who are deemed to be at a higher risk of being involved in benefit fraud and other irregularities. The Minister then analyzes these files and notifies the cooperating government authorities of those individuals (or corporations) are considered at higher risk of committing benefit fraud or other irregularities (‘risk notification’). Risk notifications are included in a register for two years. Those who are included in the register are not actively notified of this registration, but they can receive access to their information in the register after a specific request.

The preceding understanding of how the system works can be derived from the legislative texts and history, but a surprising amount of uncertainty remains about how exactly SyRI works in practice. This became abundantly clear in the hearing in the SyRI-case before the District Court of The Hague on October 29. The court is assessing the plaintiffs’ claim that SyRI, as legislated in 2014, violates norms of applicable international law, including the rights to privacy, data protection and a fair trial recognized in the European Convention on Human Rights, the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the EU General Data Protection Regulation. In a courtroom packed with representatives from the 8 plaintiffs, reporters and concerned citizens from areas where SyRI has been used, the first question by the three-judge panel was to clarify the radically different views held by the plaintiffs and the Dutch State as to what SyRI is exactly.

According to the State, SyRI merely compares data from different government databases, operated by different authorities, in order to find simple inconsistencies. Although this analysis is undertaken with the assistance of an algorithm, the State underlined that this algorithm operates on the basis of pre-defined indicators of risk and that the algorithm is not of the ‘learning’ type. The State further emphasized that SyRI is not a Big Data or data-mining system, but that it employs a targeted analysis on the basis of a limited dataset with a clearly defined objective. It also argued that a risk notification by SyRI is merely a – potential – starting point for further investigations by individual government authorities and does not have any direct and automatic legal consequences such as the imposition of a fine or the suspension or withdrawal of government benefits or assistance.

But plaintiffs strongly contested the State’s characterization of SyRI. They claimed instead that SyRI is not narrowly targeted but instead aims at entire (poor) neighborhoods, that diverse and unconnected categories of personal data are brought together in SyRI projects, and that the resulting data exchange and analysis occur on a large scale. In their view, SyRI projects could therefore be qualified as projects involving problematic uses of Big Data, data-mining and profiling. They also made clear that it is exceedingly difficult for them or the District Court to assess what SyRI actually is or is not doing, because key elements of the system remain secret and the relevant legislation does not restrict the methods used, including the request to cooperating authorities to undertake a SyRI project, the risk model used, and the ways in which personal data can be processed. All of these elements remain hidden from outside scrutiny.

Game the system, leave your water tap running

The District Court asked a series of probing and critical follow-up questions in an attempt to clarify the exact functioning of SyRI and to understand the justification for the secrecy surrounding it. One can sympathize with the court’s attempt to grasp the basic facts about SyRI in order to enable it to undertake its task of judicial oversight. Pushed by the District Court to clarify why the State could not be more open about the functioning of SyRI, the attorney for the State warned about welfare beneficiaries ‘gaming the system’. Referring to a pilot project pre-dating SyRI, in which welfare authority data about individuals claiming low-income benefits was matched with usage data held by publicly-owned drinking water companies to identify beneficiaries who committed fraud by falsely claiming they were living alone while actually living together (to claim a higher benefit level), the attorney for the State claimed that making it known that water usage is a ‘risk indicator’ could lead beneficiaries to leave their taps running to avoid detection. Some individuals attending the hearing could be heard snickering when this prediction was made.

Another fascinating exchange between the judges and the attorney for the State dealt with the standards applied by the Minister when assessing a request for a SyRI project by municipal and other government authorities. According to the State’s attorney, what would commonly happen is that a municipality has a ‘problem neighborhood’ and wants to tackle its problems, which are presumed to include welfare fraud and other irregularities, through SyRI. The request to the Minister is typically based ‘on the law, experience and logical thinking’ according to the State. Unsatisfied with this reply, the District Court probed the State for a more concrete justification of the use of SyRI and the precise standards applied to justify its use: ‘In Bloemendaal (one of the richest municipalities of the Netherlands) a lot of people enjoy going to classical concerts; in a problem neighborhood, there are a lot of people who receive government welfare benefits; why is that a justification for the use of SyRI?’, the Court asked. The attorney for the State had to admit that specific neighborhoods were targeted because those areas housed more people who were on welfare benefits and that, while participating authorities usually have no specific evidence that there are high(er) levels of benefit fraud in those neighborhoods, this higher proportion of people on benefits is enough reason to use SyRI.

Finally, and of great relevance to the intensity of the Court’s judicial scrutiny, the question of the gravity of the invasion of human rights – more specifically, the right to privacy – was a central topic of the hearing. The State argued that the data being shared and analyzed was existing data and not new data. It furthermore argued that for those individuals whose data was shared and analyzed, but who were not considered a ‘higher risk’, there was no harm at all: their data had been pseudonymized and was removed after the analysis. The opposing view by plaintiffs was that the government-held data that was shared and analyzed in SyRI was not originally collected for the specific purpose of enforcement. Plaintiffs also argued that – due to the wide categories of data that were potentially shared and analyzed in SyRI – a very intimate profile could be made of individuals in targeted neighborhoods: ‘This is all about profiling and creating files on people’.

Judgment expected in early 2020

The District Court announced that it expects to publish its judgment in this case on 29 January 2020. There are many questions to be answered by the Court. In non-legal language, they include at least the following: How does SyRI work exactly? Does it matter whether SyRI uses a relatively straightforward ‘decision-tree’ type of algorithm or, instead, machine learning algorithms? What is the harm in pooling previously siloed government data? What is the harm in classifying an individual as ‘high risk’? Does SyRI discriminate on the basis of socio-economic status, migrant status, race or color? Does the current legislation underpinning SyRI give sufficient clarity and adequate legal standards to meaningfully curb the use of State power to the detriment of individual rights? Can current levels of secrecy be maintained in a democracy based on the rule of law?

In light of the above, there will be many eyes focused on the Netherlands in January when a potentially groundbreaking legal precedent will be set in the debate on digital welfare states and human rights.

November 1, 2019. Christiaan van Veen, Digital Welfare State & Human Rights Project (2019-2022), Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU School of Law.

November 1, 2019 Dev Account Uncategorized

Guyanese Indigenous Council Rejects Canadian Mining Company’s Flimsy Environmental and Social Impact Assessment, Calls for Rejection of Mining Permit

CLIMATE & ENVIRONMENT

Guyanese Indigenous Council Rejects Canadian Mining Company’s Flimsy Environmental and Social Impact Assessment, Calls for Rejection of Mining Permit

The Global Justice Clinic has been working with the South Rupununi District Council (SRDC) since 2016. Through the clinic, students have provided data analysis and legal support for monitoring activity undertaken by the SRDC.

Last week, the South Rupununi District Council (SRDC), a legal representative institution for the Wapichan people, released a statement forcefully denouncing the procedurally and substantively defective environmental and social impact assessment (ESIA) submitted by a Canadian mining company (Guyana Goldstrike) seeking to begin large-scale mining operations on Marutu Taawa through its Guyanese subsidiary (Romanex). Marutu Taawa, also known as Marudi Mountain, stands deep in the traditional territory of the Wapichan and holds historical, cultural, spiritual and biological significance for the entire region. Because Marutu Taawa sits at a critical watershed, the environmental impact of large-scale mining operations would threaten the ability of the Wapichan people to continue living in the ancestral lands they have called home for centuries. Notwithstanding the threat to the Wapichan people posed by large-scale mining, SRDC finds that Guyana Goldstrike’s ESIA relies on incomplete, inaccurate, or decades-old information to ignore the substantial environmental, public health, and cultural consequences that would occur if such mining operations were allowed to proceed. The SRDC also strongly condemns the mining company’s failure to consult the Council, as a legal representative institution of the Wapichan people. This failure to meaningfully consult stands in direct violation of both Guyanese and international law.

Given the inadequacy of the ESIA and Guyana Goldstrike’s flouting of domestic and international law, the SRDC has strongly encouraged the Guyanese Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to deny the Canadian company’s subsidiary the environmental permit needed to initiate large-scale operations in the territory. The SRDC also calls on the EPA to oversee a process that ensures that Guyana Goldstrike and Romanex adhere to Guyanese and international law and best practices in the international mining sector.

This post was originally published as a press release on September 28, 20218.

September 28, 2018 Dev Account Uncategorized

NYU Clinics File Lawsuit Seeking Disclosure of Trump Policy Behind Termination of TPS for Haitians

HUMAN RIGHTS MOVEMENT

NYU Clinics File Lawsuit Seeking Disclosure of Trump Policy Behind Termination of TPS for Haitians

On Thursday January 25, 2018, the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers’ Guild and Margaret Satterthwaite, NYU School of Law professor and director of the Global Justice Clinic (GJC), filed a Freedom of Information lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Department of State, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to obtain records documenting the reasons behind the U.S. government’s decision to terminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitians. NYU School of Law’s Immigrant Rights Clinic provided legal counsel.

Download Lawsuit

On November 20, 2017, the Trump Administration terminated TPS for Haiti, stating that the conditions caused by the earthquake no longer exist. Many reports, including Extraordinary Conditions: A Statutory Analysis of Haiti’s Qualification for TPS, published by the GJC in October, show that families in Haiti continue to face displacement, homelessness, one of the worst cholera epidemics in the world, hunger, and other challenges that make Haiti unsafe for return. The termination will affect the estimated 58,000 Haitian TPS holders and their families. TPS is set to terminate in July of 2019.

President Trump’s recent racist statements towards certain foreign nations, including Haiti, make the public’s right to access information that influenced the decision to terminate TPS that much more urgent.

January 25, 2018.

Communications from NYU clinics do not represent the institutional views of NYU School of Law or the Center, if any.

January 25, 2018 Dev Account Uncategorized

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

Global Justice Clinic Calls for Transparency in the Development of Haiti’s Mining Sector

CLIMATE AND ENVIRONMENT

Global Justice Clinic Calls for Transparency in the Development of Haiti’s Mining Sector

On July 24th, the Haitian media reported that Senator Hervé Fourcand submitted a draft mining law to Parliament for its consideration. This law has not been made available to the public despite repeated requests made by GJC collaborator, the Kolektif Jistis Min (KJM), a collective of Haitian social movement organizations that support communities affected by metal mining. The passage of the mining law would unlock the sector. The law that currently governs mining in Haiti is seen as outdated, and considered the key obstacle to future metal mining.

In late August, GJC Haiti Project Director Ellie Happel and Oxfam America staff met with members of Congress and the State Department in Washington, D.C. The objective of the meetings in D.C. was to request that U.S. actors encourage the Haitian government to disclose the draft law and to hold a meaningful public debate about its content. Such a debate is crucial at this time, since Haiti does not yet have a modern mining industry, and the human rights and environmental risks attendant to the nascent sector are significant. At the beginning of December, Representative Jan Schakowsky of Illinois submitted a letter to the President of Haiti’s Parliament, suggesting that he makes the draft law public and stating concerns about the human rights and environmental risks that mining poses. Four other members of Congress signed the letter.

The lack of access to information about Haiti’s mining sector is a longstanding problem. In 2013, the Haitian Senate passed a resolution calling for a moratorium on mining, citing the “opacity” of information about the country’s mineral resources. In 2015 GJC and KJM testified at a hearing before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on the situation of the right to access to information in Haiti. The Commission found the testimony about the “existing obstacles to the exercise of the right of access to public information”—specifically in the context of mining—“troubling.”

GJC provides an extensive analysis of the draft mining law in its report co-authored with Hastings College of Law, Byen Konte, Mal Kalkile? Human Rights and Environmental Risks of Gold Mining in Haiti. GJC found that this version of the draft law fails to adequately protect Haiti’s environment, violates the Haitian Constitution of 1987, and does not respect the rights of Haitian communities. GJC created a brief analysis of the law to use in advocacy efforts. GJC translated it into Kreyòl, and KJM similarly uses it in advocacy efforts in Haiti, including to inform radio interviews.

Download Brief Analysis

August 29, 2017.

August 29, 2017 Dev Account 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.

Download Materials

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

Byen Konte, Mal Kalkile? Human Rights and Environmental Risks of Gold Mining in Haiti

CLIMATE AND ENVIRONMENT

Byen Konte, Mal Kalkile? Human Rights and Environmental Risks of Gold Mining in Haiti

Until now, most discussions about mining have occurred behind closed doors among government officials, company stakeholders, and international financial institutions. There is a dearth of information in the public domain about what gold mining entails, what challenges it poses, what opportunities it presents, and what it may mean for communities and the country as a whole. The purpose of this report is to help fill that gap.

Download Report

Haiti stands at a crossroads: The prospect of gold mining glitters on the horizon, while the reality of an uncertain political future, weak institutions, and widespread impoverishment glares in the foreground. Celebrated as the only nation in the world born of a successful slave revolution, but known today as the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti is a fragile, if resilient, place. Rights are precarious, and basic resources are scarce. As of 2014, only 62 percent of all households in Haiti had access to safe drinking water, while less than 50 percent enjoyed such access in rural areas. The cholera epidemic that erupted in 2010, which has taken more than 9,000 lives to date, has revealed the vulnerability of the Haitian population amid inadequate water, sanitation, and health infrastructure. But it has also highlighted the power of popular protest. Haiti has a longstanding tradition of peasant movements, in which ordinary Haitians have mobilized to challenge and overcome injustice. It is in this context—against the backdrop of the country’s complex history with foreign intervention and investment—that efforts to develop a mining industry in Haiti must be understood.

Minerals can be exploited only once. The current moment, before mining has begun, presents a unique opportunity for the Haitian people to engage in a robust public debate about the risks and benefits of mining and for the Haitian State to implement preventive measures to avoid future human rights abuses and environmental harms. Such a debate requires transparency, public education, and active engagement of Haitian communities.

Report Objectives and Approach

Recognizing the important decisions that Haiti faces, the Global Justice Clinic at New York University School of Law (GJC) and the University of California Hastings College of the Law have prepared this Report concerning the risks and realities of modern gold mining and its implications for human rights and the environment in Haiti. The Report is the fruit of collaboration between environmental law experts and human rights lawyers, informed by the Justice in Mining Collective, a platform of Haitian organizations and individuals committed to promoting the interests of Haiti’s rural, northern communities and prompting a national dialogue about the future of Haiti’s mineral resources. Consistent with best practice in the field of international human rights, this Report is based on intensive documentary research and review of primary and secondary materials on gold mining in Haiti; interviews with community members, Haitian government officials, and representatives of mining companies and international organizations operating in Haiti; field investigation; and discussions with members of communities in areas where companies hold permits for activities related to gold mining. The Report is a product of more than 100 days of interviews and participant observation in more than fifty meetings held in communities affected by mining-related activities in Haiti (see infra).

All Report-related research in Haiti was undertaken using a human rights-based approach, which supports the power and capacity of people and communities to change their own lives, both independently and through institutions that represent or affect them. This approach takes respect for human rights as its starting point and end objective, emphasizes the informed engagement of rights-holders in both the analysis of factors affecting their own lives and the design of solutions, and stresses accountability, by including evaluation of both the process and outcomes of the research.

The Report addresses four main issues:

the process of modern gold mining, through an examination of its mechanics around the world and a history of extractive activity in Haiti;
the experiences and concerns of communities in Haiti that have hosted mineral exploration in the past ten years, including community members’ allegations that mining companies have failed to respect human rights and the communities’ fear of future human rights violations;
the environmental and social risks of mining gold in Haiti;
the institutional, legal, and regulatory frameworks that will shape the economic, social, and environmental consequences of mining in Haiti.

September 1, 2016 Dev Account 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