INEQUALITIES
Launched in 2015, this initiative expanded upon the Center’s long record of working in the field of economic and social rights, to deepen interdisciplinary dialogues and scholarship, and critically examine the role of international human rights law in regulating the global economy and in countering its tendency to exacerbate inequalities.
By promoting research and scholarship at the intersection of the global economy and human rights, the Center seeks to enhance understanding of the structural causes of deepening inequalities, including the role of economic and fiscal policies. It also aims to strengthen community efforts to document the lived effects of those policies on the enjoyment of economic and social rights and to identify and reinforce channels of accountability for violations of those rights.
Throughout its work on issues ranging from the rights to water, food, and livelihood, to the use of interdisciplinary legal and social science research to improve documentation of ESR violation, the Center has consistently focused on the human rights obligations of powerful institutions and actors, such as donor governments and international financial institutions, in the face of deepening global inequalities.
Tax and Human Rights
Debates over tax policies and tax abuses have gained public prominence in recent years, with growing outcry over corporate tax scandals and the use of tax havens by wealthy elites to avoid paying their fair share. But there has been limited attention in legal scholarship and advocacy to the effects of these tax policies and practices on human rights, or to the implications of human rights law for the design and implementation of taxes internationally and domestically.
- Switzerland: State Responsibility for the Impacts of Cross-border Tax Abuse on Women’s Rights & Gender Equality. Submission to the CEDAW 65th Pre-Sessional Working Group Geneva (March 7-11, 2016).
- United Kingdom: UK Responsibility for the Impacts of Cross-border Tax Abuse on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Submission to the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights 58th Session (June 06-24, 2016).
- The Global Justice Clinic Applauds UN Committee for Calling UK to Account Over Impact of Unjust Tax Laws. Statement.
- Switzerland: Swiss Responsibility for the Extraterritorial Impacts of Tax Abuse on Women’s Rights. Shadow report; Submission to the CEDAW 65th Session (October 24-November 18, 2016).
- CEDAW calls Switzerland to account for effects of its tax policies on women’s rights. Statement.
