Financial Transparency Coalition

This blog is part of a series ahead of our annual conference, which takes place next week. Each piece is written by a conference speaker and aims to give a preview of some of the issues to be discussed. 

Written by Niko Lusiani, Director of the Human Rights in Economic Policy program at the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR)

Experts, advocates, government officials and journalists from all regions of the globe will be gathering next week in Lima, Peru to scale-up strategic efforts to curb illicit financial flows in ways which ensure sufficient, equitable and accountable financing of sustainable development.

The timing couldn’t be more auspicious. As governments move into the final stages of negotiating a set of new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to replace the Millennium Development Goals after their expiration date next year, this post-2015 momentum represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to shape the contours of national government priorities, policies and financing decisions in areas from education to ecology, housing to health, climate change to care work. Beyond national commitments, the post-2015 process is also an important strategic opportunity to secure global commitments on tax cooperation in a truly multilateral institution whose reason of being and higher-order imperative—unlike other bodies like the G20—is to promote human rights in development.

As the post-2015 process now starts to harden and fault lines become more pronounced, experts and activists from the development, environmental and human rights communities are converging around a fairly straightforward argument.[1] Unless governments agree to concrete tax and budgetary commitments which ensure robust, equitable and accountable fiscal foundations for sustainable development, the SDGs will end up merely dead letters.

In light of this unique moment, a special breakout session, “The 2015 Fiscal Revolution: Where Human Rights, Development, and Fiscal Policy Converge” will be held in Lima. Participants from the Center for Economic and Social Rights, Christian Aid, DAWN, Tax Justice Network and Jubilee USA will explore why the post-2015 debates matter, discuss concrete proposals to embed fiscal justice in the post-2015 commitments, and consider how human rights standards, accountability mechanisms and organizations like my own can be better leveraged to overcome some of the political obstacles to ensuring robust, equitable and accountable financing of sustainable development.

So join us as we together devise ways to transform this fleeting post-2015 momentum into an enduring fiscal justice movement.