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GI-ESCR Convenes Strategic Global South Briefing as UN Tax Convention Negotiations Advance
As the United Nations launches its second and third negotiation sessions for the future Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation in New York, we brought together a strategic cross-regional dialogue to strengthen Global South collaboration in shaping an ambitious and equitable global tax system.
Held on Monday, 4 August, at the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung’s New York office, just after the official opening of the negotiations, the briefing gathered government representatives from Brazil, Côte d’Ivoire, Chile, Spain, and Colombia, alongside civil society and academic experts. The discussion was built on recent exchanges hosted by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), exploring how the Convention can become a transformative instrument for realising economic, social, and cultural rights (ESCR) in practice, particularly in a context of eroding trust in institutions and growing pressures on multilateralism.
Participants acknowledged that the Convention is emerging when public frustration with the lack of effective solutions to pressing socio-economic challenges is fueling distrust in governments, weakening the rule of law, and emboldening authoritarian tendencies worldwide. A robust and rights-based tax cooperation framework is more than a technical exercise; it is an opportunity to demonstrate that multilateralism can deliver concrete, material improvements in people’s lives and help rebuild faith in democratic, collective solutions.
A central focus of the briefing was the relationship between States’ extraterritorial obligations under international human rights law and the need for ambitious fiscal reforms to expand the fiscal space of the Global South. Participants examined measures such as establishing global beneficial ownership registries, tackling tax evasion and avoidance, and advancing fairer taxation frameworks, including the taxation of high-net-worth individuals. These discussions resonated with findings from GI-ESCR’s recent publication series, International Law at the UN Tax Convention.
Speakers included GI-ESCR’s Programme Officer on Economic Justice and Climate Finance, Ezequiel Steuermann; Tove Maria Ryding, Policy and Advocacy Manager on Tax Justice at EURODAD; Sergio Chaparro Hernández, International Policy and Advocacy Lead at the Tax Justice Network; Everlyn Muendo, Policy Officer on Tax & International Financial Architecture at Tax Justice Network Africa; and María Emilia Mamberti, Coordinator of the Initiative for Human Rights in Fiscal Policy. The event opened with remarks from David Williams, Director of the International Climate Justice Programme at Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung’s New York Office. It was moderated by Rio Hada, Chief of the Equality, Development and Rule of Law Section at OHCHR’s New York Office.
During the negotiations, we brought international law and human rights arguments to the debates on and off the floor, including arguments on the weaponization of human rights, alternatives for dispute settlement mechanisms, and models of framework conventions from other international experiences.
Our Programme Officer on Economic Justice, Michelle Cañas, called for a fair, transparent, and inclusive approach to resolving cross-border tax disputes. She stressed that current mechanisms are fragmented, costly, and biased toward wealthy nations and corporate actors, undermining countries' fiscal sovereignty and development prospects in the Global South. She urged negotiators to adopt unitary taxation to simplify the allocation of taxing rights, reduce disputes at the source, and ensure all countries, including those with few tax treaties, have equal access to just and efficient processes.
She also highlighted that fixing technical flaws in existing procedures is not enough. Instead, the Convention must address the structural roots of tax conflicts, safeguard against investor-state arbitration, and ensure adequate funding for developing states to access the legal and technical expertise needed to defend their rights. Any dispute resolution framework must strengthen national capacities, avoid unnecessary litigation, and uphold states’ ability to fulfill their human rights obligations.
As civil society, we reaffirmed our readiness to contribute evidence, analysis, and expertise from all regions to support the creation of a genuinely equitable global tax system.
You can see the complete intervention here.
With negotiations expected to continue until late 2027, we will remain committed to convening timely, cross-sectoral, and cross-regional exchanges that bridge geographical and disciplinary silos. Our goal is clear: to ensure the Convention and its future protocols deliver a democratic, inclusive, and rights-based global tax governance framework, recognising that sustained economic justice is not only a matter of fiscal policy, but a cornerstone for strengthening democratic resilience worldwide.
