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Explore our work with partners, globally and locally, to tackle social and economic injustice using a human rights lens.

Raising awareness on how privatisation and financialisation are hampering the SDGs agenda

Raising awareness on how privatisation and financialisation are hampering the SDGs agenda

GI-ESCR, alongside Human Rights Watch, the Center for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESR) and Minority Rights Group International (MRG), organised a discussion in New York, as the 2023 SDG Summit was taking place on 18-19 September 2023 to look at Corporate capture of the SDG agenda: How privatisation and financialisation hamper efforts to reach those far left behind.

The discussion brought together experts, including our ED Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona, to address the fact that while business involvement in the SDGs may have brought some benefits, CESR, GI-ESCR and MRG have documented numerous recent examples where private sector intrusion has brought considerable harm to marginalized communities in terms of their realisation of the SDGs, such as health (SDG 3), education (SDG 4) and water (SDG 6).

These three SDGs concern fundamental rights establishing state obligations to provide essential services. Meanwhile, the private sector is more forcefully intruding in international processes, such as climate change (SDG 13) and biodiversity (SDGs 14 & 15).

A lack of accountability is a key driver of these injustices. For the past several decades, many governments around the world have outsourced public services to the private sector without strengthening oversight mechanisms. Profits have been siphoned off for corporate gain rather than reinvested in the necessary infrastructure. The intrusion of the private sector comes after decades-long processes of financialisation, whereby shifts in capital to financial investment have led to chronic underinvestment in essential services.

 

"Governments must stop diverting public funds to private for-profit corporations to deliver on the Sustainable Development Goals and have to ensure that corporations pay their fair share of taxes." Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona Watch the full discussion here.

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