UN Updates
Our strategic presence in Geneva sets us apart as the sole NGO exclusively committed to economic, social, cultural, and environmental rights. This permits us to play a pivotal role in promoting and protecting these rights globally.
This publication focuses on the design of the Second Protocol on tax dispute prevention and resolution. It draws on compliance and enforcement models from human rights and trade treaties to propose a hybrid mechanism that ensures fairness, efficiency and accessibility. The report recommends a multi-tiered system with binding decisions, robust oversight, and capacity-building support, particularly for Global South countries, to foster an equitable and enforceable global tax dispute architecture grounded in human rights.
This publication is part of a series, which you can find here.
This publication focuses on legal and procedural lessons from past multilateral treaties to inform the design of the Second Protocol on tax dispute prevention and resolution. Analysing key success factors like inclusivity, enforcement, flexibility, civil society engagement and financial support, the report offers policy recommendations to help build a fairer, more effective, and human rights-aligned global tax system.
This publication is part of a series, which you can find here.
This publication argues that the UN Tax Convention offers a vital chance to shift global tax governance towards greater transparency and justice, aligning taxation with human rights obligations. While civil society secured key wins, like recognising the link between tax cooperation and rights fulfilment, some countries, especially in the Global North, are pushing to limit transparency under the guise of protecting privacy. Our paper contends that such narratives serve the interests of wealthy individuals and multinational corporations who exploit secrecy and legal loopholes to avoid taxes, thereby deepening inequality and depriving governments of funds for essential public services. This publication calls for robust, rights-based tax transparency measures to ensure accountability, fairness and sufficient public revenue.
You can find the executive summary here and the full publication below.
This publication is part of a series, which you can find here.
From 2025 to 2027, UN Member States will engage in intergovernmental negotiations towards a Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation. This process could establish a new multilateral norm-setting space to address structural asymmetries in global tax governance and strengthen the fiscal capacities of all States to deliver on human rights and sustainable development commitments.
The convention offers a legally binding vehicle to tackle illicit financial flows, abusive tax practices and profit shifting by multinational enterprises, core barriers to equitable resource mobilisation and systemic reform.
As negotiations progress, the legal architecture of both the framework convention and its protocols will be critical to ensuring coherence, enforceability and alignment with international law. Substantive provisions must be precise, normatively sound and institutionally operable.
This series provides international legal analysis tailored to the convention process, aiming to inform negotiators, civil society and other stakeholders. By bridging disciplinary divides and unpacking legal dimensions of key issues, it supports the design of a coherent, effective and rights-aligned international tax instrument.
Publications
Taxpayers’ Rights and the UN Tax Convention: Addressing the Weaponisation of Privacy and Confidentiality to Reinstate Tax Transparency in Favour of Tax Justice
This publication argues that the UN Tax Convention offers a vital chance to shift global tax governance towards greater transparency and justice, aligning taxation with human rights obligations. While civil society secured key wins, like recognising the link between tax cooperation and rights fulfilment, some countries, especially in the Global North, are pushing to limit transparency under the guise of protecting privacy. Our paper contends that such narratives serve the interests of wealthy individuals and multinational corporations who exploit secrecy and legal loopholes to avoid taxes, thereby deepening inequality and depriving governments of funds for essential public services. This publication calls for robust, rights-based tax transparency measures to ensure accountability, fairness and sufficient public revenue.
Click here to access the publication.
Legal and Procedural Lessons from International Treaties for Multilateral Tax Treaty Negotiations
This publication focuses on legal and procedural lessons from past multilateral treaties to inform the design of the Second Protocol on tax dispute prevention and resolution. Analysing key success factors like inclusivity, enforcement, flexibility, civil society engagement and financial support, the report offers policy recommendations to help build a fairer, more effective, and human rights-aligned global tax system.
Click here to access the publication.
Comparative Legal Insights for the Second Protocol on the Prevention and Resolution of Tax Disputes
This publication focuses on the design of the Second Protocol on tax dispute prevention and resolution. It draws on compliance and enforcement models from human rights and trade treaties to propose a hybrid mechanism that ensures fairness, efficiency and accessibility. The report recommends a multi-tiered system with binding decisions, robust oversight, and capacity-building support, particularly for Global South countries, to foster an equitable and enforceable global tax dispute architecture grounded in human rights.
Click here to access the publication.
More publications about the UN Tax Convention:
We have published our position paper on the current draft of the outcome document for the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4).
While recognising positive elements that move development financing closer to a human rights-based approach, our analysis raises concern that the current draft lacks the ambition needed to reshape the systems that perpetuate global inequality. We highlight risks in areas such as public services, debt, climate finance, taxation and private sector involvement, stressing the need for stronger commitments to human rights, equity and sustainability.
As negotiations continue towards the final outcome document in Seville, we urge States to reject the watering down of ambition and to deliver a roadmap that upholds human rights, addresses structural inequalities and supports sustainable development.
Echoing the call of the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Development for his 2025 report on the nexus between gender equality and the right to development, this April we prepared a collective submission, along with Public Services International (PSI) and Corporación Humanas (Chile).
The document sought to make visible the shortcomings of the current state of care work worldwide, where the overrepresentation of women and girls reinforces gender inequalities, exacerbates multidimensional poverty and forces them further away from development.
Overcoming these barriers to development requires rebuilding the social organisation of care towards a care society: one that assumes interdependency and eco-dependency as constituent dimensions of life, and positions care as an activity that includes everything we do to maintain, continue and repair our world. Through this approach, we are pushing for the resourcing of care as a public good and a collective social responsibility, and the enshrinement of care and support as a human right within international, regional, domestic and sub-national legislations.
This input follows a series of activities we have organised to foster a care society as a critical step for the advancement of economic, social, cultural and environmental rights. Read all our latest endeavours during the 69th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in New York, in our latest newsletter.
We submitted a contribution to the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation, titled 'The Water and Energy Nexus: the Human Rights to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation and Access to Energy for All'.
Two key case studies are used to exemplify how the transition to renewable energies have impacted water cycles and exacerbated water stress for local communities: the case of lithium extraction in Chile and the case of the construction of hydroelectric plants in Guatemala.
Our submission documents the inextricable links between the energy and water sectors, their mutual complementarity and the importance of creating synergies between them to ensure the sustainable provision of these resources for current and future generations.
The submission aims to provide insights into the following key issues:
- The energy-water nexus in the energy transition
- The right to sustainable energy
- The case of lithium extraction in Chile
- The case of the construction of the hydroelectric project in Guatemala
We joined 24 other organisations in the Human Rights and Climate Change Working Group to contribute to 'Fossil Fuels-Fueled Loss and Damage, the Right to Remedy and the Polluter Pays Principle', a joint submission to the UN Special Rapporteur on climate change and human rights for their 2025 Annual Report.
The joint submission provides evidence that shows how the failure to phase out of fossil fuels is the main cause of climate-related loss and damage with wide scale impacts that encompass economic and non economic damages. It also underlines the role of militarisation in sustaining the fossil fuel economy, propelling cycles of violence and systemic human rights violations, depleting ecosystems and heightening conflict, ultimately putting all conditions of wellbeing at risk.
In this context, our submission emphasises that, under international human rights law, States are obligated to protect human rights from the harms of climate change by phasing out fossil fuels.
As part of our commitment to engaging with human rights mechanisms, we submitted a written contribution to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Development’s upcoming report on 'Financing for Inclusive, Sustainable and Participatory Development'. Our submission underscores the urgent need to transform global financing structures into ones that are rights-based, equitable and climate-responsible.
We raised concerns about the growing reliance on private sector-led solutions, particularly in the delivery of essential public services, which too often operate without sufficient regulation or accountability. In response, we called for progressive fiscal reforms, a fairer international tax system and grant-based climate financing, rejecting debt-driven approaches that exacerbate inequality.
We also stressed the need for meaningful participation by civil society, especially from the Global South, in international processes such as the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4).
With FfD4 approaching, we urge global actors to put forward a bold agenda that ensures sufficient public financing while protecting human rights and advancing environmental justice.
