Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Tax justice and human rights: call for essays on litigation strategies

I received the following notice by email, of interest:
Oxfam and the Tax Justice Network are joining together to launch a tax justice and human rights essay competition for legal students and professionals. With tax justice rising up the human rights agenda, we want to hear your ideas on how human rights law can be used in the fight against tax dodging.

Tax justice is a human rights issue

International tax dodging by multinational corporations and wealthy elites costs countries both rich and poor billions of dollars a year in lost revenues. This is undermining vital public services where they are most needed and further driving inequality at a time when the richest 62 people in the world have as much wealth as half the world's population.  Overall, substantial damage is done to human rights through the use of tax havens, the opacity of corporate accounting, the manipulation of trade prices and the disguising of beneficial ownership. But national and international fora may provide scope for redress.

What we want

We're inviting 3,500-word complaints to identify the plaintiffs, defendants, remedies sought, and arguments that are considered enforceable in an existing legal forum. We seek complaints that could form the basis of effective  advice to developing countries, or to groups of citizens in countries at any income level who have suffered, and want to know how they could best use law to protect their or their people's human rights in the face of tax injustice.
I have a few thoughts on this and I really look forward to seeing the results of the competition.

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