On 12 August, the Special Rapporteurship on Economic, Social, Cultural, and Environmental Rights (REDESCA) of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) issued a press statement calling for human rights to be integrated into the open global discussions for reforming the international financial architecture and climate financing.

We welcome and celebrate this declaration, which is vital to ensuring that human rights priorities are leveraged in current and imminent forums of multilateral negotiation, such as the drafting sessions of the terms of reference of the future United Nations Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation (currently being discussed in New York City) and the upcoming COP 29 meeting in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Special Rapporteur Javier Palummo explicitly affirmed that “fiscal policy is intrinsically linked to human rights and climate justice.” Tax decisions taken by States regarding the generation and allocation of financial resources need to necessarily comply with the legal mandates established in International Human Rights Law—namely, ensuring the progressive realization of Economic, Social, Cultural, and Environmental Rights (ESCER). 

In that regard, it is fundamental that the processes leading to the creation of new legal instruments paving the way for future international cooperation on fiscal matters take human rights as a guiding principle for their interpretation, leading to concrete and practical reforms.

While the Zero Draft of the Terms of Reference of the future United Nations Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation has included human rights as a consideration in its preamble, the current negotiations in New York should serve to amplify the reach of this inclusion and, following REDESCA and civil society’s recommendation, determine their integration as a guiding legal principle for the future framework convention.

As to climate financing, REDESCA acknowledged the existence of an “environmental debt” being faced by countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, where the combination of reduced fiscal spaces, added to the present and future effects of the climate emergency, poses insurmountable obstacles and a differential impact on the livelihoods of the population.

The necessity to resort to non-concessionary loans to finance essential public functions places many States -particularly those in the Caribbean- in the delicate position of having to choose whether to meet their repayment obligations with public and private creditors or International Financial Institutions by way of austerity or conditionalities or failing to gain access to the necessary funds to finance the adaptation and mitigation measures that are needed to preserve the human rights of their population from the present and foreseeable consequences of the environmental crisis. 

Given that scenario, the Rapporteur highlighted the “urgent need to mobilise additional resources to meet climate financing objectives” through national and international progressive fiscal reforms.

This consideration proves essential not only in breaking the silos between the fiscal and climate justice discussions (a matter recently addressed by GI-ESCR in a dedicated webinar under the framework of REDFIS) but also in light of capitalising on the opportunities for synergy that the upcoming COP 29 in Azerbaijan poses to discuss the integration of new fiscal tools with the process leading to the establishment of the New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance (NCQG).

You can read the complete press release here.