MDG+10 civil society Hearings: "Human rights should not be absent from the MDGs"

Aldo Caliari from the Center of Concern also participated in the UN General Assembly Informal Interactive Hearings with Non-Governmental Organizations at United Nations Headquarters in New York from 14-15 June 2010. Read the notes from his presentation.

Statement to MDG Hearings with Civil Society and the Private Sector 
June 15, 2010 By Aldo Caliari, Center of Concern/ CIDSE 

Mr. Chairman, I am speaking today on behalf of CIDSE, a network of sixteen Catholic Development Agencies (14 of them in Europe and 2 in North America).

We want to express our alarm at the absence of human rights and right to development references in the Outcome document. Ironically, we go to the Financing for Development Outcome Document –which was a conference about finance‐‐ and we find more references to human rights there. We find references to “human rights, including the right to development”, “gender equality as a human right” and so on and so forth. We would have expected a conference on MDGs to have more on human rights.

In fact, it was not always like that. The Millennium Declaration contains human rights language that was removed when identifying the precise Goals.

We hear from governments that human rights become divisive, politicized, they lend themselves to political manipulation.

But that should not need to be the case. Well‐approached, human rights provide a unifying platform that catalyzes the efforts of all governments. Many of the structural transformations that MDGs call for will not happen as a result of a technocratic mandate to reach some targets, but as a result of the transparency, accountability and empowerment that a human rights approach can unleash.

At lunch time some of us attended a discussion on Decent Work that I think proves this point. No government wants to face unemployment, no government wins elections on unemployment. So common sense dictates there is a great incentive for governments to cooperate in ensuring full employment and decent work. I would submit the same is true for many of the human rights embedded in the Universal Declaration.

We also need a fresh look at the sources of financing for the MDGs.

The aid situation is very bleak, we cannot expect much in terms of increases in the near future. So we need to be willing to think out of the box.

We have to reach into every tool in our toolbox and mobilize every possible penny towards financing the MDGs. And we need to do it at this Summit, MDG + 10, not later.

Financial transaction taxes (FTTs), are one of these tools that is currently actively discussed. I hope the UN will speak with a clearer voice in this debate.

Already a consensus is emerging on their feasibility. Couple of months ago the IMF technical experts concluded that FTTs are feasible. So we should be moving to the next step: how to implement them. This is the right forum, the right institution to reach a political agreement like that.

At the MDG summit Leaders should reach a global agreement to implement FTTs, with the revenues from FTTs being used for funding development needs, including the MDGs and responding to climate change – certainly a social floor.

These funds must be additional to ODA commitments.

We also believe the UN should play a key role in determining the destination of FTTs’ revenues, their governance.

Similarly, Special Drawing Rights are a tool whose potential is underutilized so far.

To realize this potential, there is a need to have greater allocations. But these allocations should also be accompanied by reforms in a number of areas: allocation – interest charges – composition of the basket – liquidity – transferability and use.

Both FTT and Special Drawing Rights are tools that also offer important sideeffects.

If adequately implemented they could help stabilize financial markets, and exchange rates.

On Trade, we want to note some issues with the trade targets in MDG 8. In the years preceding the crisis, we saw a boom of trade, developing countries saw their best performance since the 1960s, but this generated little benefit for development finance. And, as the crisis showed, little benefit for stability of finance.

A lot of this trade was undiversified, of limited value added, not linked to local production chains.

So increasing market access, as MDG 8 demands, is not the crucial issue. In fact, we face a situation where demand from key markets that were high consumption countries will be depressed, for several years.

There is a need to reestablish the link between trade and development finance.

Enabling the fiscal, investment, aid, monetary and debt management policies that can allow to reestablish this link between trade and development finance should be the focus of our efforts.

On Taxation there are important revenue gains that could be made. The Summit could declare that listed companies will be required to report financial activities including profits and tax payments on a country by country basis.

This would significantly reduce the opportunities for transfer pricing – a recent report stated that some USD 100 billion of trade‐related revenue are lost to developing countries due to transfer pricing.

The beneficial ownership of all companies, trusts, and foundations should be put on public record in all jurisdictions, this is something that the Summit could also agree upon.

The UN Committee of Experts on International Cooperation in Tax Matters should be upgraded into an Intergovernmental Committee, which will enable developing countries to have development concerns inform the discussions on tax matters.

On Debt, many countries have been pushed into high levels of indebtedness as a result of the financial crisis. Their public revenue losses and the need to increase public spending for countercyclical action, were leading factors.

Today, 37 percent of Low Income Countries are either in debt distress, or at high risk of debt distress. This is not acceptable at this time and after so many years of implementation of debt cancellation initiatives.

Last year we saw a reform of the Debt Sustainability Framework. But this was not to address shortcomings in the measurement, but to disguise that debt levels in developing countries are climbing at an alarming pace. We should go back to a key idea in the MDG framework which was that MDG costings, and not mere repayment capacity, should be the guiding principle to assess debt sustainability and, therefore, debt cancellation needs of countries.

We also need a binding, independent and predictable framework for arbitrating on sovereign debt claims, developed with the relevant agencies with expertise, and internationally adopted.

The World Crisis Conference last year saw a consensus emerge that existing frameworks will not do the job. The Greek and Icelandic crises have shown the absence of viable restructuring mechanisms is not a problem for poor countries only. Will we find that in 2015 this institution essential to any market‐based economy is still missing at a global scale? I hope not.

Finally, I WANT TO STRESS: WE DO NOT WANT TO GIVE UP HOPE THAT THE MDGS WILL BE ACHIEVED. IN SPITE OF HOW OFF‐TRACK WE FIND OURSELVES IN ACHIEVING THE MDGS, WE STILL BELIEVE THEY ARE ACHIEVABLE AND WILL HOLD GOVERNMENTS ACCOUNTABLE TO SUCH STANDARD.

BUT IF THEY ARE NOT ACHIEVED WE CANNOT AFFORD TO REACH 2015 WITHOUT A PLAN FOR WHAT WE DO THE DAY AFTER.

THUS, PARAGRAPHS 51‐53 OF THE DRAFT OUTCOME SHOULD BE STRENGTHENED. THEY MUST CALL FOR AN EMERGENCY, URGENT MEETING IN 2013. THIS MEETING COULD BE CONVENED BY THE ECOSOC, OR BY THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY, OR BOTH, TO EVALUATE THE SITUATION AND DECIDE ON A POST‐ 2015 WORK PROGRAM.

EVEN IF THE MDGS ARE ACHIEVED, IT WILL NOT BE A BAD IDEA TO HAVE THIS SAFEGUARD IN PLACE. LET US REMEMBER WE ALWAYS SAID THE MDGS ARE A MINIMUM STEPPING STONE IN THE STRUGGLE TOWARDS ENSURING HUMAN RIGHTS FOR ALL.  

**See also Social Watch's presentation at the Hearings**