Articles
End corporate tax dodging
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Having spent 15 years coordinating care in emergency rooms, I know something about setting priorities. And, right now, politicians in Washington have their budget priorities backward. Budget writers are still relying on service cuts to make their numbers add up instead of targeting hundreds of billions of dollars in unpaid corporate taxes. It’s time to reverse that pattern.
Working families have a hard enough time getting ahead without losing the essential services we have every right to expect from our government. Over the past five years of deficit reduction deals, we’ve absorbed $2.7 trillion in spending cuts—in everything from housing vouchers to preschool slots to meals for seniors. It’s time to restore and improve vital services by finally collecting the taxes big corporations owe us.
The World's rural poor need social protection
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The success of the UN’s post-2015 development agenda is predicated on one underlying theme: no one should be left behind – and certainly not the world’s rural poor –in the fight to eradicate hunger and poverty by 2030.
Over 70 percent of the world’s poor live in rural areas and amongst indigenous communities which are deeply entrenched in rural environments.
The United Nations says these include subsistence farmers and herders, fishing communities and migrant workers, artisans and indigenous peoples – all of them struggling for economic survival.
The EU's Investment Court System: ISDS back from the dead
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The Investment Court System (ICS) proposed by the European Commission for all of the EU's ongoing and future investment negotiations to get around the massively unpopular Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) system, would still empower corporations to sue governments over measures to protect the environment, health, workers and other public interests, according to a just released new report.
According to the report, the proposed ICS does not put an end to ISDS. Quite the opposite, it would empower thousands of companies to circumvent national legal systems and sue governments in parallel tribunals if laws and regulations undercut their ability to make money.
Read more: The EU's Investment Court System: ISDS back from the dead
Rise of the Investor-State Dispute Settlement: Challenges for Africa
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African countries have been active in concluding international investment treaties. They are increasingly subject to investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) cases, including claims that challenge regulatory actions of host countries in a wide range of areas, including public services and race relations. At the same time, African States have developed the ‘Africa Mining Vision’, which is aimed at introducing policy and regulatory frameworks intended to maximize the development of the region through the use of natural resources as catalyst for industrial development in order to diversify the economy.
This paper discusses the potential challenges that could arise out of rules established by international investment treaties and ISDS to policy space in African countries and the operationalization of the ‘Africa Mining Vision’. It provides an overview of the rising number of ISDS cases in the mining and extractive industries, including cases brought against African countries. It also reviews how investment treaties are increasingly imposing a wider net of prohibitions around performance requirements, which could potentially be crucial for the operationalization of the ‘Africa Mining Vision’.
The paper concludes that in the case of African countries, similar to other developing countries, the expansion of international investment agreements could carry significant risks to policy space and policy tools necessary for industrialization and development. In the case of African countries, this implies risks to the potential use of sectoral policies, such as policies in the extractive industries and the ‘Africa Mining Vision’, in order to support and promote African countries’ industrialization objectives.
Scrapping Trident and Transitioning to a nuclear-free world
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As geopolitical tensions escalate in the Middle East and the world teeters on the brink of a new Cold War, it’s clear that the only way to eliminate the threat of nuclear warfare is for governments to fulfil their long-held commitment to the “general and complete disarmament” of nuclear weapons – permanently. A bold and essential step towards this crucial goal is to decommission Trident, the UK’s ineffective, unusable and costly nuclear deterrent submarines. Renewing Trident would not only undermine international disarmament efforts for years to come, it will reinforce the hazardous belief that maintaining a functional nuclear arsenal is essential for any nation seeking to wield power on the world stage.
Read more: Scrapping Trident and Transitioning to a nuclear-free world
