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	Tax Policy is Human Rights Policy: The Irish Debate by Philip Alston Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights   Keynote Address at Christian Aid conference on The Human Rights Impact of Tax and Fiscal Policy, Dublin, February 2015.   Let me begin by congratulating Christian Aid not just on organizing this conference but on the approach that it takes to development. There was a time, not so long ago, when such groups saw their primary and perhaps only role as service delivery. Today, its work attests to the fact that there will often be little to be gained by providing assistance unless the structures of the society can be encouraged to develop in directions that can make effective use of that aid.   The same transition is occurring in the human rights field, although much more gradually. Gone are the days when it was thought sufficient to expose killings, torture, arbitrary detention, and so on. We now realize that such policies are rooted in broader societal structures and that they too need to be addressed.   If a police force relies for its daily bread on extortion and its main weapon against suspects is to eliminate them, calling for the ratification of a treaty or the cessation of the relevant practices is no more than the starting point in identifying potential solutions for bringing lasting change.   This brings us to today’s focus on tax and human rights. The focus of the role that I play for the UN Human Rights Council is extreme poverty.   I can call for a wide range of measures to be adopted to address the immediate plight of those living in poverty, and such measures are important. But at the end of the day, tax policy might in many contexts actually be even more important.   In fact, the focus needs to be even wider. Corruption, illicit financial transfers, undisclosed payments, transfer mispricing by corporations, all have a major impact on the human rights situation in any given country.   But to return to taxation, the link with human rights is not necessarily an intuitive one; it needs to be explained. First, there is the most obvious link which is that of resource availability. Refusing to levy taxes, or failing to collect them, both of which are commonplace in many countries, results in the availability of inadequate revenue to fund human rights related expenditures.   Second, tax policy is where the action really is in terms of setting priorities. Tax policies reflect better than all of the ministerial statements and white papers the real priorities of a government. We can see clearly the activities that it chooses to incentivize, those that it opts to disincentivize, the groups that it decides to privilege, and the groups that it decides to ignore or even penalize.   It makes no sense to say that human rights policies will be made by the human rights people, while tax policies will be made by the Finance Departments of the world, and the two will not interact.   Third, whether we like it or not, human rights policies have an indispensable element of redistributing societal resources. The regressive or progressive nature of a state’s tax structure shapes the allocation of income and assets across the population, and thereby affects various types of inequality.   Fourth, tax policy is central to political accountability, which is an essential element in the human rights framework. When designed and implemented well, taxes can reinforce the state’s accountability to the public and strengthen democracy. Or the process can undermine democracy by having crucial decisions made behind closed doors in the name of ‘commercial in-confidence’ insider deals.   Finally, as we shall see today, there is a crucial international cooperation dimension. The differential tax treatment of domestic and foreign entities in a given country, and variations in tax law between jurisdictions, influence the global flow and distribution of assets.   A focus on “the human rights impact of tax and fiscal policy” might seem like a distinctively Irish debate because of the extent to which it brings together perhaps the two greatest pre-occupations of post-2007 Ireland: the costs of austerity and its appropriate limits, especially in relation to the poor, on the one hand, and the role of tax policy in promoting economic development, on the other.   But the debate is in fact no longer distinctively Irish. Ireland is today very much a reflection of broader global developments that have thrust these two once separate topics together in a broad range of international debates.   The negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals, the upcoming International Conference on Financing for Development, the work of the OECD on tax evasion and avoidance, the major inquiries in different countries and by the European Commission into the systematic nature of tax avoidance, all combine to put the spotlight increasingly on the linkages that have for far too long been ignored.   Why has the link been neglected in the past?   Human Rights and economic policy-making have long remained separate. There are many reasons. One is that the human rights area is dominated by lawyers, and they have tended to steer clear of matters of economic policy, despite their centrality. Another is that the proponents of civil and political rights have long shielded behind the myth that resource availability is irrelevant to a government’s obligations in that domain.   Bringing up the economics of human rights would seem to violate the status of rights as being above and superior to such mundane considerations.   But the reality that is increasingly obvious is that many of the world’s worst human rights situations are driven overwhelmingly by economic factors. Theft, corruption, extortion, the failure to tax, the failure to regulate economic actors fuel these conflicts and help to perpetuate them.   And finally, economic and social rights have been kept determinedly marginal from many of the debates. The USA has worked hard over decades to undermine efforts to treat these rights as human rights.   Judges and lawyers, in states like Australia and Ireland, have generally played a very negative role in arguing that social rights cannot be effectively protected by law, contrary to widespread experience even in far less wealthy countries. Ireland is by no means immune from this criticism. While the early Irish Constitution was a pioneer in recognizing these rights as directive constitutional principles, the intervening years have seen a strong reluctance to accept that there are minimum human rights of access to health care, to housing, and to food.   Detailed proposals prepared for the Constitutional Convention have so far been ignored. But if Ireland’s advice for developing countries is to be taken seriously, it needs to lead by example.   There is a big price to pay for the neglect of economic and social rights at the domestic and international levels.   There is a backlash these days, in both the North and the South, against human rights. Much of the criticism relates directly to the effects of approaches that effectively marginalize social rights, do not engage with the greatest challenges of the day in the form of inequality and the need for redistribution, ignore the challenges that confront developing economies in this area, has do little to bring the increasingly dominant corporate sector under the umbrella of human rights.   As long as social rights are seen largely at both the domestic and international levels as a matter of charity rather than of rights, the human rights framework will have all too little to say about the most pressing problems of the day and the bulk of the population in both developed and developing countries will see the debates are irrelevant to their most strongly felt needs.   How does all of this relate to Ireland?   Let me focus on only two dimensions of a much more complex picture.   The starting point is to acknowledge that Ireland has achieved dramatic economic success, notwithstanding the huge post-2007 setback, based on its distinctive tax policies. The 12.5% corporate tax rate and the willingness of Ireland to countenance a wide array of special arrangements designed to attract inward investment and make itself an attractive financial hub have become almost a defining characteristic of the society. The shamrock now has the euro and the dollar carefully embedded within it, and the leprechaun of old has been replaced by the Finance Department official ever ready to do what it takes.   But policies of this type can easily descend into mantras, and mantras are simply slogans that are repeated unthinkingly. Ireland’s much vaunted and hugely successful tax policies need to be kept under constant review and need to be re-examined in light of the broader priorities that it has as a society. Pre-eminent among those broader priorities is to ensure the protection of basic levels of social rights for all of its citizens and residents.   Another is Ireland’s longstanding vision of itself as an altruistic good international citizen. Few countries are as active in the international human rights domain, few countries of its size play such a role in peace-keeping and peace-making, and few are as consistently generous with development assistance.   But unthinking versions of the low-tax mantra risk getting in the way of both of these critical priorities.   Take first of all the consequences of austerity. I am not here to recount the human costs of the drastic cutbacks in social services and other arrangements that have been carried out in recent years. Suffice it to mention just one of the most recent figures to have been made public.   The Central Statistics Office reported last month that the number of children living in consistent poverty (both at risk of poverty and experiencing deprivation) doubled from 6% to just under 12% between 2008 and 2013. 135,000 children in Ireland, or one in eight.   We need to acknowledge that social policy is a matter of human rights and that extreme poverty is a negation of all human rights. It obviously makes the enjoyment of economic and social rights impossible.   Equally importantly, it undermines the enjoyment of civil and political rights by effectively disenfranchising many of the poorest. As I noted earlier, legal recognition of economic and social rights is as crucial as legal recognition of civil rights. Here, Ireland was once a pioneer, motivated by its experience of colonialism and a determination to do better. Today, it is one of the laggards.   It is important to emphasize, however, that the deep pockets of poverty that persist in Ireland are the result of a series of deliberate and conscious decisions by key actors who have chosen to prioritize other goals.   Those living in poverty have been largely disempowered and their economic position reflects their political marginality. There are always reasons why poverty can’t be eliminated and why alternative projects need to take priority. The sanctity of tax policy is too often invoked as though there are no choices to be made.   Let me turn then to the international dimension of tax policy. The question is often asked as to whether Ireland is a tax haven. In 2013, Tobin and Walsh, two very senior officials from the Department of Finance and the Office of the Revenue Commissioners, respectively, argued that Ireland simply does meet the 1998 definition of a ‘tax haven’ offered by the OECD. They also rebutted “a dated but influential academic paper from 1994 that incorrectly included Ireland in a list of tax havens, based on a reason that has long lost any validity.” The paper was much cited here in Ireland and became the basis for denials by Ministers and other officials.   The problem is that almost no one outside of Ireland accepts this line. When lists of tax havens are drawn up, Ireland is always prominently among them. When Australia launches a national inquiry into massive corporate tax evasion, the headlines always include Ireland. When the New York Times welcomed the plan to eliminate the double Irish scam, it still described Ireland as continuing to engage in “beggar-thy-neighbor policies.”   And the Campaign for Tax Justice, in a widely republished analysis, headlined its report “American corporations tell IRS the majority of their offshore profits are in 12 tax havens”.   The list carries few surprises: Bermuda, Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands, Bahamas, Luxembourg, Ireland … . US Congressional reports on international tax avoidance and evasion continue to feature Ireland prominently.   The problem is not just the 12.5% tax rate. Some other countries have that too. The problem is that for many years now Ireland has supplemented that rate and its many natural attractions for investors with a range of schemes that look to all the world to be designed to facilitate tax avoidance by huge multinationals in return for a pittance of a reward to Ireland. But more importantly, the costs to other countries, including developing countries, have been immense.   It might help to use an analogy. It is as if I live in a large apartment complex, and the main rule is that I can do whatever I like within the confines of my own apartment. I rent it out for a small amount to a band that plays very loud music all night long.   I have made a ‘rational’ decision and increased my income in a time of austerity. But the cost to my neighbours is immense and bears no real relationship to the tiny gains that I have made.   Ireland’s double Irish arrangement was clearly anti-social in this respect. The Irish authorities knew exactly what was going on, long before the international community finally blew the whistle.   But there was no acknowledgement and there really still is not of the fact that this was a deliberate policy decision to extract a tiny amount of tax from huge multinational corporations at a huge cost to the international system.   There is a risk that the ‘knowledge innovation box’ proposals that were immediately wheeled out when the double Irish had to be killed, could be designed in a comparable way not to reward genuine innovation but to enable tech companies and others to continue effectively laundering their profits through Ireland. This does not need to be the case, and the international community will need to scrutinize the new proposals carefully.   Policies that give large multinationals a free pass on tax are especially damaging to developing countries. The latter rely heavily on investment from multinational corporations.   And often the resulting profits provide the best chance for tax to actually be collected in those countries. When developed countries tolerate internal pricing mechanisms and other arrangements that enable those corporations to effectively avoid such taxes that would otherwise be due to the developing country, they do an immense disservice.   Ireland needs to acknowledge the spillover effect of its policies, and the inconsistency between these minor components of its overall tax policy and its broader role in the world. A spillover analysis needs to be serious and transparent. Ireland’s exceptionally positive image in the world, manifest in so many contexts, should not be spoiled by tax policies that are absolutely marginal to its basic economic and fiscal strategy.   There needs to be a national debate as to what aspects of the much-vaunted tax policy have been successful and what elements have not. One hears all too little of acknowledged failures in the sense of policies that cost the treasury a lot in terms of revenue foregone, but achieved very little in return. Unless there is greater openness in this regard, the Irish public cannot be expected to continue to accept explanations that dire social conditions must continue to be endured.   * Philip Alston is John Norton Pomeroy Professor of Law, New York University Law School. http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Poverty/Pages/SRExtremePovertyIndex.aspx   http://www.taxjustice.net/ http://business-humanrights.org/en/tax-avoidance-0/ http://www.cesr.org/article.php?id=1726 http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Poverty/Pages/Fiscalandtaxpolicy2014.aspx http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Poverty/Pages/AnnualReports.aspx http://www.ibanet.org/Human_Rights_Institute/TaskForce_IllicitFinancialFlows_Poverty_HumanRights.aspx   http://academicsstand.org/2014/06/press-release-un-goals-should-do-more-to-curb-tax-dodging-that-has-cost-poor-countries-trillions/ http://academicsstand.org/2014/09/experts-thousands-from-around-the-world-call-on-ban-to-put-an-end-to-tax-abuse/ http://academicsstand.org/2014/09/policy-options-for-addressing-illicit-financial-flows-results-from-a-delphi-study/   http://www.actionaid.org.uk/news-and-views/global-plans-to-crack-down-on-tax-avoidance-leave-the-worlds-poorest-countries-out-in http://resourcecentre.savethechildren.se/library/tackling-tax-and-saving-lives-children-tax-and-financing-development http://blogs.oxfam.org/en/blogs/15-01-23-why-oxfam-calling-world-tax-summit http://www.oxfam.org/en/explore/issues/inequality-and-essential-services   http://www.rightingfinance.org/?p=977 http://www.cesr.org/article.php?id=1622 http://www.cesr.org/downloads/fiscal.revolution.pdf http://www.icij.org/offshore http://www.icij.org/project/luxembourg-leaks http://www.gfintegrity.org/need-clear-sdg-target-illicit-financial-flows/ http://www.world-psi.org/en/billions-disappearing-through-tax-evasion http://www.trust.org/item/20140226151645-jbwui/ http://www.taxjustice.net/cms/upload/pdf/Price_of_Offshore_Revisited_120722.pdf Visit the related web page
	We need to put public health before profit by MSF Access Campaign, France 24, agencies   July 24, 2015   Trade negotiators must remove damaging provisions in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal or risk locking in high drug prices and endangering the health of millions of people for decades to come, said the medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) as negotiations resumed in Maui, Hawaii, today.   MSF’s call comes as reports indicate that this could be the last negotiation before the agreement is concluded.If approved in its current form, the TPP, which is being negotiated between the U.S. and 11 other Pacific-Rim countries, will have a devastating impact on global health. It would strengthen, lengthen and create new patent and regulatory monopolies for pharmaceutical products that will raise the price of medicines and reduce the availability of price-lowering generic competition.   “We have raised our voice as loudly as we can, repeatedly warning that this is a terrible deal for access to affordable medicines,” said Manica Balasegaram, executive director of MSF’s Access Campaign. “Ministries of health, humanitarian groups such as MSF and global health programs funded by the U.S. government all rely on affordable medicines to provide medical care.   Despite repeated warnings from MSF, other concerned experts and groups, and even other negotiating countries, U.S. negotiators have pushed for provisions that benefit pharmaceutical companies at the expense of the more than 800 million people who need access to affordable generic medicines in current TPP countries.”   Some of the most concerning provisions in the TPP center on so-called ‘patent evergreening,’ which would force TPP governments to grant pharmaceutical companies additional patents for changes to existing medicines, even when those changes provide no therapeutic benefit to patients.   U.S. negotiators have also aggressively pushed for 12 years of ‘data exclusivity’ for biologic medicines, which include vaccines and drugs to treat conditions such as cancer and multiple sclerosis. Data exclusivity blocks government regulatory authorities from allowing price-lowering generic competitors to enter the market with previously generated clinical data.   If pharmaceutical companies get their way, brand-name drugs and vaccines would not face direct competition for excessively long periods of time while patients, medical providers like MSF, and people in TPP countries endure unnecessarily high prices.   http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/article/tpp-negotiators-must-fix-most-damaging-trade-agreement-ever-global-health http://www.msf.org/article/tpp-negotiators-must-fix-most-damaging-trade-agreement-ever-global-health   June 2015   MSF launches global campaign urging India to protect access to affordable medicines   Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) today launched a global campaign urging Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to stand strong in the face of intensifying pressure from the United States, Japan, Switzerland and the European Union to change India’s laws and policies in ways that would severely restrict the country’s ability to produce affordable medicines, upon which millions of people around the world rely.   MSF launched the campaign as the eighth round of negotiations for the RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership) trade agreement were taking place in Kyoto, Japan, which contains harmful proposals that would undermine access to medicines.   More than 80% of the medicines MSF uses to treat over 200,000 people living with HIV in its projects are Indian generics, and MSF sources essential medicines from India to treat other diseases, including tuberculosis and malaria. India also produces affordable versions of medicines for non-communicable diseases, now considered too expensive even for healthcare systems in developed countries.   “As doctors who have been relying on affordable medicines and vaccines made in India to do our work, we cannot afford to stand by silently as the tap of life-saving drugs gets turned off for people in our projects and beyond”, said Dr Joanne Liu, International President of MSF. “We want to send India a strong message of support as the world is watching anxiously to make sure it remains the ‘pharmacy of the developing world.”   India’s law sets the bar higher than other countries for what does and does not deserve a patent, in the interest of public health. This has allowed the robust generic competition to continue that has, for example, resulted in the price of a basic HIV treatment combination dropping by 99% over the course of a decade, from over $10,000 to around $100..   http://www.msf.org/article/access-campaign-msf-launches-global-campaign-urging-india-protect-access-affordable   Mar 2015   A matter of life and death: improving access to medicines worldwide   When Dr Hawa Abdi set up a one room obstetrics clinic in rural Somalia in 1983, she never thought that she’d end up providing free health care for more than a million people.   It all happened gradually. When Somalia’s bloody civil war erupted, Dr Abdi, Somalia’s first female gynaecologist, refused to leave. As medical needs grew, she added more services, then a hospital. Originally intended only to serve displaced Somalis in a small area, her Dr Hawa Abdi Foundation now provides a wide range of health care for an entire region.   The Foundation is now run by Dr Abdi’s daughter, Dr Deqo Mohamed. Recently, the UN Human Rights Office (OHCHR) invited Dr Mohamed to speak at the Human Rights Council’s Social Forum on improving access to medicines. She shared her experiences with academics, lawyers, governments, international organisations and other health care campaigners. Their mission was to find ways of making medicines more readily available to larger numbers of people worldwide.   Jane Connors, Director of the OHCHR’s Research and Right to Development Division, paid tribute to the “wealth of expertise and experience” which the speakers brought to the conference.   She said, “Everyone is entitled to healthcare, which includes access to essential medicines for the prevention, treatment and control of diseases. Human rights law requires medicines to be affordable, acceptable, accessible, of good quality, and made available without discrimination. Yet, two billion men, women and children have no access to essential medicines.”   In her speech to the Forum, Dr Mohamed stressed the importance of linking up medical facilities with local infrastructure projects to ensure that people from rural areas could reach clinics in safety.   She described innovative ways to help rural women access health services, for example, getting them to text in their symptoms for advice. If a woman texted that she couldn’t afford to travel to the clinic, transport would be sent to fetch her.   However, she added, poverty remained one of the biggest obstacles to accessing health care.   “In Somalia, it is very hard to talk to people about medicine when the household income for a day, or a week, might be less than one dollar for a family of eight or nine,” she said. “People first think about food – what they’re going to eat. The last thing they think about is health care and how they can get it.”   Many other speakers emphasised the need for affordable drugs, saying the high prices often charged by pharmaceutical companies were beyond the reach of many people. Others suggested that people suffering from “tropical” diseases were sometimes given outdated, expensive and unsuitable drugs, because those companies felt research into such illnesses was not financially viable.   Rohit Malpani of Medicins Sans Frontieres said it was vital for everyone to work together to confront this injustice. This included governments, the pharmaceutical industry, international institutions and NGOs. “What we, as a civil society movement, demand, is change, not charity,” he said.   Dr Deqo Mohamed said sustainability was crucial. “Providing health care” did not mean just funding a one-off project, or building a hospital.   The international community, she insisted, must give local people the skills to take care of themselves – it had to allow them take the burden on their own shoulders.   http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Poverty/SForum/Pages/StatementSForum2015.aspx http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Poverty/SForum/Pages/SForum2015.aspx http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/presscenter/pressreleases/2015/05/21/undp-and-unaids-back-efforts-by-least-developed-countries-to-secure-sustainable-access-to-treatment/   20 Jan 2015   MSF slams expensive vaccines, urges GSK and Pfizer to cut prices. (Reuters)   The international charity Medecins Sans Frontieres urged drugmakers GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer on Tuesday to slash the price of their pneumococcal vaccines to $5 per child in poor countries.   In a report on vaccine prices ahead of an international donor conference in Berlin at the end of January, MSF slammed Big Pharma companies and said the cost of vaccinating a child in the world"s poorest countries was now 68 times higher than in 2001.   The "skyrocketing" prices mean many countries can"t afford expensive new vaccines such as those that protect against pneumococcal disease, which kills about a million children a year, MSF"s report said.   "A handful of big pharmaceutical companies are overcharging donors and developing countries for vaccines that already earn them billions of dollars in wealthy countries," said Rohit Malpani, policy and analysis director for MSF"s access campaign.   Responding to the criticism, GSK said in a statement that it was just covering its costs with the price it charges poorer countries for its pneumococcal shot, Synflorix, which it said was "one of the most complex we"ve ever manufactured".   "Many of our available vaccines are advanced and complex and require significant upfront capital investment to make and supply," it said, adding that to discount pneumococcal vaccines further would threaten GSK"s ability to supply them long-term. Pfizer also said its pneumococcal shot, Prevenar 13, was highly complex and took a long time to develop.   MSF"s report said pneumococcal shots alone accounted for about 45 percent of the cost of fully vaccinating a child against 12 diseases. It said GSK and Pfizer had together reported more than $19 billion in global sales for pneumococcal vaccines since their launch.   A pledging conference for the GAVI global vaccines alliance is due in Berlin next week, when government donors and private philanthropists will be asked for some $7.5 billion to help immunize hundreds of millions of children in poor countries between 2016 and 2020.   "Governments need to put pressure on drug companies to offer better prices to GAVI," said Kate Elder, an MSF policy adviser.   "We need to put public health before profit. Life-saving vaccines for children shouldn"t be big business in poor countries."   http://www.msfaccess.org/ http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/how-drug-companies-and-bad-patents-put-lives-risk http://www.msfaccess.org/about-us/media-room/press-releases/msf-calls-gsk-and-pfizer-slash-pneumo-vaccine-price-5-child-poor http://www.msf.org/article/msf-responds-pfizer-announcement-pneumococcal-vaccine-price-reduction   December 13, 2014   Balancing intellectual property and public health   Indian Judge Blocks Bayer"s Drug Monopoly Bid, upholds ruling which protects interests of public health over intellectual property.   In a move that advocates are saying is a "momentous" win for public health, an Indian court on Friday rejected a bid from multinational pharmaceutical giant Bayer to block a local generic drug company from mimicking their costly cancer drug.   Bayer had attempted to appeal a 2012 decision by India"s patent controller, who had argued the monthly $5,500-per-person cost charged by Bayer for the liver and kidney drug Nexevar was too costly for most Indians. The Hyderabad-based Natco Pharma"s version of the drug costs roughly 97% less.   Friday"s court"s decision highlights India"s "critical role" in "balancing intellectual property and public health," Leena Menghaney, South Asia regional head of Medicins San Frontieres (MSF)/ Doctor"s Without Borders regional access campaign, told AFP.   Observers are saying that the decision may have far-reaching impact on the drug market because of India"s dominance in the pharmaceutical industry. AFP reports:   India"s Lawyers Collective, another rights group, said the "momentous" judgement held wide-ranging implications for access to other medicines.   India"s generics industry is a major supplier of life-saving drugs to treat diabetes, cancer and other diseases afflicting people locally and globally who cannot afford expensive branded versions.   http://www.france24.com/en/20141213-india-court-blocks-bayer-generic-drug-appeal/ http://www.msfaccess.org/ http://www.msf.org.au/resources/special-features/medicines-shouldnt-be-a-luxury.html Visit the related web page
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