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Advancing Transparency in the UN Tax Convention Negotiations
During the Fourth Session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on the UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation, held from 2–13 February 2026 at the UN Headquarters in New York, we delivered a statement on Article 9 concerning mutual administrative assistance.
In our intervention, we welcomed the draft’s recognition that effective tax cooperation requires the ‘widest measure’ of administrative assistance and concrete efforts to address structural barriers that hinder information exchange. At the same time, we underscored that key transparency tools remain absent from the current text.
We called for the inclusion of a truly global and public country-by-country reporting obligation, accessible to all States and operationalised through the Conference of Parties. Such a measure would help curb aggressive tax planning by multinational corporations and address persistent information asymmetries that disadvantage developing countries.
From a human rights perspective, we also clarified that tax transparency strengthens, rather than undermines, rights protections. Privacy is not equivalent to secrecy, and meaningful access to information on matters of public interest is indispensable to safeguarding economic and social rights.
Our full statement on Article 9 is available below.
Camila Maia – GI-ESCR
Thank you, Chair,
The Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights welcomes the inclusion of a commitment to afford one another the 'widest measure' of mutual administrative assistance to combat tax evasion andavoidance.
It’s positive that paragraphs 2 and 3 recognise the existence of administrative barriers preventing effective tax cooperation. Assessing and addressing these obstacles is a core purpose of the Convention and could translate into a clear mandate for the Conference of States Parties.
Dear delegates,There is a very strong nexus between Articles 9 and 10. Exchange of information and transparency are one of the core issues at stake when it comes to fair taxation.
Yet a few key tools for transparency are missing from this draft.
One of them is public country-by-country reporting, which States recognised in para 28 (f) of the Compromiso de Sevilla as a crucial measure that has to be strengthened; even committing to exploring the creation of a central, public database to keep this information.
You are all well aware that Country-by-country reports are central to curbing aggressive tax planning by multinational corporations. They cover each jurisdiction in which a company operates, including where subsidiaries are located, and where they have operations, income, employees, assets, sales, and taxes arepaid.
CBCR was introduced in the BEPS framework, but the information is protected by fiscal secrecy and confidentiality and developing countries struggle to get access to the information, which they do not receive from an automatic exchange of information in which they do not participate. Similar reporting mechanisms are currently being introduced within the European Union and Australia. Because access to information exchange remains limited and public data is highly aggregated, most developing countries have little or no access to these reports.
Establishing a truly global country-by-country reporting obligation under the UN Tax Convention,that can be fully operationalised by the Conference of Parties, would strengthen transparency in an inclusive way. These reports should be available to all countries and made public.
I also want to take the opportunity, as a representative of a human rights organisation, to make some points on transparency and rights. Under international human rights law, corporations are not rights-holders. As for individuals, no right is absolute, and this includes privacy. The extent to which the right to privacy is protected depends on how it impacts other rights. In tax matters, tax transparency is essential to protect the economic and social rights of the majority of the population.
At the same time, privacy and secrecy are not the same. Privacy protects individuals from unauthorised intrusion. Secrecy is the condition of being hidden. There is no right to secrecy in human rights law.There is a right to the highest level of access to information on matters of public interest.
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