Accessibility Tools

Web Accessibility plugin by DJ-Extensions.com

On the Ground

Explore our work with partners, globally and locally, to tackle social and economic injustice using a human rights lens.

GI-ESCR at the IMF and World Bank Spring Meetings: Advancing Tax Justice and Climate Finance

GI-ESCR at the IMF and World Bank Spring Meetings: Advancing Tax Justice and Climate Finance

From April 13 to 18, we participated in the 2026 Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, held in Washington, D.C. Our Programme Officer on Economic Justice and Climate Finance, Ezequiel Steuermann,  represented the organisation, advancing priorities related to international tax cooperation and the mobilisation of resources for a just transition.

 

A constrained official agenda amid global uncertainty

 

We attended multiple official panels featuring IMF and World Bank staff and State representatives. Discussions were largely shaped by global economic uncertainty, with a strong emphasis on macroeconomic resilience, financial stability, and adaptive capacity.
 
However, critical issues such as climate finance and debt relief for Global South countries remained largely marginal in official spaces. A deregulatory narrative around private sector-led growth also featured prominently, often with limited attention to its distributive impacts.

 

Civil society spaces: from technical debates to structural critiques

 

In contrast, the Civil Society Policy Forum (CSPF) provided a more dynamic space for engagement.
A key discussion convened by GI-ESCR and partners, including Human Rights Watch, Oxfam, the Tax Justice Network, and the South Centre, on “Making IMF Tax Policy Work for People” highlighted both convergence and tension. While IMF staff acknowledged inequality as a macro-critical issue and emphasised a “holistic” approach to fiscal policy, civil society actors highlighted persistent implementation gaps.
 
In practice, “holistic” fiscal packages often rely on regressive taxation combined with compensatory transfers that face serious limitations in accessibility and delivery. This disconnect between policy design and lived outcomes emerged as a central concern.
At the same time, structural barriers to progressive taxation were underscored, including limited access to beneficial ownership information and the absence of comprehensive asset registries. These transparency constraints continue to undermine efforts to effectively tax wealth, particularly in the Global South.
 
At the international level, discussions highlighted longstanding asymmetries in the global tax architecture and reinforced the importance of ongoing negotiations toward a UN Tax Convention as a pathway to rebalance taxing rights and curb the opacity that currently allows global tax abuse to flourish.

 

Climate finance: from negotiation to implementation

 

In parallel, we participated in a high-level consultation convened by the Brazilian COP30 Presidency and the World Resources Institute on the implementation of the Baku-to-Belém Roadmap on Climate Finance.
 
A central message emerging from the consultation was the shift from negotiation to implementation. With the USD 1.3 trillion goal now reflected in the COP30 cover decision, discussions focused on developing monitoring frameworks, accountability tools, and concrete financing pathways to operationalise this target in the lead-up to COP31 in Antalya.
 
Participants emphasised the need to move beyond tracking aggregate financial flows toward assessing real-economy outcomes across sectors such as energy, adaptation, and just transition. At the same time, growing engagement from finance ministries and multilateral development banks was identified as a key opportunity, albeit one shaped by evolving geopolitical constraints.
 
We also represented the Latin American and Caribbean Platform for a Sustainable Financial System (REDFIS) in this consultation and highlighted the increasingly normative dimension of the USD 1.3 trillion goal. Building on recent developments in international law, including the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice, we underscored that such collectively agreed targets may reflect authoritative interpretations of States’ obligations under the Paris Agreement. Such findings can be explored more in depth in our recent publication “From The Hague to Belém: Synergies Between Recent Normative Developments on Climate Finance and the Path Towards 1.3 Trillion and Beyond.
 
This perspective points to a critical shift: the challenge is not only how to mobilise finance, but how to ensure that what is counted as climate finance is consistent with principles of public provision, differentiation, and non-debt-creating support.

 

A key insight: convergence at the level of discourse, divergence in implementation

 

Across both tax and climate finance discussions, a common pattern emerged: increasing convergence around the diagnosis (inequality matters, public finance is central, international cooperation is necessary), but persistent divergence in implementation.
 
While IFI staff framed core policy choices as competing priorities, often presented as trade-offs, civil society actors highlighted the need to question these assumptions and to explore alternative policy pathways grounded in human rights and distributive justice.

 

Looking ahead

 

The Spring Meetings provided an important opportunity to strengthen alliances across the economic justice and climate finance space. Looking ahead, key priorities include advancing negotiations on the UN Tax Convention, engaging in climate finance discussions ahead of COP31, and continuing to promote integrated fiscal policy approaches aligned with human rights obligations.
 
A central takeaway from our participation is clear: while the discourse within international financial institutions is evolving, meaningful progress will depend on whether these shifts translate into changes in policy design, institutional incentives, and governance structures.

Related Articles

Reimagining Africa’s Future: From Financialisation to Foresight

Reimagining Africa’s Future: From Financialisation to Foresight

Macarena Cano Muñoz
Along With Partners, we Submitted Human Rights Recommendations to the UN Tax Convention Process

Along With Partners, we Submitted Human Rights Recommendations to the UN Tax Convention Process

Macarena Cano Muñoz
CESCR Review of Kenya 2026: When Evidence Aligns with Accountability

CESCR Review of Kenya 2026: When Evidence Aligns with Accountability

Martín Pintus

SITEMAP

TAKE ACTION

NEWSLETTER

Don´t miss any updates!
SUBSCRIBE
Image

Social Media:

Log in

Climate and Environmental Justice

We have advanced rights-based and gender-transformative transition frameworks through research that centres the lived experiences of women and marginalised communities on the frontlines of extractive energy policies, promoting climate and energy frameworks attentive to the social and care-related impacts of transition pathways. We have developed a clear vision for a gender-just transition, firmly rooted in gender and human rights norms, establishing both the legal basis and the direction for the transformative changes our planet and societies urgently need. In particular, the ‘Guiding Principles for Gender Equality and Human Rights in the Energy Transition’, a collective effort built through online consultations, an in-person workshop and multiple rounds of revision with activists, practitioners and experts from around the world, outline a transformative vision for reshaping global energy systems through a human rights and gender equality lens.

Our work recognises that the climate emergency is both an existential threat and an opportunity to reimagine societies built on social, gender, economic and environmental justice. We ground our advocacy in feminist and intersectional principles, prioritising the agency and perspectives of communities in the Global South who have contributed the least to the climate emergency yet face its most devastating consequences. Central to our approach is the understanding that energy is not merely a commodity but a fundamental human right; essential for dignity, health, education, work and the realisation of countless other rights. We challenge approaches to the energy transition that risk replicating the harmful patterns of fossil fuel extraction and, instead, advocate for transformative policies that ensure human rights and gender equality as central to building climate-resilient societies rooted in dignity, justice and planetary well-being.

What's next?

We will continue to challenge approaches that treat energy transition as merely a technical shift, instead positioning it as an opportunity to reimagine economies and societies rooted in dignity for all, with particular attention to communities in the Global South who have contributed least to the climate emergency yet are most exposed to its worst effects.

We will connect community-level evidence and the lived experiences of those on the frontlines of extractive policies to national reform and global norm-setting, breaking down silos between human rights, gender, and climate movements, and advancing a shared vision that recognises just transitions as not only fundamental to achieving climate-resilient and sustainable societies, but as transformative pathways that advance social and gender equality, redistribute power and resources equitably, and ensure that energy systems serve the public good rather than profit.

We will mainstream rights-based and genderjust transition priorities in key multilateral spaces (particularly, within the Just Transition Work Programme and the to-be-developed Just Transition Mechanism, within the UNFCCC) to guarantee that just transitions are advanced at all levels.

We will also translate our work, through strategic advocacy, into at least two concrete policy wins, whether promoted, adopted, implemented, or scaled, in priority countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Colombia, South Africa, or Kenya), ensuring these policies align with human rights standards, centre gender equality, and reflect the needs and views of affected communities.

We will build momentum for the progressive recognition of the right to sustainable energy to shift dominant narratives away from purely extractive solutions that sideline gendered impacts, community participation, and Global South perspectives.

Economic Justice and Climate Finance

Our work has transformed the global discussion on fiscal policy in a more just, emancipatory and sustainable direction. Our approach has combined both high-level, expert contributions within decisionmaking circles, with bold, impactful work on narrative change with the general public.

We have been instrumental in the inclusion of human rights as a guiding principle of the future United Nations Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation, a multilateral instrument with the potential of raising approx. USD 492 billion per year in public revenues currently foregone to global tax abuse. In the process leading to the ‘Compromiso de Sevilla’ decided at FfD4, we proposed and succeeded in creating a specific human rights workstream within the Civil Society Financing for Development Mechanism, which was critical to ensure that explicit commitments on the matter were included in the negotiating outcome. In a context of cutbacks in multilateral institutions, we have amplified the capacities of technical experts, providing rigorous technical support and leveraging our influence to ensure the enactments of groundbreaking standard-setting instruments, such as the 2025 UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights Statement on Fiscal Policy and Human Rights, and the first ex oficio hearing on the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights on Fiscal and Economic Policies to Address Poverty and Structural Inequality, leading to an upcoming thematic resolution on the matter. We have also bridged the silos between multilateral tax discussions and climate finance debates, promoting ambitious financing commitments to increase international and domestic resource mobilisation during COP 28, 29 and 30.

At the regional level, our engagement with fiscal cooperation platforms such as the Platform for Fiscal Cooperation of Latin America and the Caribbean (PTLAC), where we are member of its Civil Society Consultative Council, and the African Anti-IFFs Policy Tracker, for which we participated in the pilot mission in Ivory Coast together with Tax Justice Network Africa (TJNA), have been critical in cementing a growing engagement between tax administrations and ministries of finance with international legal experts, exploring actionable and transformative initiatives, such as the taxation of high-net-worth individuals, beneficial ownership registries and corporate countryby-country reports, to be implemented at the international level.

At the local level, our interventions in fiscal reform debates in Chile, Brazil, Colombia and Nigeria have contributed to shaping legislative outcomes in a more progressive, rights-compliant direction.

As for our leadership in narrative change, we have a measurable track record in delivering tailored, innovative campaigns which have decisively expanded economic justice constituencies by appealing to a broader tent. In Latin America and the Caribbean, we created the ‘Date Cuenta’ campaign, coordinating over 40 organisations across civil society to deliver plain language, innovative messaging connecting progressive fiscal reforms to the financing of health, education and social protection. ‘Date Cuenta’ generated over 55 original campaign messages that were tailored to the realities of seven priority countries (Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru and Honduras) and disseminated in Spanish, Portuguese and English. In doing so, we convened more than 65 online co-creation workshops with partners, coordinating a unified communications strategy which combined digital outreach, press and media coverage, and collaboration with influencers. Ultimately, ‘Date Cuenta’ resulted in more than 60,000 interactions on social media, coverage in major regional and international media outlets, including El País, Deutsche Welle, Bloomberg and France 24, and the participation of at least 63 social media influencers through 58 dedicated publications. In collaboration with Fundación Gabo and the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, we also organised a two-day workshop in Bogota with 20 journalists from 13 countries, building a regional network trained in a human rights-based approach to fiscal policy that has since generated published media coverage on outlets such as La Diaria, Ciper, El Diario Ar and Milenio. Through ‘Date Cuenta’ and our regional advocacy, we strengthened civil society engagement in key processes, including the Financing for Development track and FfD4, co-organised highlevel dialogues with states and civil society from Latin America and Africa.

What's next?

We will shape the UN Tax Convention and its Protocols so they embed human rights principles, and we will stay engaged through follow-up processes (including the expected Conference of the Parties) to support effective implementation. We will keep linking tax and climate finance so that new resources mobilised through fiscal cooperation are channelled to adaptation, mitigation, and loss and damage, in line with UNFCCC commitments.

Public Services for Care Societies

We have translated participatory research into accountability and policy outcomes.

In Ivory Coast, our work with Mouvement Ivoirien des Droits Humains and affected communities since 2023 exposed how privatisation and lack of accountability restrict access to quality healthcare. It contributed to the closure of 1,022 illegal private health centres, an executive instrument strengthening the regulation of private hospitals across the country, and the creation of a permanent complaints management committee in healthcare through a bylaw issued by the prefect of Gagnoa. Partners engaged through this process also advanced concrete improvements at facility level: members of the Gagnoa Midwives Association who took part in the participatory action research pooled resources to renovate the neonatal unit of the Regional Hospital, and the Director of the Gagnoa General Hospital launched an action plan to expand services and improve patient reception, with the facility receiving the award for best hospital in the country in 2025.

In Kenya, our research with the Mathare Education Taskforce documented the absence of public schools and the expansion of private provision, evidencing impacts on households and caregivers and strengthening demands for free, quality public education. This work contributed to stronger community agency and collective organisation, alongside ongoing strategies ranging from communications to litigation to secure a public school in the area, some involving GI-ESCR and others led independently.

Across Africa, this work is complemented by a multi-country study examining the human rights implications of austerity in education and health, including how regressive fiscal policies, rising debt burdens and persistent underinvestment undermine the financing and delivery of public services.

In Latin America, from 29 November to 2 December 2021, over a thousand representatives from over one hundred countries, from grassroots movements, advocacy, human rights, and development organisations, feminist movements, trade unions, and other civil society organisations, met in Santiago, Chile, and virtually, to discuss the critical role of public services for our future. Following the meeting, the Santiago Declaration on Public Services was adopted to demand universal access to quality, gender-transformative and equitable public services as the foundation of a fair and just society.

We are currently advancing work on care systems, linking public services and fiscal justice through integrated research, advocacy and communications, including a regional campaign framing care as a collective responsibility requiring sustained public investment.

What's next?

In Ivory Coast, we will evaluate and strengthen the complaints management committee and position it as a replicable model for other health facilities. In Kenya, we will support the Mathare community to co-design a model public school for Mabatini and Ngei wards, grounded in human rights standards. Building on our multi-country austerity study, we will drive national advocacy on financing for education and health: advancing reforms in Ghana; launching a fiscal policy and public services financing agenda in Kenya through the CESCR process and targeted coalition work; and, in Nigeria, using the new tax acts in force since 1 January 2026 to catalyse a national accountability campaign for adequately funded, quality public services. In Latin America, we will amplify locally led care pilots across 8 countries and turn lessons into influence—advancing care policies that strengthen care organisations, protect care workers’ rights, support unpaid caregivers, include disability and family networks, and redistribute care more equitably.