ASAP is co-organizing a roundtable on Thursday 20th May on the Health Impact Fund: How the pharmaceutical sector can satisfy the needs of the global population:
Fondo de Impacto en la salud. Cómo hacer que el sector farmacéutico satisfaga las necesidades de toda la población
https://www.flacso.org.ar/mesa-redonda-fondo-de-impacto-en-la-salud/
We are a global community of academics dedicated to confronting and transforming rules and practices that perpetuate and aggravate poverty and inequality. At a time of unprecedented challenge and uncertainty, our mission of supporting the most impoverished, marginalised and discriminated, while fighting for a fairer and more just world has never been more critical.
ASAP Global channels its funding through our network of national Chapters who, being at the forefront of the academia-policy interface, are equipped to leverage evidence to effectively advocate and affect change. Your financial support allows us to continue this important work.
How would your contribution help us to tackle the world’s most pressing poverty-related issues?
We have recently been approached by a very generous donor, who would like to remain anonymous, but who is offering to match any donations that we receive up to the 31st December 2020 and up to the value of $40,000.
Over it\’s ten years, ASAP has been a leader championing for change on many fronts of the global poverty problem. Part of our uniqueness is the ability to draw on the expertise of our membership, which includes an extensive array of world class academics from across diverse disciplines. Some of the networks most notable achievements include:
Health Impact Fund
The HIF aims to incentivise the development of new medicines for the global poor by delinking the price of drugs from the cost of research.
The project is led by Thomas Pogge (ASAP founder and Global Board member), and economist Aidan Hollis.
As currently designed, pharmaceutical markets have a fundamental flaw that mainly affects poor people: the development of new medicines is funded exclusively through markups protected by patents. This flaw causes research neglect of diseases concentrated among the poor. It deprives poor people of access to patented medicines even when these can be mass-produced cheaply. HIF will address this flaw by creating complementary incentives that decouple the price of medicines from the fixed costs of innovation and cover the latter through health impact rewards by encouraging pharmaceutical innovators to register new drugs for participation in ten consecutive annual payouts. Each round of payment is divided among registered products according to health gains achieved the preceding year. These reward payments will enable innovators to recoup their R&D expenses and make appropriate profits while, at the same time, allowing the price of these registered medicines to be capped – covering merely their lowest feasible cost of manufacture and distribution. The result will be more affordable drugs to those in middle and lower income countries.
The first step is a 5 year pilot. Find out more about how the Health Impact Fund is progressing.
Manifesto Poverty Audits
ASAP has developed a methodology and approach for critically reviewing the impact of policies on poverty levels. Called Poverty Audits, the organisation has over the past five years supported multiple country Chapters to conduct audits around national elections.
ASAP Oceania were the first to pilot the audits in 2013. They produced a ground-breaking assessment looking into the manifestos of the three major Australian political parties. The report sets out the implications of the policies for poverty alleviation in key areas including: education, Indigenous policy, housing, foreign aid, migration and many others. Read the report here. Five years on, in 2018, the Oceania Chapter expanded this work to critically review the Australian Government’s progress towards the SDGs. Called: Australia, Poverty, and the Sustainable Development Goals, the report lays out evidence clearly setting out why further action is needed and makes a series of recommendations. Both reports coordinated experts in multiple dimensions of poverty to write brief, accessible responses to Government policy.
The Poverty Audit approach has also been adopted by ASAP Chapters in the UK and Canada, similarly reviewing the policy platforms of major political parties running during national elections. The UK Audit in 2017 saw 29 academics from 23 Universities analyse the running manifestos of the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat parties on 12 key poverty-related topics. The report gained widespread media attention and acclaim. Find out more about the methodology, the report itself, and listen to ASAP Global Executive Cat Tully talking about the project on the ASAP UK\’s poverty audit website.
To build on these past successes, one of the priorities for ASAP Global is to support more Chapters to conduct these innovative appraisals. They are effective means to hold parties and governments to account for their actions to address poverty at home within a country but also towards global commitments, such as through the SDGs.
Producing the Oslo Principles
In 2012, a group of legal experts from around the world, convened by Dutch Advocate-General Jaap Spier and ASAP co-founder Thomas Pogge set out to answer a pressing climate crisis-related question: how much do human rights and other sources of law require each state to do to reduce emissions, even in the absence of a specific treaty?
Greenhouse gas emissions that were escalating at the time, but that continue to rise at an alarming rate still today, stand to compromise the rights of billions of people around the world. Yet, there was an evident lack of explicit treaties legally binding states to curb their emissions. This was the problem the experts set out to resolve.
After several years of extensive legal research and discussions the group undersigned a set of principles at a meeting in Oslo, Norway, which were adopted in March 2015 as the Oslo Principles on Global Climate Change Obligations. The principles detail how international laws such as human rights law and tort law may already require states to reduce their emissions, irrespective of other specific treaties. This work was subsequently expanded to include an examination of the obligations of private enterprises to prevent climate change. Find out more about the impact of these initiatives on the Global Justice Programme website at Yale University.
Redefining Migration Discourse
In June 2019, ASAP Global in partnership with Club de Madrid and Global Justice Now, held a colloquium that brought together a focussed group of interdisciplinary specialists from academia, policy and civil society.
Much of the global narrative around migration seeks to perpetuate dishonest and emotive narratives that distort wider public understandings and cast migrants as negative and disruptive influences on economies and social order. The event aimed to bring together expert knowledge to understand how we can create a significant shift in the positioning of the migration debate.
The panel discussed how current accounts of migration are grounded in deep structural inequalities. Therefore, there is a need to reframe public policy and discourse towards a more sympathetic environment for migration that focuses on the universality of humans. It would encourage a politics of kindness and should be much more closely connected with wider global issues associated with development and the distribution of capital.
To build on the success of the London event we are currently organising a series of follow up workshops that will explore what a more positive migrant discourse looks like and how, as a network, we can use this to shape recommendations that can transform political and public perceptions of migrants.
The Future of ASAP
2020 is an exciting time for the ASAP network. Interest in our work is rapidly growing, not only at the membership level for established Chapters but also new Chapters which we currently see growing in six new countries.
At the same time, we are in the genesis of working with country leads to create a programme of inter-Chapter collaborative research projects for 2021. These stand to produce cutting edge evidence on the most pressing poverty problems the world is facing.
Your donation will enable us to carry out this vital work. From the ASAP Network family, THANK YOU.
The conference, led by Yale Global Justice Program, the Albert Schweitzer Institute at Quinnipiac University, and ASAP will bring together academics, policymakers and NGO leaders for practice-oriented presentations and discussion. We plan to host a total of nine sessions: three longer morning panels, and six shorter afternoon sessions.
For the morning panels, keynote speakers include Branko Milanovic, Bridget Conley, and Alex de Waal. Branko Milanovic is a former World Bank researcher and is currently a professor at the City University of New York (CUNY) and author of \”Global Inequality, the Haves, and the Have-Nots\”. He will set the stage for the conference by presenting a historical perspective on inequality and by analyzing the dynamics of ongoing globalization: the main forces and trends that are likely to shape the evolution of the world economy and international relations over the coming decades. He will outline how extreme economic inequality and competition feed and sustain atrocious violence, which then, in turn, aggravates massive poverty and other deprivations.
The other panels will focus on problems closely related to, if not directly caused by, extreme inequality at both global and domestic level: first, political corruption and (lack of) access to political life; and second, the role, priorities, and constraints of NGOs; third, race and incarceration.
For more details about registration please contact: global@academicsstand.org
This year, Global Financial Integrity and Academics Stand Against Poverty will be awarding the seventh annual Amartya Sen Prizes to the two best original essays examining one particular component of illicit financial flows, the resulting harms and possible avenues of reform. Entered essays should be about 7,000 to 9,000 words long. There is a first prize of $5,000 and a second prize of $3,000.
Illicit financial flows are generally defined as cross-border movements of funds that are illegally earned, transferred, or used. Examples are funds earned through illegal trafficking in persons, drugs or weapons; funds illegally transferred through mispriced exchanges (e.g., among affiliates of a multinational corporation seeking to shift profits to reduce taxes); funds moved to evade taxes; and funds used for corruption of or by public or corporate officials. Illicit financial flows are explicitly recognized as an obstacle to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and singled out as a separate target #4 of SDG 16.
Components of illicit financial flows can be delimited by sector and geographically. Delimitation by sector might focus your essay on some specific activity, business or industry – such as art, real estate, health care, technology, entertainment, shipping, agriculture, sports, gaming, education, politics, tourism, natural resource extraction, banking and financial services – or on an even narrower subsector such as the diamond trade, hunting, insurance or prostitution. Delimitation by geography might further narrow the essay’s focus to some particular country, province or region.
Your essay should describe the problematic activity and evaluate the adverse effects of it that make it problematic. Also, in quantitative terms insofar as this is possible, you should estimate the magnitude of the relevant outflows as well as the damage they do to the institutions and to the affected populations. This might include harm from abuse, exploitation and impoverishment of individuals, harm through subdued economic activity and reduced prosperity, and/or harm through diminished tax revenues that depress public spending.
Your essay should also explain the persistence of the harmful activity in terms of relevant incentives and enabling conditions and, based on your explanation, propose plausible ways to curtail the problem. Such reform efforts might be proposed at diverse levels, including supranational rules, national rules, corporate policies, professional ethics, individual initiatives, or any combination thereof. The task is to identify who has the responsibility, the capacity and (potentially) the knowledge and motivation to change behavior toward effective curtailment.
We welcome authors from diverse academic disciplines and from outside the academy. Please send your entry by email attachment on or before 31 August 2020 to Tom Cardamone at SenPrize@gfintegrity.org. While your email should identify you, your essay should be stripped of self-identifying references, formatted for blind review.
This year, Global Financial Integrity and Academics Stand Against Poverty will be awarding the sixth annual Amartya Sen Prizes to the two best original essays on assessing the human, social, political and institutional impacts of illicit financial flows out of Latin America as well as measures to curtail them in order to positively transform states and societies. Entered essays should be about 7,000 to 9,000 words long. There is a first prize of $5,000 and a second prize of $3,000.
Illicit financial flows are generally defined as cross-border movements of funds that are illegally earned, transferred, or used. Examples are funds earned through illegal trafficking in persons, drugs or weapons; funds illegally transferred through mispriced exchanges (e.g., among affiliates of a multinational corporation seeking to shift profits to reduce taxes); funds moved to evade taxes; and funds used for corruption of or by public or corporate officials. Because many Latin American countries have large natural resource sectors with relatively weak administrative controls on officials and powerful enablers operating locally (global banks; global tax, law, auditing and consulting firms; fiscal havens, etc.), illicit financial flows out of these countries tend to be substantial relative to their GDP or overall
trade. And because structural poverty and inequality persist there, Latin
American societies cannot afford such losses of capital and tax revenues that greatly hamper their ability to mobilize domestic resources to provide services and policies needed toward sustainable development.
Mindful of the Sustainable Development Goals (esp. SDG target 16.4 with
indicator 16.4.1) and seeking to inspire effective political action toward reducing illicit financial flows out of Latin America, we are inviting essays that assess the human, political and institutional impact of such illicit outflows. Your entry may focus on one or more specific countries and on one or more specific kinds of illicit financial flows and strategies/policies to curtail, control or avoid them. It should then estimate the magnitude of these outflows as well as the damage they do to the institutions and to the affected populations – for example, through depressed investment and through reduced tax revenues leading to, inter alia, lower public spending on health, education, social security and development.
We welcome authors from diverse academic disciplines and from outside the academy. Please send your entry by email attachment on or before 31 August 2019 to Tom Cardamone at tcardamone@gfintegrity.org. While you email should identify you, your essay should be stripped of self-identifying references, formatted for blind review.
A collaborative workshop between the Development Studies Association Ireland (Civil Society Working Group), Academics Stand Against Poverty-Irish Network, Basic Income Ireland. Hosted at Trinity College Dublin (10am-2pm), on 5th March 2019.
All are welcome. For more information email nitsamishra@yahoo.com
The \’Connected Sociologies\’ conference is being hosted at NUI Galway (Ireland) on the 10th and 11th May.
Nita Mishra (ASAP Ireland) will be hosting a panel.
https://www.sociology.ie/annual-conference-2019.html
Studies on how poverty is perceived would particularly be of interest – either theoretical studies or studies from the field.
Please can contact ASAP Global if you are interesting in contributing.
The increasing prominence of growing inequality around the world has intensified the interest in global tax fairness. In most countries, the tax burden has shifted from large multinational corporations (MNCs) and wealthy elites to ordinary citizens and smaller firms. This problem has been exacerbated by the inability of the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) project to address the critical needs of the poorer countries. While the effort was well-intended, resistance by several developed countries and their MNCs has blocked genuine progress. Roughly half of all world trade still passes through tax haven jurisdictions; and tax avoidance continues to be facilitated through complex and intransparent financial structures. The resulting enormous revenue loss affects people everywhere. But it hurts poor people in poor countries the most, because they are least able to assert themselves politically and they suffer vital losses when their state fails to make the basic social investments required to end their deprivation.
The current efforts of large economies (such as the U.S.) to go their own way and try to implement sweeping reforms to benefit mainly themselves will undermine international cooperation and disadvantage especially the poorer countries whose bargaining power is weak. To raise the revenues that these countries need to achieve social justice, they must take control of their own tax destinies. They must think creatively, thoughtfully and collaboratively to find ways of protecting their tax revenues in an increasingly adversarial global environment.
We invite papers that explore the options available to developing countries and provide a basis for dialogue and concerted policy action. The intellectual collaboration we initiate should help tax administrators, policy makers, academics and civil-society experts to learn from one another and to jointly envision practices suitable to advancing their own countries toward tax justice and a better future for their citizens. The papers are to be published as an anthology with a good publisher that assures wide distribution at an affordable price.
Papers should be about 6,000 to 7,000 words, with appropriate citations and an executive summary. The deadline for submission is June 30, 2017. Accepted papers will be thoroughly discussed at two workshops planned for August and December 2017.
Without limiting authors’ creative discretion, we suggest some sample topics:
– What would it take to tax multinationals as single firms? The mandate from the G20 world leaders, in support of the BEPS project, was that multinational companies should be taxed “where economic activity takes place and value is created.” This mandate is subject to various interpretations including treating these firms as unitary entities. That would involve the allocation of profits based on a formula that is commensurate with value creation as determined through the entities’ sales, payroll and assets. How can this agenda best be taken forward, and how can some of the misallocations arising from the ‘separate entity’ principle best be overcome? If such an approach were to succeed, what implications would this have for both developing and developed countries?
– How do we move from tax competition to tax cooperation? While there is a healthy tension between the need to attract investment and the need to ensure fairness and equality in competition, there is also an urgent need to avoid a race to the bottom. Are tax incentives necessary to encourage foreign direct investment? What are their pros and cons? Do developing countries have a better option that avoids the tragedy of a shrinking tax base?
– How can we strengthen global tax governance in ways that would be helpful to developing countries? Do the Bretton Woods Institutions, the OECD and the UN meet the needs of the Global South and, if not, why not? Do we need a body with universal membership that could arbitrate and resolve issues of special importance to the Global South? What would the design of a more inclusive framework look like? Can a new institution negotiate new regulations that are authoritative and ensure just outcomes?
– What are the pros and cons of developing countries signing bilateral tax treaties, and what alternative paths should they consider? Do these treaties typically protect MNCs at the expense of developing countries? Does the empirical evidence show that such treaties increase foreign direct investment? What can be learned from reviewing the model tax conventions of the UN and the OECD as well as the Multilateral Instrument (MLI) recently proposed by the OECD under the BEPS initiative?
– What are some ways of protecting the tax base of developing countries? Does it make sense to impose withholding taxes on payments to non-residents? Could such taxes work even as the reach of the digital economy expands? And what about the idea of adopting safe harbors to simplify tax administration and compliance? These ‘tax thresholds’ can often broaden the tax base and offer predictability to both companies and revenue authorities. Are there some best practices here that can benefit all developing countries?
– Can developing countries use the profit split method more widely to determine taxable profits? What are best practices in this regard that may serve as a model for other countries? If properly structured, the profit-split method can address difficulties in valuing cross-border transactions and transfer pricing arrangements and enhance the tax base of developing countries. A paper might outline some ways of doing this and provide examples of what has/has not worked in specific countries.
– Natural resource management is a critical issue for many developing countries, often fraught with tax abuse and lack of transparency. How have some countries (such as Chile and Botswana) managed this challenge reasonably well while others have foundered? What are some lessons to be learned here, and are there some innovative ways of negotiating the return of investment with MNC\’s so that both the companies and the countries can benefit?
– A number of developing countries have been able to enhance their tax base by requiring more disclosure and attestation rules by both corporate officers and independent public accountants. This also provides an important risk management function for tax administrators and encourages taxpayer compliance. The Dictaman Fiscal rule in Mexico is a case in point. Are there other rules or practices of this kind that may be helpful to developing countries?
– Another paper might cover key developing country priorities that have not been adequately covered in international deliberations thus far and continue to constrict the tax base of developing countries. This includes many shortfalls in the existing transfer pricing standards, tax treatment of technical services in developing countries, the impact of investment treaty obligations, high interest costs borne by developing countries, and the use of tax havens. It may be useful to outline also transfer pricing methodologies that do work for developing countries (such as for Brazil and Argentina) even if they are not recognized by the OECD. All of these have an important impact on the tax base of developing countries, and need further dissemination and dialogue.
– Also worthy of developing-country attention is the opportunity to form regional alliances on tax and trade matters. This involves both capacity building and economic integration to enable greater flow of resources and increased economic development. Can regional economic integration build strength in a globalized economy and provide long-term benefits in the member countries involved? Can developing countries then pool their expertise and bargaining power to negotiate more effectively as a group? Answers would be useful to policy makers in developing countries who may find such an alliance a promising tool toward protecting their national tax bases.
Following one of the above suggestions or developing other ideas, papers should assist countries of the Global South toward designing tax systems that can sustain a just society. We look forward to receiving pertinent thoughts from academics, tax administrators, policy makers, business people and others with suitable expertise.
Krishen Mehta (krishen.mehta@asiainitiatives.org)
Thomas Pogge (thomas.pogge@yale.edu)
ASAP is mobilizing its network to produce a series of expert policy papers on migration.
In September 2016 there was a High-level Summit Addressing Large Movements of Refugees and Migrants. It brought States together to discuss how the global community should be responding to the larger numbers of people moving in the world. The impetus for this meeting was largely the increased movements into Europe from the Middle East region, but the meeting itself was intended to have a global focus.
After much negotiation the outcome document from the meeting, called the New York Declaration, includes two annexes. These annexes call for the development of a \’comprehensive refugee response framework\’ and \’a global compact for safe, orderly and regular migration\’ respectively. In reference to the second of these, some have referred to this period as echoing something of the 1940s and early 1950s in terms of the scope to produce new global norms for migration. Others see this as an over-dramaticisation, given there already is a substantial set of governance frameworks for international migration. Either way, now is an important time for global migration governance and it is important to get it right.
The timeline for the creation of the Compact on Migration is tight. Negotiations are underway now and the Annex requires that the new Compact be launched at a conference in 2018. The Global Forum on Migration and Development is in Berlin in June 2017.
So what can global academia do to help? One thing that we have been told would be useful is the production of a series of working papers on key topics of negotiation within Annex II of the New York Declaration, presenting the current state of thinking in each area to ensure that progress to this point is not overlooked. We are planning to produce a series of (maximum) 20 academic policy briefs (about 3,000-4,000 words) examining the current situation and are looking for people to join the team.
ASAP is looking for contributions from lawyers, economists, political scientists, but others too. Tell us what you can contribute and we’ll see if it can fit. We will include a maximum of 20 papers and will be selecting based on your proven level of expertise, on ensuring that we can cover a broad range of the important topics for consideration, and on ensuring that the contribution will be useful for the discussion process.
Rather than list the topics to be covered, we invite you to formulate a topic from Annex II of the New York Declaration which you think should be addressed.
This year, Academics Stand Against Poverty and Global Financial Integrity will be awarding the fourth annual Amartya Sen Prizes to the two best original essays on the moral assessment of tax dodging. Contributed essays should be of ca. 7,000 to 9,000 words. There will be a first prize of $5,000 and a second prize of $3,000.
Individuals and corporate officers often engage in tax dodging. They, and many others, do not think that — even when doing so is technically illegal — it is a serious moral failing. Among the reasons they give for this assessment are the following. (1) A substantial proportion of tax revenues are misappropriated, wasted or spent on inappropriate or immoral projects. (2) The tax system is unfair in the way it distributes benefits and burdens. (3) Many others manage to escape the tax burdens assigned to them, and it is not seriously wrong to do likewise when paying one\’s taxes honestly would make one a sucker who picks up the slack of non-compliers.
These reasons cannot be easily dismissed. Clearly, existing tax schemes do exhibit the listed flaws to some extent; and clearly the flaws are sometimes so severe that it might even be wrong to pay taxes (e.g., to the governments of Nazi Germany or Apartheid South Africa). On the other hand, one might argue that citizens ought to put up, and to comply, with a flawed tax system insofar as it is democratically legitimated. By living in a democracy one has joined a social contract that provides one an opportunity to co-legislate in exchange for a duty to comply with legislation properly enacted. It also seems relevant that the tax system, even if flawed, does underwrite various morally urgent services (e.g., protections against violence and deprivation) that would not be reliably supplied to all without tax revenues.
Submissions should illuminate these or other key moral issues surrounding tax dodging in the real-world context of one or more present states. How can we work out what those to whom particular tax rules apply must, should and may do? Is it relevant for the moral assessment of specific cases how a tax dodging individual or corporation is spending the money saved (e.g., on donations to effective charities)?
We welcome entries from all disciplines including philosophy, political economy, international relations, development studies, law and business. Please send submissions on or before 31 August 2017 by e-mail attachment to Tom Cardamone at tcardamone@gfintegrity.org. Essays should be stripped of self-identifying references, formatted for blind review.
