A/HRC/53/39 Tax justice 50. As noted above, to fulfil their human rights obligations to reduce gender inequality and poverty, States must direct adequate public resources to comprehensive social protection systems and services. A key mechanism for the redistribution of resources is through proportional and progressive taxation. One of the hallmarks of neoliberal economic policies over the past few decades has been a decline in the fiscal contributions being made by large corporations and high-income earners, while indirect taxes with regressive distributional impacts, such as value-added tax, have expanded.90 In addition to lower direct taxes, illicit financial flows by multinational corporations are depriving countries in the global South of up to $200 billion a year in lost fiscal revenues, and failures to effectively curb tax evasion, trade misinvoicing, corruption and money-laundering mean that there are fewer public resources available for equitable social and climate spending. 91 51. Regressive taxation frameworks and illicit financial flows both have a particularly pernicious impact on women and girls, who account for a greater proportion of those living in poverty as a result of structural discrimination, and who are more likely than men to be responsible for caring for other family members, or to be care-receivers, and are therefore in greater need of social protection and public services. 92 Tax justice, both nationally and globally, is a crucial mechanism for realizing human rights and for tackling socioeconomic inequalities and poverty, as Governments require fiscal revenue to sustainably finance investments in public services, social protection and gender-responsive infrastructure. 93 Feminist methodologies for fiscal reform emphasize the need for transparent, genderresponsive taxation frameworks that recognize women’s indispensable labour in the economy and equitably redistribute resources from the wealthiest corporations and individuals to fund public provisioning.94 Debt cancellation 52. Debt cancellation is a prerequisite for just and human rights-based redistributive public policies. In 2021, in low-income countries, debt repayments represented 171 per cent of all spending on health care, education and social protection combined and, in 2022, debt servicing among low-income countries globally was estimated at $43 billion. 95 If left unchecked, widespread, lasting debt crises in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic have the potential to set the achievement of global development goals back by at least a decade. 96 53. There are alternative models to indebtedness that would not result in increased inequalities through the adoption of austerity and fiscal consolidation measures that lead to reduced social expenditure and that have been shown to undermine the human rights of women and girls living in poverty. In recent years, more than 60 countries have successfully renegotiated debts, and over 20 have defaulted on or repudiated public debt, preferring to invest debt service savings in social programmes. 97 Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the G20’s Debt Service Suspension Initiative and the International Monetary Fund’s Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust have provided some debt service relief to highly indebted poor countries. Additionally, in some country settings, it has been possible for data on the negative impact of austerity measures on the sexual and reproductive health and other rights of women and girls to be put forward to maintain programmes and budgets to guarantee those essential human rights.98 Those interventions have opened space for dialogue on the human rights impacts of debt and fiscal consolidation in specific countries, and in particular sectors such as education, health and nutrition, but more could be done with respect to cancelling debt and 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 GE.23-06173 Bohoslavsky and Cantamutto, eds., The IMF and Human Rights: Interviews. See A/77/169. Global Alliance for Tax Justice and others, Framing Feminist Taxation. A/HRC/29/31 and A/HRC/26/28. See also Radhika Balakrishnan, James Heintz and Diane Elson, Rethinking Economic Policy for Social Justice: The Radical Potential of Human Rights. Akina Mama wa Afrika and Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, “A feminist tax justice handbook for women in the informal economy” (2021). Oxfam, “First crisis, then catastrophe” (2022). See A/75/164. Bohoslavsky and Cantamutto, The IMF and Human Rights: Interviews. Views expressed during consultations. 15