Social Watch E-Newsletter - Issue 266 - July 22, 2016

The negative impact on developing countries of the secrecy of the Swiss banking system, which encourages damaging tax evasion, corruption and illicit financial flows, was highlighted by civil society when Switzerland submitted its report about the 2030 Agenda to the United Nations. "Switzerland continues to host the largest offshore financial centre in the world" says the alternative report of Aliiance Sud. In 2015, Swiss banks administered foreign assets in the total amount of 2,300 billion francs. Civil society criticizes the lack of political will in allocating adequate resources for appropriate measures at home and abroad, especially against Switzerland's engagement and commitments at the international level during the post-2015 process. This raises questions about the extent to which Switzerland is institutionally and strategically prepared for effective planning and implementation of the 2030 Agenda. Read more

The Mexican legal framework on energy amended in 2013 and 2014 presents obstacles to the exercise of human rights as well as to achieving the SDGs, as it prioritizes the activities of exploration and exploitation of hydrocarbons "over any other involving the use of the surface and subsurface of the lands concerned". The framework establishes several legal provisions such as the determination of legal easements for hydrocarbons to public, private, national and transnational energy projects (some of which employ harmful techniques such as hydraulic fracturing or fracking), which constitutes a regression in terms of human rights and the environment, while seriously compromising the achievement of the SDGs.
The organizations of the Space for civil society coordination to the follow-up of the 2030 Agenda in Mexico therefore urge the Government to observe Article 1 of the Constitution which mandates the application of the highest standards of human rights and the fulfilment of the obligation to respect them, protect them, promote them and secure them to prevent, investigate and punish their violations. Read more

Social Watch coalitions around the world are contributing their assessments and reports to the global Social Watch report 2016, under the overall theme Goals for 2030... and obstacles to getting there. The Social Watch network thus joins the current global discussions around a set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and on a new development framework and the need for civil society monitoring.

The Social Watch national platforms are independent coalitions of civil society organizations struggling for social and gender justice in their own countries. The Social Watch network has been publishing since 1996 yearly reports on how governments implement their international commitments to eradicate poverty and achieve equality between women and men.

Much is made of the public-private partnership (PPP). This is where the public and private sectors combine to produce outcomes which are favorable to the nation. But the biggest and best-supported PPP is to be found in the world of education. Here, the private sector, consisting of students and their families, combine with the public sector in the hitherto unlovely form of the Department of Education to produce an educated populace. 
In the 2016 presidential election voters chose radical changes. President Duterte has chosen Dr. Leonor Briones to be Secretary of the Department of Education. Briones has an impressively wide resumé. Prior to her appointment as DepEd Secretary, she was responsible for Social Watch Philippines. Read more

How much is tax collection dependent on the policies of one individual country? When discussing tax policy a common tendency used to be to treat it as an exclusively domestic policy matter, one to which only the prerogatives and obligations of the State where the respective taxes are to be collected are relevant. Reality could be nothing further from the truth, as demonstrated by the amounts of revenue that get lost to tax evasion and avoidance by international actors because of their ability to straddle across a diversity of national jurisdictions. As more of such tax maneuvers come to light, international cooperation for tax matters gains more prominence on the development finance agenda. Read more