It has been a decade since Social Watch Philippines (SWP) convened the Alternative Budget Initiative (ABI). The consortium has now blossomed to around one hundred and sixty strong civil society organizations and individuals conducting research and lobby efforts in coming out with annual budget analysis, campaigning against lump sum funds, and engaging the national government and the legislature in the budget process by coming out with a civil society-crafted alternative budget, otherwise called as the Orange Book.

Throughout the years, the effort of the consortium to directly engage through the budget process has led to the forging of partnerships with concerned agencies and champion legislators, expansion of the ABI network to more organizations and individuals who share SWP and ABI’s development vision through budget advocacy, and the continuing presence of the ABI in House and Senate to present alternative budget proposals.

The adoption of the Guiding Principles on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights by the United Nations Human Rights Council in 2012 was a significant victory in the effort to end extreme poverty. It acknowledged that poverty is not simply a matter of lack of income. These Guiding Principles clearly identify actions that governments and other relevant actors should take to ensure that all people are able to enjoy their human rights.

ATD Fourth World worked alongside our partners to complete this important document. The next step in their work was to translate these principles into language that everyone can understand and to suggest actions at the local level that groups working alongside people in poverty can put into place. In collaboration with a group of ten international non-governmental organizations active at the field level, they developed an implementation handbook on these Guiding Principles.

The Panama Papers have helped expose how politicians, criminals and corporations around the world hide their cash and avoid taxes. In Papua New Guinea (PNG), foreign owned logging companies are profiteering, using some of the same tricks.

Recent research by the Oakland Institute revealed that most logging companies operating in the country are not paying corporate tax. Despite decades of operations and the country being today the largest exporter of tropical timber in the world, logging companies barely declare any profit. This deprives PNG of hundreds of millions of dollars in much needed revenue.

While all human rights are indivisible, economic and social rights entail specific principles that bear relevance for tax policy. Economic and social rights require that states devote maximum available resources to their progressive realization. The principle of non-retrogression sets forth that states should not take measures that deliberately lead to retrogression on the enjoyment of such rights. States also have an immediate obligation to ensure the satisfaction of, at the very least, minimum essential levels of economic, social and cultural rights.

Aldo Caliari, Director of the Rethinking Bretton Woods Project at the Center of Concern, reports on the outcomes of the first ECOSOC Financing for Development Forum that took place April 18 to 20, 2016 in New York. The Forum was intended to be the centerpiece of a reinvigorated follow up to the Financing for Development process created by the Third Financing for Development Conference held in Addis Ababa in 2015. "[...] those observing the first event to follow up on [2015's] commitments were suddenly awakened to the bitter reality of transitioning from paper to the realities of implementation."