Tax Justice for Education: Transforming the Financial Architecture
SDG Summit 2023
Side event approved
Side Event title: Tax Justice for Education: Transforming the Financial Architecture
Co-conveners:
Government of the Republic of Malawi, Government of the Republic of Argentina, Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Special Adviser to the UN’s Secretary General for Transforming Education, Education & Academia Stakeholder Group (EASG), Global Campaign for Education (GCE)
Language: English
Date/time: 17 September 2023
Time: 13:30-14:45
UN Headquarters, Room (tbc)
Coordination Vernor Muñoz (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)
Background
All States are responsible for ensuring the right to education for all and in doing so they must provide adequate and sustainable public funding for education. This key obligation is enshrined in several binding human rights instruments and stressed by the Sustainable Development Agenda, which includes the call for all governments to allocate the maximum of available resources to education. This is a substantive theme in the UN High Level Dialogue on Financing.
The lack of education financing is due to multiple factors and has worsened due to various causes, such as the prevalence of regressive tax systems, over-indebtedness, privatization, and weak international cooperation to low-income countries. Behind those causes remains the idea that education is not a right that must be ensured. In fact, the estimation of the annual financing gap to reach SDG4 in low and lower middle-income countries is $148 billion[1], but this estimation may vary according to different sources, so the gap could be even worse.
The Transforming Education Summit adopted a comprehensive approach to the most pressing problems in education financing, calling to mobilize more resources, to increase equity and efficiency of investments on education and to build stronger and accurate education financing data and accountability.
Description
This event is a key platform to broaden the data, scope and understanding of education financing and the impact of tax reforms into the progress of SDG4/ the human right to education.
The side event would facilitate diverse analysis to complement and enrich the information offered by states during the Transforming Education Summit and would provide innovative perspectives from different actors, aiming to provide a comprehensive view of the challenges we need to overcome for building sustainable, gender equal, inclusive and peaceful societies.
While focusing on Tax Justice, it is expected to critically analyze the current financial architecture, both in the international and domestic spheres, the challenges to expand coverage to all populations and educational modalities and the urgency to convert educational financing into an inclusive and gender-transformative process.
Agenda
1:00 Welcome and introductions.
1:05 Mobilising resources for driving SDG4 progress: gaps and trends
1:15 Tax justice, the path to equitable education financing
1:25 The UN Tax Convention proposal and its impact on education financing.
1:35 Transforming the education financing landscape: Strengthening of national South-South and triangular cooperation mechanisms to influence progressive tax systems.
1:45 Inter-generational and gender-transformative approach to education financing
1:55 Q&A.
2:15 Closure.
Speakers
- Leonardo Garnier,Special Adviser to the UN’s Secretary General for Transforming Education. Mobilising resources for driving SDG4 progress: gaps and trends
- Honourable Madalitso Kambauwa Wirima MP - Minister of Education -Malawi. The UN Tax Convention proposal and its impact on education financing.
- Mariana Huepe. ECLAC’s representative.Transforming the education financing landscape: Strengthening of national South-South and triangular cooperation mechanisms to influence progressive tax systems.
- Faraja Nyalandu, GCE Board Member.The role of civil society in promoting progressive education financing.
- Sebastian Berger, President of Global Student Forum. Inter-generational and gender-transformative approach to education financing
- Vernor Muñoz. GCE Head of Policy & Advocacy and former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education(moderator)
[1] https://www.developmentaid.org/api/frontend/cms/file/2020/09/374163eng.pdf
