CESR at the 2024 Annual Meetings: advocating for a rights-based transformation of the international financial architecture

At the 2024 IMF/World Bank Annual Meetings, CESR and allies will get together to challenge the unjust economic structures perpetuated by the Bretton Woods institutions. We aim to push for a decolonial, feminist, and rights-aligned financial system that addresses the interconnected crises of debt, climate, and inequality. CESR’s “inside-outside” strategy combines policy advocacy within the meetings and grassroots mobilization outside to amplify Global South voices and demand a shift toward a just, people-centered, and sustainable international financial architecture.

By: Mahinour ElBadrawi, CESR’s Co-Director of Program

​​The Annual and Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) are key global forums held annually since 1946. These meetings gather central bankers, finance ministers, development officials, private sector executives, civil society representatives, and academics to discuss pressing issues related to the global economy, such as financial stability and poverty reduction. This year, CESR and its allies are participating again as the IMF and WB mark 80 years since their establishment through the post-World War II Bretton Woods system. This milestone presents a critical opportunity to evaluate the historical roles of these institutions and advocate for transformative shifts in global economic governance. While initially founded to promote international cooperation and sustainable growth, the IMF and World Bank have also contributed to persistent global challenges like fiscal imbalances, economic instability, inadequate climate responses, and gender inequities.

The 2024 Annual Meetings serve as a crucial platform to push for reforms in the International Financial Architecture (IFA). Building on discussions from the Spring Civil Society Policy Forum (CSPF), CESR aims to advocate for transformative change that addresses global health crises, the debt crisis, the climate crisis, and pervasive gender inequalities—paving the way toward a decolonial, feminist, green, and rights-aligned global economic system. Our strategy combines a “dual inside-outside” approach: we aim to radicalize policy debate inside the IMF/WB while engaging in grassroots mobilization outside. This strategy strives for concrete, cross-field collaboration that bridges policy advocacy with movement building to create collective power. By doing so, it seeks to amplify Global South visions for change and achieve tangible outcomes in economic governance.

CESR envisions reshaping the roles of the IMF and World Bank within broader international frameworks, such as the United Nations (UN) and the Financing for Development (FfD) process. We aim to foster a democratic global economic governance system centered on human rights, dismantling entrenched power structures that perpetuate systemic injustices. 

What issues are we addressing, and what change are we advocating?

Debt crisis: A rights-based solution

The global debt crisis is especially severe in the Global South, where high debt servicing demands are threatening major budget cuts and undermining critical public services necessary for realizing economic and social rights. The situation is dire, with debt payments exceeding expenditures on essential rights like education, health, housing, and social protection. The crisis remains deeply rooted in colonial histories, perpetuating neocolonial dynamics that undermine the possibility of a just, people-centered, and planet-centered future. The burden of debt constrains the rights to self-determination of these nations, forcing them to adopt policies that limit the fiscal space needed to meet their populations' economic and social rights, conflicting with their obligations to uphold human rights. This situation also exacerbates racial inequalities, disproportionately affecting non-white nations in the Global South.

The current IFA, designed and governed by the Bretton Woods institutions, exacerbates these structural inequities. It prioritizes creditors over debtors, lacks a statutory mechanism, and leads to inconsistent outcomes in debt restructuring. Holdout creditors often obstruct restructuring efforts, prolonging economic crises and placing debtor countries at a significant disadvantage. Conflicts of interest persist, with institutions like the IMF serving as both creditors and restructuring advisers.

In contrast to the IMF’s approach to debt restructuring within or outside the Common Framework and discussions at the Global Sovereign Debt Roundtable (GSDR), CESR advocates for a rights-based statutory mechanism to address the global debt crisis, recognizing it as a structural problem that requires a structural solution. This approach aims to disrupt entrenched power dynamics and prioritize sustainable development and human rights over market-driven rules that typically favor creditors. By integrating human rights principles, CESR seeks to transform these market rules, making debt negotiations more equitable and focused on putting people and the planet before profit.

A human rights framework introduces universal standards -such as transparency, participation, and good faith-  that demand the protection of fundamental rights, fostering fairness and accountability in debt solutions. It provides a consistent basis for negotiations by requiring transparency and good faith. It also addresses the intersection of debt and climate, recognizing the need for solutions that consider environmental impacts alongside financial ones. Key principles guiding this reform include the right to self-determination, development, equality, non-discrimination, transparency, extraterritorial obligations, maximum resource mobilization, and maintaining minimum living standards.

Implementing a rights-based statutory mechanism would:

• Increase fiscal space through sustainability assessments aligned with human rights.

• Create a consistent framework that reduces fragmentation and biases favoring creditors.

• Enhance debtor bargaining power and establish an independent multilateral oversight body, eliminating conflicts of interest.

• Level the playing field between creditors and debtors, allowing an opportunity for righting historical wrongs by following an obligations-based approach to debt resolution.

Tax Justice: toward a rights-aligned global tax framework

An equitable tax system is vital for resourcing public services, reducing inequalities, and upholding human rights. However, the current global tax regime fails to address significant issues like inequality, climate change, and funding gaps in essential services, particularly in the Global South. Tax avoidance by multinational corporations and wealthy individuals further diminishes states’ capacities to fulfill human rights obligations.

CESR advocates for a UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation to embed human rights within global tax systems. This framework should:

• Promote progressive taxation: Raise revenue while reducing inequality, addressing climate impacts, and ensuring gender justice. Some of the key proposals include:

• Cap and Share Carbon Tax: Implement a global carbon tax on corporations, with revenues directed to an international fund that redistributes resources to climate-vulnerable, low-emitting countries in the Global South. This promotes equity and adheres to the "polluter pays" principle.

• Climate Damages Tax: Charge fossil fuel companies based on the carbon emissions associated with their extraction activities, generating significant funds for climate action and holding corporations accountable for environmental harm.

• Wealth and windfall taxes: Institute global taxes on high-net-worth individuals and windfall profits of fossil fuel companies, recognizing that the wealthiest contribute disproportionately to carbon emissions. Even a modest tax could raise substantial funds (e.g., a 1.5% tax on wealth over $100 million could generate nearly $300 billion annually).

• Enforce transparency: Mandate automatic exchange of information, public beneficial ownership registration, and public country-by-country reporting to tackle tax abuse and corruption. 

• Uphold democratic participation: Ensure inclusion of marginalized groups and of all countries on equal footing in decision-making.

• Mobilize Maximum Available Resources: Require states to generate sufficient revenue to realize economic, social, and cultural rights (ESCR) while looking at the extraterritorial role of tax abuse conduit countries (tax havens) and other abuse-enabling structures and ensuring there are no retrogressions in the enjoyment of these rights without an adequate and monitored justification.

Climate finance: addressing historical injustices

The climate crisis, rooted in colonial-era resource extraction, disproportionately impacts those who contributed least to it. Climate finance must address these structural inequalities, but it often perpetuates debt cycles and prioritizes profit over people, leading to further inequalities.

CESR champions transformative climate finance policies that align with reparations and human rights standards. Aligning climate finance with human rights principles can make it more equitable, accountable, and responsive to Global South communities' needs and duties of Global North Countries. Key proposals include:

• Debt cancellation as reparations: Link debt sustainability to human rights by canceling sovereign debt where possible.This avoids exacerbating debt burdens and respects countries' right to development, economic sovereignty and right to self determination.

• Prioritizing grants over loans: Focus on grants and low-interest loans to fund climate resilience projects, and public financing over private.  This is to prevent increasing indebtedness of Global South countries, aligning with obligations to mobilize maximum available resources for the fulfillment of rights.

•  Advancing the Loss and Damage Fund: Ensure transparent and equitable resource distribution to address climate impacts. Funds like the Loss and Damage Fund must be adequately financed and administered transparently to ensure equitable distribution aligned with human rights principles, including participation, accountability, and non-discrimination.

• Gender-responsive climate action: Climate finance mechanisms must be gender-responsive, recognizing the disproportionate impact of climate change on women and marginalized communities and ensuring their meaningful participation in decision-making processes.

• Adopting a rights-based and reparations-focused approach: By adopting a rights-based and reparations-focused approach, climate finance can promote a just transition that rectifies historical injustices, upholds human rights, and fosters sustainable development for all, particularly the most vulnerable. Climate finance flows should align with human rights standards such as the polluter pays principle and the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities. 

• Reforming Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs): Pressure MDBs to prioritize support for climate-resilient and sustainable projects, cease funding fossil fuel initiatives, and phase out investments that undermine environmental sustainability and human rights. MDBs should align their financing with human rights obligations and the goals of a just transition.

• Advocating for an ambitious and progressive New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG): The New Collective Quantified Goal will be established at the upcoming COP29 meetings. It is the main climate finance objective under the Paris Agreement, and has historically been underfunded. Global North countries must be pressured to set an ambitious target that prioritizes adaptation and loss and damage funding. 

• Embracing climate change litigation efforts: Progressive judicial decisions such as the recently-released advisory opinions on states’ legal obligations for preventing climate change should be championed.   

Gender Justice: Integrating feminist economic reforms

Economic structures often perpetuate gender inequalities, exacerbating disparities through regressive tax policies and austerity measures. CESR calls for feminist transformation of the IFA through gender-focused reforms that dismantle structural barriers and support women’s rights.By connecting tax, debt, climate, and governance reforms, CESR aims to foster a comprehensive, rights-based transformation of the IFA that centers gender justice.

Key Gender Justice Proposals:

• Progressive taxation: Advocate for fair taxes on multinational corporations and wealthy individuals, mobilizing resources for gender-sensitive public services.

• Equitable debt management: Embed gender justice into debt negotiations, ensuring they support women’s economic and social rights.

• Climate justice with a gender lens: Prioritize investments in climate adaptation and resilience that incorporate women’s needs and leadership.

Governance issues crucial to our advocacy

CESR’s agenda targets critical governance issues within the IFA, including:

• Quota reform: Seek to democratize decision-making, enhancing Global South representation in financial governance. This means fighting against “the one-dollar-one vote” system as one way to decolonize the IFA.

• IMF surcharges: Although a decision has recently been made to significantly reduce surcharges, CESR joins the debt justice movement in calling for the full elimination of these surcharges. This would free up resources for human rights-centered investments and honor human rights obligations of both creditor and debtor countries.

• Special Drawing Rights (SDRs): Push for equitable redistribution to expand fiscal space in lower-income nations. This would be a step forwards towards the state's ability to fulfill their duty to mobilize maximum available resources as required by human rights obligations, and for global north and more powerful states that have stronger voting powers to be respecting their extraterritorial obligations towards lower-income states and their duty to cooperate accordingly.

These changes aim to create an IFA aligned with feminist principles, systemic transformation, and human rights.

CESR’s vision for transforming the IFA

Through a multi-year learning collective co-convened with regional partners—including Centro de Derechos Económicos y Sociales (CDES), the Institute for Economic Justice (IEJ), International Women’s Rights Action Watch Asia Pacific (IWRAW AP), and L’Observatoire Tunisien de l'Économie (OTE)—CESR has co-developed a vision for a decolonial, green, feminist, and rights-based transformation of the IFA:

We envision a transformative shift in the global financial architecture centered on the principles of human rights, self-determination, intersectionality, and climate justice. The current system must be dismantled to redistribute power and resources, deliver reparations, and ensure accountability. We demand action from governments, IFIs, and private actors to achieve real transformation for those most impacted by systemic injustices.

Events 2024 IMF/WB Annual Meetings

CESR’s presence at the meetings will focus on inside policy dialogue and outside grassroots mobilization:

• “Reimagining Governance: 80 Years of IMF and World Bank Legacies and Pathways to Transforming the IFA” at the Civil Society Policy Forum (CSPF), this session is led by CESR and together with partners like Equidad de Género, Latindadd, MENAFem, IBON International, and WEDO. This session will analyze IMF/WB legacies, explore governance reforms, and propose transformation pathways.

• “Taxing the Rich- a step closer”, at CSPF, organized by the Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation (ICRICT), and co-sponsored and supported by CESR, Oxfam, Arab NGO Network for Development (ANND), Tax Justice Network Africa, Club of Rome, Earth4all, Patriotic Millionaires, Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (GI-ESCR). Under Brazil's G20 presidency, this panel explores the next steps to taxing the super-rich to reduce inequality.
  
  
  
  

• "Financing Care Economies through Progressive Taxation: Role of IMF-driven Austerity": Gender-responsive, progressive fiscal policies are critical in funding care economies as a priority in many Global South countries. However, the IMF’s advice and programs still prescribe austerity in practice without tackling systemic issues like illicit financial flows, taxing wealth, or financial transparency to raise more progressive tax revenue. Organized by FTC, APMDD, CBGA, Christian Aid, LATINDADD, TJNA, and WEDO.

• “Resist & Revive: A feminist gathering”, happening outside of the CSPF, co-organized with partners including WEDO, MENAFem, ActionAid International, Akina Mama wa Afrika, and the Feminist Macroeconomic Alliance-Malawi (FEAM). The gathering features include an open mic, art displays, and community-building activities to challenge colonial structures.
  
  

• "Beyond Austerity: Feminist Perspectives on the Role of Bretton Woods Institutions", This session explores the impact of GDP-focused economic policies on Global South nations, particularly under IMF and World Bank austerity measures. It examines how these policies affect women, the working class, and the environment using case studies from MENA, Africa, and Latin America while highlighting grassroots resistance and alternative economic frameworks. Organized by MENAFem, WEDO, FARN, FEMNET, Recourse, Equidad de Género: Ciudadanía, Trabajo y Familia, ActionAid UK, Latindadd, Akina Mama wa Afrika, Al Bawsala, CESR, Gender Action; Bretton Woods Project, End Austerity Global Campaign, End Austerity MENA Hub, ISER, CEPR, IBON International.