"Do not forget the Bank for International Settlements!"

Professor Attiya Waris, the world has changed radically since you took office in 2021. The "polycrisis" has accelerated considerably, driven by the various consequences of the pandemic and the new wars in Gaza, in Sudan and in Ukraine. How do these dramatic developments affect your work?

As far as I can judge, every country on earth is experiencing its own set of crises – which may be geopolitical, economic, political or financial in nature. In a very short space of time this autumn, several governments have found themselves with new prime ministers or presidents. Some of them were catapulted into office with the help of social media. In many countries around the world, young people are protesting in the streets. The challenge is to address and deal with their very real concerns. Other factors at play are artificially created crises, such as growing militarisation around the world or drastic savings policies in many countries.

In Switzerland, we must fight hard against political attacks on the already limited development budget. Do you also see countries that are doing anything to counter this trend?

I just got back from Kuwait. There I was told that they would like to stabilise or even increase the aid budget. That is a tiny ray of hope in the present gloomy environment. Besides, our entire continent is the theatre of a fierce battle between China and the West for geopolitical influence in Africa, being waged by Western and Chinese companies through the building of infrastructure.

What is the role of multilateral institutions in this game, in which the rules of the global financial system are being set?

One institution that is often underestimated in the current architecture of the financial system is the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). It is located in Basel. The BIS in fact monitors knowledge about every single financial transaction in the world. These data sets are of course highly important and should not be in the hands of an entirely private institution. Before working for the UN, I had taken a look at the BIS. In the light of the extremely important role it plays, it is remarkable how invisible it is, generally speaking.

Why is it so important for such institutions to be transparent?

Let us assume that we want to introduce a global transaction tax, something we have attempted in the past. How can we know what the resulting tax take could be if we have no idea of the actual transactions? How then should the tax be levied? Besides, taxes belong to a society, a community, which collects them because it needs them. We are talking about data that are of critical importance to financial authorities, civil society or researchers, who function as overseers of the system.
 

BIS, the "Bank of Central Banks"

The Bank for International Settlements is the oldest international financial institution. It was founded in 1930 to handle the newly negotiated German reparation obligations following the First World War. It is organised as a stock company with headquarters in Basel, though the only shareholders are the central banks of currently 63 countries (in contrast to Switzerland's BIS member, the Swiss National Bank (SNB), which also has private shareholders. The BIS assists its members in managing currency reserves and deals with the economic and financial market situation, and also international monetary and financial stability. Also located at the BIS are the secretariat of the Financial Stability Board (FSB) and the Basel Committee on Bank Supervision.

What is your relationship with the Bretton Woods Institutions – the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the IMF?

It is rather problematic. First, I find it difficult to gain access to important meetings, which I think is outrageous, considering my role at the United Nations. But putting my personal situation aside, these institutions were entrusted with developing a new financial architecture under last year's UN Pact for the Future. But there is nothing, no report, not even rumours. The lack of transparency of the Bretton Woods institutions is particularly harmful when it comes to loan agreements between creditors and sovereign borrowers. They concern entire population groups, but we do not know what they contain. These institutions should be required to publish such documents.
 

The International Monetary Fund, dominated by the North, keeps many agreements secret: IMF Director Kristalina Georgieva with a journalist in Washington. © Reuters/Ken Cedeno

There are significant gaps in the closing document of the fourth UN Conference on Financing for Development held in Seville in July. The best parts of the "Compromiso de Sevilla" are perhaps those that address taxation and sustainable development. This debate is gaining more attention in the negotiations on the UN Tax Convention. How do you see the situation?

Set up in 1968, the UN Tax Committee was for a long time the only United Nations platform for tax policy. This body consists of highly specialised tax auditors who know very little about human rights. This is why the absence of a dialogue on taxes and human rights has always been one of the greatest challenges in the UN setting. Since the start of my mandate, one of my main concerns has been to bring about greater rapprochement between New York, where economic and social matters are located, and Geneva, where human rights are the main focus. My overriding concern in that regard has been to interlink taxes and human rights.

Are the negotiations on a UN tax convention a turning point in this connection?

Not really, as the country delegates who are negotiating the agreement are also mostly tax experts. There are no negotiators on treaty law, human rights, sustainable development or trade involved. In this regard, all we have seen so far is 'business as usual' and regard for the inequality almost invisible.

The fact is that also from a tax justice standpoint, tackling this subject is no easy matter. There are human rights that stand in the way of greater tax justice, the fair distribution of taxation rights between all world regions, progressive taxation or tax transparency – primarily the right to property.

Indeed, and that brings us to the question of the type of human rights that we are dealing with. And here, the European perspective, which of course is also that of Switzerland, becomes a major challenge. Europe's main argument so far has been that these negotiations are duplicating OECD reforms and are therefore unnecessary. But you cannot label something as duplication if, from the very outset, three- quarters of the world felt excluded from the decision-making in regard to the original. In addition, it is extremely problematic when European countries, which are known as traditional supporters and defenders of the human rights system, circumvent it and try to exclude it from the discussion.

What are you hearing in this regard from the countries in the Global South?

Some have had negative experiences with the human rights discourse. The responsibility for this lies with the countries in the Global North, as they have used human rights as a means of punishment or a tool with which to accuse others of incompetence, bad governance or mismanagement. Meanwhile, they ignored the fact that the countries being investigated lacked sufficient resources to be able to meet their human rights obligations. Conversely global North countries have also not been held up to the same human rights standards they also have committed to.

So, it was not just the tax experts who ignored human rights, but also UN human rights specialists, who overlooked the fact that today's international tax regulations are hampering the enforcement of human rights?

Yes. And then some European human rights experts came forward and explained that they wanted to apply regional standards but at the global level. European human rights standards are different from the global ones, they recognise that companies too have human rights. This opens the door to arguments about the right to privacy, which you mentioned earlier. This can very negatively impact a strong agenda for equality by undermining tax transparency.