Inclusive societies require progressive taxation and public spending policies to unlock the untapped potential of communities on the sidelines of economic progress. There is a common misconception that technical barriers are the key challenges to achieving this, however, this paper argues that the barriers to progressive taxation and public spending are largely political in nature.
This policy paper is the third contribution to the challenge paper on the Grand Challenge on Inequality and Exclusion, which will be launched in July 2019 at the UN High-level Political Forum.
The United Nations acknowledges that prevention is first and foremost a national priority. Indeed, governments routinely undertake efforts to reduce the risks of violent conflict, even when such actions are not formally called “prevention.”
This briefing, our second in a series on prevention at the UN, describes nationally led approaches to building resilience and reducing risk based on field research in Timor-Leste and Tunisia, as well as examples from a number of other countries, including the Gambia and Norway.
All over the world, countries at widely varying levels of development and with very different histories are grappling with a similar challenge: breakdown of common ground in politics. This policy paper, the second contribution to the challenge paper on the Grand Challenge on Inequality and Exclusion which will be launched in July 2019 at the UN High-level Political Forum, argues that the solution is to find ways back to a shared sense of common ground, common identity, and common purpose by "untriggering" politics, addressing grievances, and rebuilding common ground.
The Democratic Republic of the Congo held national presidential and legislative elections on December 30th 2018. The national electoral commission declared opposition leader Felix Tshisekedi the winner of the presidential poll. However, a leak from the same commission, whose results were extremely similar to those released by the Catholic Church’s observation mission, showed that Martin Fayulu, another opposition leader, clearly won the elections.
Despite this controversy, the post-electoral scene has been relatively stable. Tshisekedi was inaugurated on January 24th and has spent his first months traveling abroad––meeting with at least 17 heads of state since January––and in the country. Meanwhile, Martin Fayulu has launched a campaign to contest the election results, holding rallies in several towns across the country.
This policy brief does two broad things. First, the author sets up gender inequality as a dimension of generalized inequality and reviews existing evidence about the links between gender inequality and income inequality. Second, the paper outlines policy solutions and institutional fixes to promote both recognition and redistribution, such as eliminating legal discrimination, social-protection programs, education, social spending, quotas for women in parliament, the recognition and protection of informal-sector workers, and parental leave and related schemes.
This brief is a first contribution to the challenge paper on the Grand Challenge on Inequality and Exclusion, part of the Pathfinders initiative, which will be launched in July 2019 at the UN High-level Political Forum.
