The links between tax evasion and corruption: how the G20 should tackle illicit financial flows. A briefing paper by Global Witness, Tax Justice Network, Christian Aid, and Global Financial Integrity

This report from Christian Aid looks at the impact of the financial crisis on the developing world. "Chastened taxpayers in the western world are now footing the bill for the excesses of the night before in the form of multi-billion-pound payouts to keep afloat the banks that triggered the crisis in the first place. At the same time, many people’s main assets – their pension funds and their houses – are losing value." They argue that the real cost of the crisis will be borne by the poor of the developing countries. The world financial crisis ‘could be the final blow that many of the poorest of the world’s poor simply cannot survive’, says United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

This report from ActionAid looks at unpaid corporate taxes as the missing link in development finance. "Christian Aid estimates, on the basis of figures quoted by the World Bank, that corporate evasion through abuses of trade pricing costs developing countries around $160bn each year - which if spent according to current patterns would, among other things, avert the deaths of around 1,000 children under-five every day." Alex Cobham of Christian Aid and Anna Thomas of ActionAid continue: "Our analysis also shows that the same lack of transparency and use of tax havens that make these abuses possible are also responsible for the financial crisis which is now hitting the poorest hardest."

This is a 2008 article by Ann Pettifor, published in the Guardian, and used by Micah Challenge as a prayer issue in November 2008

2 MB pdf file This document studies the debt crisis of the poorest countries, and the achievement over ten years of the Jubilee Debt Campaign, which sought major debt relief for these countries. “Frankly, it is a scandal that we are forced to choose between basic health and education for our people and repaying historical debt. Shall we let our children die of curable and preventable illnesses, prevent them from going to school, let people drink polluted water, just to pay off this debt?”PRESIDENT MKAPA OF TANZANIA, FEBRUARY 2005