Fiscal justice is critical in addressing extreme inequality and poverty. More than technical tax or budget systems, it is about power, politics and support in the fight against inequality. Our vision puts active citizens and the civil society organizations at the heart of our approach – paying particular attention to commonly overlooked groups, and the barriers to their voices, issues and participation.
The overall goal of F.A.I.R. – Even it Up! is to ensure that ‘Citizens are empowered to redress inequality of power and influence, so fiscal systems are more progressive, and governments implement tax and spending policies that benefit the many not the few. Oxfam’s Fiscal Accountability for Inequality Reduction (F.A.I.R.) program unites the work of Oxfam and partners in over 40 countries.
Our intervention has four long-term outcomes:
- Tax systems generate more revenue and are made more progressive so the tax burden is more evenly shared and inequality reduced, particularly for women
- Budgeting processes become more transparent and spending on progressive public services that tackle gender and economic inequalities increases
- Southern governments, representing the interests of their citizens, are able to influence progressive changes to global tax systems and to resist external pressure to privatize or otherwise limit the provision of publicly-funded essential services
- Oxfam and partners access to skills building, knowledge sharing, evaluation and learning contribute to F.A.I.R. – Even it Up! outcomes
In order to achieve our outcomes and goal we have four key strategies:
- Citizen awareness, mobilization and campaigning for attitude change, engagement and empowerment.
- Capacity and alliance building for citizens and CSOs
- Strengthen dialogue and engagement with key decision-makers and informal power holders
- Research, advocacy and policy-influencing for policy and legislative change.
The program will provide a strong bridge between programs working at a local and national level, and Oxfam’s regional and global campaigning and advocacy, maximizing the two way benefit of applying greater regional and global leverage to support national level campaigning, and providing strong programmatic interventions at country level, which further support and shape Oxfam’s global Even it Up! campaign. A great example of this is the Finance for Development program, which involves local level work in 9 countries as well as regional and global level campaigning. This will offer the potential to deliver significant change at scale to the lives of millions of people in countries across the world. There are many projects that fall under the F.A.I.R. umbrella, of which Fair Tax Monitor is one. If you would like to learn more about what the F.A.I.R. - Even it Up! is doing worldwide, visit our website.