Human Rights Treaty Bodies and Tax

*This brief has been updated to reflect new Concluding Observations made by UN Treaty Bodies as of July 8, 2025. 

Tax policy is inextricably bound up with governments’ human rights obligations. Under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, governments have an obligation to use the maximum available resources, including through international assistance and cooperation, to realize rights. This implicates governments’ domestic policies on tax as well as the extraterritorial impacts of these policies and the positions governments take within relevant international institutions. Taxation also affects the enjoyment of many other human rights, not just because of its impact on available resources but because tax policy creates legal obligations and behavioral incentives that can have wide-ranging human rights impacts.

International human rights norms offer useful guidance to international policy debates around taxation, in particular as states are beginning negotiations around a new United Nations tax convention, which are expected to conclude by the end of 2027. The convention’s terms of reference note that efforts to achieve its objective should “be aligned, in the pursuit of international tax cooperation, with States’ obligations under international human rights law.”

This brief is based on an extensive analysis of how human rights treaty bodies have engaged with individual states’ approaches to tax policy issues. There are 10 human rights treaty bodies; committees of independent experts charged with providing authoritative interpretation of their respective instruments and monitoring states’ implementation of their obligations under these treaties.[1] Most of these regularly assess the practice of individual states parties and issue “concluding observations” that combine analysis of human rights performance with forward-looking recommendations. Our analysis examines this entire body of jurisprudence. It does not examine the General Comments, General Recommendations or other similar pronouncements issued by many of these treaty bodies, which offer authoritative interpretations of their respective human rights treaties not tied to an assessment of any one state party’s practices.

This brief does not attempt to offer its own analysis of states’ legal obligations regarding taxation. Rather, it seeks to describe how the treaty bodies have engaged with the complex interplay between human rights law and tax policy in their concluding observations, with a view to elucidating this growing body of interpretive work.

See the full database of tax references made by UN treaty bodies here.

Overview of Findings

The 184 Concluding Observations analyzed are global in scope, concerning 98 countries in every region of the world; 7 UN treaty bodies; and 14 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. The earliest Concluding Observation included in this analysis dates back to June 2007, while the most recent is from May 2025.

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The growing number of Concluding Observations on tax, and their geographical and topical breadth, reflects a sustained recognition, particularly over the last decade, of its importance for human rights.

Importantly, many treaty body recommendations address the content of tax policies – they are cognizant of the amount of tax revenues (adequacy), their design (e.g., progressivity), and their impacts on various groups and rights – in addition to procedural issues, such as around transparency and participation in policymaking. The analysis of treaty body references to tax surfaces several recurring themes around which this brief is structured. Those are, in no particular order:

• International Cooperation and Extraterritoriality – 34 Concluding Observations
• Adequacy – 19 Concluding Observations
• Progressivity – 36 Concluding Observations
• Non-Discrimination and Impact on Affected Groups – 76 Concluding Observations
• Spending – 26 Concluding Observations
• Process: Accountability, Transparency, Participation, and Enforcement – 31 Concluding Observations
• Review and Impact Assessments – 40 Concluding Observations
• Redistribution and Inequality Reduction – 44 Concluding Observations
• Corporate Tax – 35 Concluding Observations
• Tax Abuse and Evasion – 21 Concluding Observations

Findings and Examples by Theme

International Cooperation and Extraterritoriality

At least 34 Concluding Observations – made by CEDAW, CESCR, and CRC – touch upon states’ extraterritorial obligations, address the extraterritorial effects of their tax policies, or discuss efforts to address global tax abuse and evasion as well as illicit financial flows, including by corporations and high-net worth individuals. For example:

• To Switzerland – CESCR, 2019: “The Committee recommends that the State party take strict measures to combat tax evasion, in particular by corporations and high-net-worth individuals, and intensify its efforts to address global tax abuse, including by ensuring that public and private financial institutions are subject to appropriate regulation as part of efforts to combat fraud and tax evasion schemes. The Committee encourages the State party to implement the recommendations of the report of the Independent Expert on the effects of foreign debt and other related international financial obligations of States on the full enjoyment of all human rights, particularly economic, social and cultural rights, on his visit to Switzerland in 2017 (A/HRC/37/54/Add.3).” - E/C.12/CHE/CO/4
• To the Bahamas – CEDAW, 2018: “The Committee recommends that the State party, in keeping with its extraterritorial obligations, ensure that its financial and tax policies do not negatively affect women’s rights and efforts towards substantive equality between women and men.” - CEDAW/C/BHS/CO/6
• To Mauritius – CESCR, 2019: “The Committee recommends that the State party re-examine the role of corporate income tax in mobilizing domestic revenues, and that it play an active role in seeking to make progress towards the upward harmonization of corporate taxation in the region, enabling all countries in the region to maximize the contribution of foreign investors to public revenue.” - E/C.12/MUS/CO/5

Adequacy

Adequacy refers to the amount of tax revenues governments mobilize, which should contribute sufficient resources for the protection and realization of human rights. The treaty bodies refer to adequacy in at least 19 Concluding Observations made by CESCR and CRC. At times these references are explicit, and at times they are implied in calls for states to ensure that their taxation policies allow for the maximum available resources to be raised toward the progressive realization of economic, social and cultural rights. Treaty bodies have not attempted to engage with the complex technicalities of policy in this area, but some have provided guidance that tax revenues should be sufficient to realize rights, and at times have said that they should be “increased.” For example:

• To Canada – CESCR, 2016: “...adopt and implement a tax policy that is adequate and socially equitable and improves tax collection, so as to ensure the mobilization of resources sufficient for implementing economic, social and cultural rights...” - E/C.12/CAN/CO/6
• To El Salvador – CESCR, 2014: “...boost revenue and make it possible to increase the resources available for the implementation of economic, social and cultural rights.” - E/C.12/SLV/CO/3-5
• To Pakistan – CESCR, 2017: “...review its tax regime with a view to increasing its tax revenue...” - E/C.12/PAK/CO/1
• To Uruguay – CRC, 2007: “Design poverty reduction strategy and provide it with adequate resources (e.g., through a revised taxation policy) ...” - CRC/C/URY/CO/2

Progressivity

A progressive tax system is designed so that those with greater income or wealth contribute a larger share of their resources in taxes than those with less. At least 36 Concluding Observations – made by CESCR and CRC – recommend that states take steps to make taxes more progressive or express a concern that existing policies are regressive. These include recommendations to increase direct taxes (such as income taxes) and to revisit indirect taxes (such as value added taxes). For example:

• To Burundi – CESCR, 2015: “The Committee recommends that the State party take steps to implement a fiscal policy that is suited to needs, progressive and socially just, including by improving tax collection levels and thereby ensuring the availability of resources for the realization of economic, social and cultural rights.” - E/C.12/BDI/CO/1
• To Bosnia and Herzegovina – CESCR, 2021: “Review its fiscal policy with a view to improving its capacity to mobilize domestic resources and to making it progressive and non-discriminatory so as to increase its redistributive effect...” - E/C.12/BIH/CO/3
• To Bolivia – CESCR, 2021: “The Committee recommends that the State party increase direct taxes in order to establish a progressive tax system designed to reduce inequality and ensure greater enjoyment of the Covenant rights, using the maximum available resources.” - E/C.12/BOL/CO/3
• To Italy – CESCR, 2022: “The Committee recommends that the State party readjust the structure of its tax system in a more progressive direction by revisiting the revenue derived from taxes levied on corporate income, value added tax rates and the inheritance tax rate with a view to expanding the tax base and fiscal space for the progressive realization of economic, social and cultural rights, and to increasing its redistributive effect.” - E/C.12/ITA/CO/6

Non-Discrimination and Impact on Specific Groups

Tax systems and policies can have disproportionate impacts on certain groups. Analysis of such impacts is the most frequent way treaty bodies have engaged with questions related to tax policies; a number of treaty bodies have group-specific mandates. All told, at least 76 Concluding Observations – made by CESCR, CEDAW, CRC, CCPR, CERD, and CRPD – address the relationship of tax with identity groups specifically. Additionally, the UHRI’s own “Affected persons” categorization includes a list of 35 distinct tags; within the Concluding Observations reviewed, the more frequently tagged groups included Women & girls (60), Persons with disabilities, (49 counts), Children (41 counts), Persons living in poverty (41 counts), and Minorities / racial, ethnic, linguistic, religious or descent-based groups (27 counts). For example:

• To Ireland – CESCR, 2015: “Review, based on human rights standards, all the measures that have been taken in response to the economic and financial crisis and are still in place with a view to ensuring the enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights. In this regard, it draws the State party’s attention to its open letter of 16 May 2012 to States parties on economic, social and cultural rights in the context of the economic and financial crisis, in particular to the requirements that austerity policies must meet. The policies must be temporary, covering only the period of the crisis, and they must be necessary and proportionate. They must not result in discrimination and increased inequalities. They must comprise all possible measures, including tax measures, to ensure that the rights of disadvantaged and marginalized individuals and groups are not disproportionately affected.” - E/C.12/IRL/CO/3
• To Lebanon – CEDAW, 2008: “take adequate measures to eliminate discrimination against women in the area of taxation.” - CEDAW/C/LBN/CO/3
• To Belarus – CERD, 2017: “Refrain from imposing taxes disproportionately affecting disadvantaged ethnic minorities, including a tax on individuals on the basis of unemployment or underemployment, such as the tax established in presidential decree No. 3 (2015) ...” - CERD/C/BLR/CO/20-23
• To Ireland – CRC, 2023: “Ensure that tax policies do not contribute to tax abuse by companies registered in the State party but operating in other countries, leading to a negative impact on the availability of resources for the realization of children's rights in those countries.” - CRC/C/IRL/CO/5-6
• To Angola – CRPD, 2023: “Enhance efforts to ensure that mobility aids and assistive devices and technologies are affordable for all persons with disabilities, including by promoting local repairs, providing government and tax subsidies and waiving taxes and customs charges.” - CRPD/C/AND/CO/1

Spending

The treaty bodies have repeatedly linked the necessity for taxation to an imperative to increase spending in order to realize rights. In this respect, at least 26 Concluding Observations – made by CEDAW and CCPR – include recommendations referring to the spending of public revenues raised through taxation. For example:

• To Malawi – CESCR, 2024: “Increase budgetary allocations for social spending on employment programmes, social security, agriculture and food programmes, water and sanitation, healthcare, education and climate change adaptation and mitigation, and ensure that these resources are ring-fenced.” - E/C.12/MWI/CO/1
• To Panama – CESCR, 2023: “Increase the level of social spending, particularly on social security, housing, health care and education, paying special attention to disadvantaged and marginalized persons and areas where unemployment and poverty rates are high, especially rural areas and Indigenous territories.” - E/C.12/PAN/CO/3
• To Senegal – CRC, 2024: “Allocate adequate budgetary resources at the national and local levels for the implementation of children’s rights and, in particular, increase the budget of the social sectors to adequate levels and address disparities on the basis of indicators relating to children’s rights; (b) Allocate an additional share of the budget, on the basis of the significant increase in tax revenue and of the mining social fund, to support stakeholders in results ‑ based planning and improve indicators concerning children.” - CRC/C/SEN/CO/6-7

Process: Accountability, Transparency, Participation, and Enforcement

Treaty bodies refer to procedural issues related to tax policy in at least 31 Concluding Observations made by CEDAW, CESCR, and CRC. These include recommendations related to the fiscal policymaking processes, and others that touch upon the review and assessment of both new and existing policies. For example:

• To Nicaragua – CESCR, 2021: “Strengthen the accountability mechanisms applied to public revenue and expenditure and ensure greater transparency of access to information on tax receipts; Assess the impact of the Tax Harmonization Act with a view to conducting a comprehensive reform, in consultation with the relevant social stakeholders, that makes it possible to design, adopt and implement a progressive and socially just tax policy that will increase the resources available for the implementation of economic, social and cultural rights.” - E/C.12/NIC/CO/5
• To Paraguay – CESCR, 2015: “Take the necessary steps to ensure effective and transparent application of the income tax.” - E/C.12/PRY/CO/4
• To El Salvador – CESCR, 2014: “The Committee also recommends that the tax reform and resource allocation planning should be carried out in a transparent and participatory fashion.” - E/C.12/SLV/CO/3-5
• To the Democratic Republic of the Congo – CESCR, 2022: “...ensure that the process of tightening tax policy and formulating budget proposals is transparent and participatory.” - E/C.12/COD/CO/6

Relatedly, in at least 40 Concluding Observations, these same treaty bodies call on states to assess, monitor, or evaluate the impacts of its fiscal policies, primarily through independent and participatory human rights impact assessments. For example:

• To Bosnia and Herzegovina – CESCR, 2021: “Assess the effect of taxes and social transfers on poverty reduction and review its fiscal policy and social transfers with a view to enhancing their effect on poverty reduction...” - E/C.12/BIH/CO/3
• To Mauritius – CEDAW, 2018: “Undertake independent, participatory and periodic assessments of the extraterritorial effects of its financial and corporate tax policies on women’s rights and on substantive equality between women and men, ensuring that the assessments are conducted impartially and that the methodology and findings are communicated to the public.” - CEDAW/C/MUS/CO/8
• To the Netherlands – CRC, 2022: “Conduct independent and participatory impact assessments of its tax and financial policies to ensure that they do not contribute to tax abuse by national companies operating outside the State party that leads to a negative impact on the availability of resources for the realization of children’s rights in the countries in which the companies are operating.” - CRC/C/NLD/CO/5-6

Redistribution and Inequality Reduction

At least 44 Concluding Observations made by CEDAW, CESCR, and CRC include a reference to redistribution or to the reduction of economic inequality. In many cases, redistribution is not merely a by-product of effectively progressive tax policies, but the primary justification for the recommended action. For example:

• To Argentina – CESCR, 2018: “take the necessary measures not only to preserve the redistributive capacity of the tax system but also to strengthen it, including the possibility of reviewing the reduction of the tax burden on high-income sectors.” - E/C.12/ARG/CO/4
• To Guatemala – CESCR, 2022: “redouble its efforts to pursue a tax policy that is adequate, progressive and socially equitable so as to combat economic inequalities...” - E/C.12/GTM/CO/4
• To Kyrgyzstan – CESCR, 2024: “review its taxation and fiscal policies, making them more efficient, progressive and socially just and increasing the mobilization of national economic resources to close existing gaps and improve their redistributive effect.” - E/C.12/KGZ/CO/4
• To Romania – CESCR, 2024: “Review its taxation system to ensure an efficient, progressive and socially just fiscal policy, including by reassessing the tax rates levied on corporate profits and on personal income and increasing the redistributive effects of taxation with a view to ensuring the realization of economic, social and cultural rights.” - E/C.12/ROU/CO/6

Corporate Tax

At least 35 Concluding Observations made by CEDAW, CESCR, and CRC reference corporate taxation. These include recommendations to increase corporate income tax, as well as to review corporate tax incentives. The treaty bodies have also called on states to combat corporate tax abuse and evasion, and note concern that corporate taxation rates, legislation, and practices may have adverse impacts on the ability of states to mobilize the maximum available resources for the realization of rights. For example:

• To Malawi – CESCR, 2024: “Take all measures necessary to increase national resource mobilization to expand fiscal space for realizing the Covenant rights by, inter alia, expanding the tax base, improving tax collection, increasing the corporate income tax and reviewing private sector tax benefits to assess revenue losses, while building on the findings of the Development Finance and Local Level Finance Assessments; (b) Assess the effects of its fiscal policy on the economic, social and cultural rights of the most marginalized and disadvantaged groups...” - E/C.12/MWI/CO/1
• To Italy – CESCR, 2022: “The Committee recommends that the State party readjust the structure of its tax system in a more progressive direction by revisiting the revenue derived from taxes levied on corporate income ... with a view to expanding the tax base and fiscal space for the progressive realization of economic, social and cultural rights, and to increasing its redistributive effect.” - E/C.12/ITA/CO/6
• To United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland – CEDAW, 2019: “The Committee recommends that the State party continue to adopt measures to combat money-laundering and tax evasion, including by establishing public registers of companies and trusts in all of its overseas territories and Crown dependencies and undertaking independent, participatory and periodic impact assessments of the national and extraterritorial effects of its financial secrecy and corporate tax policies on the rights of women. It also recommends that the State party revise its corporate, trust, financial and tax legislation, policies and practices, with a view to fully realizing the enjoyment by women of their rights under the Convention, both nationally and abroad.” - CEDAW/C/GBR/CO/8

Tax Abuse and Evasion

Treaty bodies frequently express concern about the loss of revenue due to tax evasion and abuse, including by both corporations and high-net worth individuals, and often recommend states take action to combat this in order to ensure they have adequate revenues for the realization of rights. Explicit references to tax abuse and evasion appear in at least 21 of the Concluding Observations made by CESCR, CEDAW, and CRC. For example:

• To Luxembourg – CESCR, 2022: “strengthen its measures to combat illicit flows and cross-border tax evasion and tax fraud, in particular by wealthy individuals and corporations, in order to contribute to international efforts to combat illicit flows, tax evasion and tax fraud and to enable other countries to secure the financial resources necessary for the realization of economic, social and cultural rights.” - E/C.12/LUX/CO/4
• To Cyprus – CESCR, 2024: “...take all measures necessary to ensure the enforcement of national, regional and international legal obligations to prevent, investigate and prosecute all cases of money ‑ laundering and tax evasion by companies legally domiciled in the State party, including companies in the financial sector.” - E/C.12/CYP/CO/7
• To Malawi – CESCR, 2024: “Foster international tax cooperation to tackle tax evasion, cross-border tax avoidance and financial crimes, and consider seeking the assistance of the Tax Inspectors Without Borders initiative.” - E/C.12/MWI/CO/1
• To Guatemala – CESCR, 2022: “...energetically combat tax evasion and tax fraud by, for instance, strengthening the Office of the Superintendent of the Tax Administration.” - E/C.12/GTM/CO/4
• To Honduras – CESCR, 2017: “...take rigorous measures to combat illicit monetary flows and tax evasion and fraud.” - E/C.12/HND/CO/2

Methodology

Concluding Observations were compiled using the Universal Human Rights Index (UHRI), maintained by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). The UHRI includes the concerns, observations, and recommendations made by each treaty body, as well as the Special Procedures mandate holders and the Universal Periodic Review.

A search using the key word “*Tax*” flagged 259 Concluding Observations across 11 of the 12 treaty mechanisms, with the Committee on Enforced Disappearances being the sole mechanism not returning results. The search results were downloaded into a Microsoft Excel file and each result was manually reviewed to filter out irrelevant entries included in the search results (for example, references to taxis). This left 168 Concluding Observations, made between June 2007 and November 2024, by 7 treaty bodies, which were initially added to the database. Additional searches are conducted periodically using the same process in order to update the database to include new Concluding Observations. 

Along with the recommendations/observations text and the fields included in the search parameters, the exported search results also included categorizations according to relevant Sustainable Development Goals (SDG); Document Publication Date; Type (i.e., recommendation vs. observation); Regions Concerned; Date of Publication on UHRI; and the Document Symbol. Any missing data was added based on a review of the available information and in an attempt to remain consistent with the UHRI’s categorization methods and formatting.

Human Rights Watch then manually included additional categories for each concluding observation based on a subjective and relative review of each Concluding Observation as a whole. These categories include:

• The relative specificity of the recommendation’s engagement with tax policy (approximated as either low, medium, or high);
• the Procedural or substantive nature of the recommendations;
• what rights-based justification(s) for the recommendations are included; and
• whether the concluding observation related to any of following issues: international cooperation, maximum-available-resources, inequality, progressivity, austerity, non-discrimination or impact on certain groups, spending, transparency and participation, reviews and impact assessments, corporate tax, or tax evasion and abuse.

The manual categorization was done conservatively: concluding observations were only included in the database, and then tagged to relevant issues, when the relationship was clear.

Text and categorizations that were added manually appear in red font in the spreadsheet. The full spreadsheet is currently maintained and updated in a Google Sheets file available publicly, with the latest update date in the title.