Provide health services without crippling taxes – Amnesty International

Amnesty International said governments should make social security available to everyone worldwide.

In a briefing issued on Wednesday, 'Rising Prices, Growing Protests: The Case for Universal Social Protection', the human rights lobby also called for international debt relief and urged states to enact tax reforms and clampdown on tax abuse to free up substantial funding to pay for social protection.

“A combination of crises has revealed how ill-prepared many states are to provide essential help to people. It is shocking that more than four billion people, or about 55 per cent of the world’s population, have no recourse to even the most basic social protection, despite the right to social security being enshrined since 1948 in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” Amnesty International’s Secretary General Agnès Callamard said.

In Kenya, the Finance Bill 2023 suggests taxpayers should be taxed further to pay for services that many governments usually provide from other financial sources.

The Amnesty briefing shows how rising food prices, climate change, and the economic fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, are driving a catastrophic humanitarian crisis, and leading to increased social unrest and protests.

It urges states to ensure that social security coverage – such as sickness and disability payments, healthcare provision, pensions for older people, child support, family benefits and income support – is available to every person who may need it, without crippling taxes.

The fallout from these crises, including widespread hunger, higher unemployment and anger at falling living standards, has motivated protests around the world, which have often been brutally suppressed.

Amnesty also cautioned the government against unnecessary force to stop protests.

“Instead of viewing peaceful protest as an expression of people’s attempts to claim their rights, authorities have frequently responded to demonstrations with unnecessary or excessive use of force. Peaceful protest is a human right and Amnesty International campaigns to Protect the Protest,” Callamard said.

The briefing calls for international creditors to reschedule or cancel debts to enable them to better fund social protection.

It also highlights that the cost of offering basic social security protection in all low-income and low-to-middle income states is estimated at US$440.8 billion a year. According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), an amount that is less than the US$500 billion the Tax Justice Network estimated, is lost annually by states to tax havens around the world.

Amnesty International urges states to work together and use all their resources, as well as reform of their taxation systems to stop evasion and loss of critical revenues, to help ensure funds are available to improve social protection. 

To guarantee the right to social security, Amnesty International supports the establishment of an internationally administered Global Fund for Social Protection, a concept supported by UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, the UN Secretary-General and the ILO.

The World Food Programme (WFP) says 349 million people around the world are in immediate danger from a shortage of food, and 828 million go to bed hungry every night.

Furthermore, according to the Sustainable Development Goals Report 2022, the Covid-19 pandemic has wiped out almost four years of progress in poverty reduction and pushed an additional 93 million people into extreme poverty, living on less than US$ 2.15 a day.

Amnesty International is part of a growing coalition of experts and civil society organisations calling on states to progressively deliver universal social protection and to realise the benefits it will bring.