A/HRC/36/40 education and employment. The inequalities among States and within States, however, have been growing in many countries, where unemployment has increased, particularly affecting young people, and the actual standard of living has dropped. III. Challenges 18. Notwithstanding the positive developments described above, both the Bank and IMF continue pressing for increased reliance on purely market-based solutions, following the perspective of “market fundamentalism” that Joseph Stiglitz often decried.11 In 2016, there was increased cooperation among multilateral development banks, with a focus on megainfrastructure projects, a reliance on public-private partnerships12 as a way to circumvent constrained fiscal space, and a continued effort to impose so-called labour flexibilization and other obsolete conditionalities on States. 19. As Naomi Klein recalls in her seminal work, The Shock Doctrine, the main problem remains the commitment of international financial institutions to the philosophy of laissezfaire economics, reflecting Milton Friedman’s Chicago school and characterized by the almost religious belief that privatization and deregulation will advance GDP, notwithstanding its endemic boom and bust cycles and its minimization of social costs. 13 20. For many years, civil society has signalled human rights abuses committed by companies benefiting from World Bank financing, with numerous publications documenting those abuses. Among the most egregious violations are land-grabbing, brutal evictions, involuntary resettlement, forced labour, 14 child labour, sexual abuse, massive pollution, destruction of the environment, reprisals against human rights defenders, corruption and money-laundering. The present report summarizes a few salient cases that are representative of widespread violations. 21. Ahead of the Bank spring meeting in April 2016, Oxfam released a report entitled “The IFC and tax havens”, in which it revealed that 51 of the 68 companies in which IFC had invested in sub-Saharan Africa in 2015 used tax havens. 15 As described in the Independent Expert’s 2016 report to the General Assembly (A/71/286), that risks depriving countries in the region of essential tax revenue which could be used to meet their human rights obligations, fulfil the Sustainable Development Goals and repay foreign debts. In fact, UNCTAD estimates that developing countries lose $100 billion annually in tax revenue, from which lost revenues and uninvested earnings yield a total development finance loss in the range of $250-300 billion.16 It is time for the Bank to blacklist projects with companies that fail to pay their taxes. 11 12 13 14 15 16 6 See Joseph Stiglitz, “Moving beyond market fundamentalism to a more balanced economy”, Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, vol. 80, No. 3 (2009). See also www.globalpolicy.org/social-and-economic-policy/the-three-sisters-and-other-institutions/internalcritics-of-the-world-bank-and-the-imf/42796-joseph-stiglitz.html. See www.worldbank.org/en/topic/publicprivatepartnerships, https://ppp.worldbank.org/public-private-partnership/overview/world-bank-group and https://ieg.worldbankgroup.org/Data/reports/lp_Health_PPP_1116.pdf. See www.ipsnews.net/2017/06/east-asian-miracle-myth-making/. See www.theguardian.com/global-development/2017/jun/27/world-bank-funds-linked-to-forcedlabour-in-uzbekistan. See www.oxfamsol.be/sites/default/files/documents/bn-ifc-tax-havens-110416-embargo-en.pdf. See also www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressreleases/2016-04-11/majority-world-banks-privateinvestments-go-companies-have and www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressreleases/2016-12-12/worlds-worst-corporate-tax-havens-exposedoxfam-report-reveals. www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/bp-race-to-bottom-corporate-tax-121216-en.pdf. See UNCTAD, World Investment Report 2015, chap. V, available from unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/wir2015_en.pdf. See also www.taxjustice.net/2015/03/26/unctad-multinational-tax-avoidance-costs-developing-countries-100billion/.