Global March Chair Kailash Satyarthi welcomed the ongoing global campaign to “Make finance work for people and the planet” and initiatives by civil society and trade union activists worldwide to support the call for the implementation of a global Financial Transaction Tax. A number of Global March members and partners, including board member Education International (EI), the Global Union Federation for the education sector, have signed up to the campaign and are encouraging others to do the same.

The renewed mobilisation efforts were launched ahead of the informal meeting of the Vice Finance Ministers and Deputy Central Bankers of the G20 nations in Berlin, Germany, on 19 May 2010, and as part of the “Make Finance Pay Week” from 17-21 May 2010.

Also known as the Robin Hood Tax, the Financial Transaction Tax would be levied on all transactions in the global financial system, such as foreign exchange, derivatives trading and share deals. The campaign states that it could be as little as 0.005 percent, but even at that very small level it already has the potential to raise hundreds of billions of dollars every year.

The campaign organisers point out that these tax revenues could be used to prevent cuts in public spending, tackle poverty, and help fight climate change by enabling developing economies to adapt to the effects of global warming. Speaking from the Global March international secretariat in New Delhi, Kailash Satyarthi said:

“In the light of the recent Global Conference on Child Labour in The Hague where a new Roadmap to achieve the goal of eliminating all worst forms of child labour by 2016 was unanimously acclaimed by the international community, one of the key concerns highlighted by the Global March was the lack of identified resources to underpin renewed global efforts to tackle this problem. It will not be possible to achieve this ambitious but critical goal without serious investment in targeted interventions and policy implementation.

The potential impact of a Financial Transaction Tax on alleviating poverty and strengthening national development efforts in countries where child labour is a major problem, particularly sub-Saharan Africa, is significant and would be vital in helping us achieve our stated goals to help children who are in danger every day of their lives. We welcome this initiative and call on political leaders worldwide, particularly in the G20 nations, to hold financial institutions accountable for the global crisis that could result in more children becoming vulnerable to child labour.”

In addition, the tax revenues generated by such a mechanism could also contribute to alleviating the crisis in public education funding as highlighted by the 2010 UNESCO Global Monitoring Report entitled Reaching the marginalised.  The report warned that the aftershocks of the global financial crisis threaten to deprive millions of children in the world’s poorest countries of an education. The Report points out that with 72 million children still out of primary school, a combination of slower economic growth, rising poverty and budget pressures could erode the gains of the past decade. In addition, it is estimated that another 71 million adolescents are also not at school. If all of these children are not at school, then there is a strong likelihood that they are working.

The Financial Transaction Tax could contribute significantly to increasing access to free, public and good quality education for all children, including by hiring and training much-needed teachers. Getting children into school and out of work has been identified as a major effective and sustainable intervention in tackling child labour.

Global March has signed up to the Make finance work for people and the planet campaign and urges its members and partners all over the globe to consider doing the same. In order to make an informed decision, please take the time to visit the campaign organisers’ web site: www.makefinancework.org.

Organisations and individuals can sign the global petition on this web site.

For more information on EI’s global campaign on the economic crisis, please visit its web site: www.ei-ie.org/handsup