The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has reported today that:
Three Norwegian lawmakers have nominated the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and the Global Alliance for Tax Justice for a Nobel Peace Prize, citing the organizations' “success in building global alliances” to increase transparency in the global financial system.
“The outstanding work of the ICIJ to expose illicit flows, and the mammoth achievement of the GATJ to build national and international pressure for accountability and fair taxation – warrants attention, recognition and support,” the letter says. “They are, independently and by different means, trailblazers in creating a world where financial incentives for conflict, wars, human rights abuses and violence are non-existent. These courageous journalists and civil society organizations play a critical role in documenting corruption and Illicit flows, often while putting their lives in peril in the process.”
The GATJ grew out of the Tax Justice Network, of which I was a co-founder in 2003, and whose first meeting I chaired, before serving as research director until 2010.
Tax justice has come a long way since 2003.
Warm congratulations to all who have taken it along its path to this point.
For the record, I had no involvement in the work for which nomination has been made, apart from helping spike public concern in this issue over many years. If there is one person who does deserve credit more than anyone else though it is my old friend and colleague John Christensen, who co-founded TJN with me and is still its chair. he also helped launch GATJ. No one has done more to advance tax justice than he has.
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Congratulations all round.
Fabulous news.
Are regular citizens able to vote on this?
In a word, no….
They thoroughly deserve it, can’t think of a better cause.
Fabulous news, well done all round.
Wow, this is impressive, and good news – it helps up the profile of the issues they are tackling, and it is always nice to get recognition; I hope the nomination is successful. Congratulations to them, and it must make you proud to see what’s become of what was probably (in my imagination) an inspirational idea spawned while you worked away in a grubby basement accountancy office with dusty ledgers and chewed pencil nubs. My imagination isn’t always accurate, mind you.
(P.s. Is there a possibility, Richard, of you opening up the comments again on Helen’s first post so I can ramble on, at length, about tin mines and border reivers? I could add it to a later one, but it would be fairly extremely off-topic anywhere else, and I can’t envision you depriving your readers of such useful information…)(yes, even I’m grimacing at that last one)
Thanks
First, my offices were on the 4th (top) floor if a block in Wandsworth, and certainly not grubby! It was an almost entirely female firm (I was the odd exception) and grubbiness was never in the agenda.
Second, sorry I can’t reopen comments without doing it for all. Apologies.
Haha, I wondered which of my themes would be most objectionable 🙂 ‘grubby’ obviously! I note the ‘inspirational idea’ was not objected to (hm, or the ‘dusty ledgers’ – but they don’t fit in well with a light, airy, sparkling clean, modern office; I’ll have you toiling away making everyone’s cups of tea or something; you’ll need to add a bit of drama, you know, for your memoirs).
No worries about opening that comments section, I will get the opportunity for tin mine chat at some point, somehow, when I get the slightest chink of an opening, and I had inspiration from a different comment of Helen’s on something else anyway, but need to re-read some stuff first.
While I don’t wish to rain on the tax justice movement’s parade – I’ve followed what it has been doing for years – this is far from a shortlist or anything like it and no qualitative assessment of the nominees has been done yet. The Nobel Foundation doesn’t release its records for 50 years, though says it gets about 200 nominees for the peace prize each year. Jared Kushner is reported to be on the list this year.
Ralph
I know
But this is the sort of news that can really do no harm
I doubt, very much, that it could or would win
Richard