From Poverty to Power Green, Oxfam 2008 - weman

FROM POVERTY TO POWERIn the face of such a systemic failure, numerous NGOs and legalaid organisations around the world fight to obtain access to justice forpoor people and their organisations. Sometimes they win. In Yemen,the volunteer lawyers of the Yemeni Women’s Union (YWU) providefree legal support to poor women in prisons, courts, and policestations, and in 2004–05 won the release of 450 female prisoners.An advocacy campaign mounted by the YWU also led to changes inthe law, which had previously forbidden women to leave prison unlesscollected by a male guardian, and to the opening in 2005 of Yemen’sfirst ever female-staffed detention centre, where women report feelingmuch less at risk.TAXATIONThe eighteenth-century philosopher Edmund Burke once observedthat ‘Revenue is the chief preoccupation of the state. Nay more it is thestate.’ 140 Taxation not only raises revenue for public spending to fightpoverty, it can redistribute wealth and opportunities in order todiminish inequality. Taxation is also central to public accountability.As noted elsewhere in this book, until governments depend on theirpublics for their wages, it will always be an uphill struggle to forcethem to listen.Curiously, taxation is an all but invisible issue in many poorcountries, for whom tax represents a ‘chicken and egg’ problem.Without tax revenue, states struggle to pay civil servants, while a competentcivil service is needed to collect tax. There are only about 700taxpayers in the whole of the DRC (population 59 million), and theyprovide 90 per cent of domestic revenue. 141 Poorer African and LatinAmerican countries have traditionally depended on resource revenuesand taxes on imports, but the latter has declined precipitously due totrade liberalisation.The nature of taxation is crucial if it is to effectively addressinequality. Poor people spend a larger slice of their income on food,clothing, and other essentials, so taxes on income, profits, or propertytend to favour redistribution more than taxes on consumption.Recent tax reforms in Latin America, prompted by World Bank advice,have increased value-added tax (VAT) and reduced more progressivetaxes, while East Asia has done precisely the opposite. 142 The Bank’s98