Brasília – The United Nations meeting on poverty and hunger reduction, which has been engineered by president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, will begin on September 20 and will focus its efforts on ways and means to obtain the financing necessary to reduce social inequality around the world.

A technical group, consisting of representatives from Brazil, Chile, France and Spain, created to discuss funding mechanisms, presented its report yesterday. The report contains guidelines that will be endorsed by at least 55 leaders at the UN meeting. Among the group's suggestions are taxing international financial transactions and arms sales, combating tax evasion and fiscal paradises, voluntary contributions and greater safeguards for remittances by immigrants.

Lula's idea for the meeting is to find the money to combat inequality without being utopian about the issue or trying to set up some kind of World Fund Against Poverty. "UN studies show that the resources exist. So why not use them for social causes," explains Maria Nazareth Farani, of the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Relations. She goes on to say that an estimated US$17 billion could be raised by taxing international financial transactions and arms sales. "The problem is to find the political will to mobilize these resources," says Farani.

Farani also explains that no new international taxes will be invented to pay for the fight against hunger. "These will be domestic taxes that each country will have total control over," she says.

Agência Brasil
Reporter:Gabriela Guerreiro
Translator: Allen Bennett
09/092004