The Youth for Tax Justice Network (YTJN) convened a Youth Policy Village Session on March 13h at the Makerere University, taking part in Global Alliance for Tax justice’s campaign to Make Taxes Work for Women”. The event aimed to encourage youth active participation in the formulation and implementation of tax policies for gender equality.
The Policy Village session’s title was promissing: “Making Taxes work for Women: Taxing for Gender Equality in a bid to enhance youth active participation in the formulation and implementation of tax policy and other domestic resource mobilisation efforts that are gender sensitive and responsive to women’s rights”.
The Policy village focused on mobilizing youth and young leaders to play a more active role in shaping conversations around tax policy and laws, domestic and local revenue mobilization efforts being sensitive to women’s rights and consequently gender equality, and to demand for accountability.
To achieve this goal, it featured two kinds of activities;
- Information Dissemination on the subject using Tax justice to attain women’s rights and ultimately gender equality through the screening a video, an all-female panel discussion on the ways youth can actively engage government to reform the tax system so that It reflects and accommodate women’s rights.
- (Social) Media Engagements: A series of online conversations on twitter and Facebook were held in real time, aimed at proactively sharing information, initiate participation in tax policy reform debates, shedding light on the need for the youth to voice their concerns on the unfair tax policies that are injurious to women’s rights. The Media engagement also offered an opportunity to reach and mobilize youth not in attendance at the YPV session to get involved in the session activities.
“The participation of young people in the policy-making process is fundamental to make tax justice a reality for all. We want to encourage young leaders to play a more active role in shaping the conversations around tax laws, as well as allocation of national and local budgets to ensure gender-responsive public services”, said Caroline Othim, Africa Campaigns & Policy Coordinator at GATJ.
Ahead of International Women’s Day, an Inter-University Debate on Tax Justice had also been organised in Kigali, Rwanda.
