Rio de Janeiro: Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva will launch a new initiative against world hunger on Wednesday ahead of the upcoming G20 meeting in Rio de Janeiro.
Finance ministers from the grouping’s member states will meet in the Brazilian capital on Thursday and Friday, one of the final meetings before the G20 summit on November 18-19 in the same city.
The initiative, called the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty, will seek to pool financial resources to fight world hunger and replicate successful programs that have worked locally.
“The fight against inequality, the fight against hunger, the fight against poverty are all fights that cannot be carried out by one country,” Lula told reporters on Monday.
This initiative is one of Lula’s top priorities ahead of the G20 summit.
A recent report published by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations outlining the state of world hunger will be presented at the meeting to illustrate the scope of this effort.
In addition to the world hunger initiative, this week’s G20 finance ministers’ meeting will discuss how to achieve another goal set by Brazil: finding ways to tax the ultra-rich.
The initiative, which was first discussed at a meeting in Sao Paulo in February, involves establishing methodologies for taxing billionaires and other high-income earners based on the work of French economist Gabriel Zucman.
However, the talks have been highly contentious and any progress is far from guaranteed.
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen spoke out against international negotiations on the issue during the G7 financial meeting held in Italy in May.
“We believe that arguably the most efficient and effective tax solutions in this space will almost certainly vary widely across jurisdictions,” said a senior US Treasury official.
The meeting will also discuss the taxation of multinational corporations, nearly three years after an agreement was signed to create the initiative’s blueprint.
The Group of 20, which was founded in 1999, brings together 19 of the world’s largest economic powers, as well as the European Union and the African Union.
The organization was originally focused on global economic problems, but is increasingly concerned with other pressing challenges of today. APPLICATION
