“On September 22-23, 2016, the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ) at NYU School of Law will host an international conference entitled Human Rights and Tax in an Unequal World. The conference is the centerpiece of CHRGJ’s broader initiative to promote scholarship and public debate on the relationship between inequality, the global economy, and human rights. It will bring together an interdisciplinary group of leading practitioners and scholars, international officials and activists to discuss the ways in which tax policy can be viewed as a form of human rights policy, and to consider how the international human rights framework might contribute to bringing greater equity and justice to the global tax regime. The conference is particularly timely given mounting public concern that tax abuses are widening the gap between the rich and the poor and broad recognition that growing economic inequality threatens the human rights of all.  Corporate tax scandals and tax avoidance schemes, such as those revealed by the Panama Papers, have fueled demands that the wealthiest pay their fair share and that States play their part in tackling abuses both domestically and transnationally. Public budget shortfalls, which result in part from these tax abuses, weigh disproportionately on the poorest and most vulnerable populations.”