International assistance and cooperation

International cooperation (and assistance) can only achieve its intended human rights outcomes when it adheres to the principles of fiscal legitimacy, with the allocation and use of public funds conducted with legality, transparency, accountability and public trust.¹ A reflection on this issue emphasizes the importance of empowering financially limited States to engage purposefully in international financial governance, demonstrating institutional innovations that can transform international cooperation (and assistance) from a donor-beneficiary relationship into an equitable partnership based on shared rights and responsibilities.²

1. Submission by NGO Monitor. ↩
2. Submission by Maat for Peace. ↩

The foundation for international assistance and cooperation is set out in article 2 (1) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which requires States to take steps individually and through international assistance and cooperation to the maximum of their available resources, to achieve progressively the full realization of the rights recognized in the Covenant. This formulation establishes international assistance and cooperation not as discretionary charity but as a binding legal obligation. Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights general comment No. 3 (1990) on the nature of States Parties’ obligations expands this understanding by clarifying that “available resources” encompasses both domestic and international resources accessible through cooperation, that obligations are not only legal but moral, and that progressive realization must be understood in terms of steady, measurable steps. Specifically, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has interpreted the phrase “to the maximum of its available resources” as encompassing both domestic resources and those available through international cooperation and assistance.³ This interpretation recognizes that many States, particularly those emerging from conflict or facing severe resource constraints, cannot fulfil their human rights obligations through domestic resources alone. Conversely, it establishes that wealthier States bear obligations not merely to their own populations, but to support the international community’s collective effort to ensure universal realization of human rights.

3. See the Committee’s Fact Sheet No. 16 (Rev. 1), available at https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Publications/FactSheet16rev.1en.pdf. ↩

The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has also provided guidance on what “maximum of available resources” and cooperation mean in hard fiscal times. The Committee’s statement on public debt, austerity measures and the Covenant⁴ affirms that debt workouts and consolidation cannot erode minimum essential levels of rights, and that any retrogression must be temporary, necessary, proportionate, non-discriminatory, and subject to participation and transparency. Where domestic resources are insufficient, the role of international assistance and cooperation is to avert rights-eroding cuts. The guiding principles on foreign debt and human rights⁵ further stress that when contracting, servicing or repaying debt, States must do so in ways that do not impair their ability to fulfil minimum levels of rights (e.g. health, education, housing), and that States should ensure transparency, participation and accountability in that process.

4. E/C.12/2016/1. ↩
5. A/HRC/20/23. ↩

The Charter of the United Nations frames cooperation for rights as a shared duty. Chapter IX commits the United Nations to promote conditions of stability and well-being, and “universal respect for, and observance of, human rights”. Moreover, article 56 stipulates that all Members “pledge themselves to take joint and separate action” to achieve these purposes. Read together with article 55, this places international assistance and cooperation at the heart of the Charter’s social and economic order, not as charity but as a structural obligation flowing from membership. The Declaration on the Right to Development further 1 Submission by NGO Monitor. 2 Submission by Maat for Peace. 3 See the Committee’s Fact Sheet No. 16 (Rev. 1), available at https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Publications/FactSheet16rev.1en.pdf. 4 E/C.12/2016/1. 5 A/HRC/20/23. GE.25-21221 codifies the duty. It recognizes that the right to development requires States to create international conditions favourable to its realization and to cooperate to eliminate obstacles. These formulations move assistance from discretionary benevolence to a normative expectation that States align external policy, financing and institutional action with the advancement of rights at home and abroad. The Maastricht Principles on Extraterritorial Obligations of States in the Area of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and their commentaries tie this back to article 28 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which envisages a social and international order where rights can be fully realized. While not a treaty, these principles reflect and organize duties already present in the Charter and the International Covenants on Human Rights. The Limburg Principles on the Implementation of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights attempt synthesis, stating that “international cooperation and assistance pursuant to the Charter of the United Nations and the Covenant shall have in view as a matter of priority the realization of all human rights and fundamental freedoms”.⁶ 6 This formulation establishes international assistance and cooperation not as secondary or conditional support, but as a primary mechanism through which the international community must prioritize universal realization of rights.

6. E/CN.4/1987/17, annex. ↩

The legal position is clear: international assistance and cooperation is a positive, shared obligation embedded in the Charter order, elaborated by International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights doctrine, and sharpened by the debt statement of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: States must mobilize resources, individually and together, so that financing choices, including debt management, do not push people below minimum essential levels of rights, and decisions must meet standards of transparency, participation and accountability. However, when one unpacks the concept of immediate and progressive realization of rights, one sees that during conflict, the right to life is continually undermined, and that all rights, not just economic, social and cultural rights, cost money. All rights – civil and political, and economic, social and cultural – require fiscal resources and these can only be achieved through international assistance and cooperation.

Some may argue that a “minimalist” interpretation suggests that international assistance and cooperation remains largely voluntary, constrained only by principles of good faith and non-interference.⁷ A “maximalist” school contends that article 2 (1) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights creates binding extraterritorial obligations requiring wealthy States to aid when other States cannot meet their human rights commitments.⁸ While some support a nuanced understanding that establishes “graduated responsibility”,⁹ others advance the “maximalist” analysis by demonstrating how international assistance and cooperation obligations extend beyond traditional donor-recipient relationships to encompass “third-party States” whose capacity to influence international economic arrangements creates corresponding responsibilities for human rights protection.¹⁰

7. Philip Alston, “Ships passing in the night: the current state of the human rights and development debate seen through the lens of the Millennium Development Goals”, Human Rights Quarterly, vol. 27, No. 3 (August 2005), pp. 755–829 (2005). ↩
8. Sigrun Skogly, Beyond National Borders: States’ Human Rights Obligations in International Cooperation (Intersentia, 2006). ↩
9. Malcolm Langford et al. (eds.), Global Justice, State duties: The Extraterritorial Scope Of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2013). ↩
10. Tara Van Ho, “Obligations of international assistance and cooperation in the context of investment law”, Malcolm Langford et al. (eds.), The Routledge Handbook on Extraterritorial Human Rights Obligations (Routledge, 2021), pp. 325–338. ↩

However, by positioning international assistance and cooperation within a comprehensive fiscal legitimacy framework,¹¹ the seven principles – accountability, transparency, responsibility, efficiency, effectiveness, fairness and justice – must govern not only domestic fiscal arrangements but also international mechanisms. This approach transcends traditional development paradigms by treating international assistance and cooperation as an integral component of the global fiscal architecture rather than as discretionary assistance between sovereign equals. The analysis argues that fiscal legitimacy is ensured when a fiscal system operates according to the seven principles, which must extend beyond national boundaries to encompass international financial relationships.¹² This formulation directly challenges the voluntary cooperation model that has dominated development practice, instead positioning international assistance and cooperation within binding human rights obligations that require systematic transformation of the global financial architecture.

11. See A/HRC/55/54. ↩
12. Ibid., para. 4. ↩

Historical responsibility¹³ also reshapes international assistance and cooperation obligations. The calculation that global North countries would owe $192 trillion in compensation for atmospheric appropriation under a net-zero scenario fundamentally reframes international assistance from charitable benevolence to debt settlement.¹⁴ This analysis grounds international assistance and cooperation obligations in measurable harm and quantifiable responsibility rather than in abstract moral duties. Accordingly, participatory governance that includes input from marginalized communities is essential for legitimate international assistance and cooperation¹⁵ and is not just abstract moral duties. The “overshooting States owe compensation or reparations to undershooting countries for atmospheric appropriation and climate-related damages”, with the global North appropriating “half of the global South’s share” of the 1.5°C carbon budget.¹⁶ This formulation provides empirical foundation for graduated responsibility arguments, while establishing clear parameters for calculating assistance obligations. The documentation that African countries are expected to pay $163 billion in debt service in 2024 alone, exceeding all climate finance pledges combined, demonstrates how international assistance and cooperation actually increases rather than alleviates fiscal burdens on vulnerable States.¹⁷ This pattern directly violates the statement by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights on public debt, austerity measures and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights,¹⁸ in which the Committee affirmed that debt arrangements must not erode minimum essential levels of rights and stressed, where domestic resources were insufficient, the role of international assistance to avert rights-eroding cuts.

13. See A/HRC/55/54. ↩
14. A/HRC/58/51, para. 9. ↩
15. Ibid., para. 25. ↩
16. Ibid., para. 9. ↩
17. Ibid., para. 6. ↩
18. See E/C.12/2016/1. ↩

Fiscal legitimacy cannot be achieved through technical compliance with selected international standards while maintaining structures that undermine global equity and justice.¹⁹ international assistance and cooperation requires comprehensive transformation of the global financial architecture rather than incremental reform of existing mechanisms, as an integral component of global fiscal legitimacy rather than discretionary action between sovereign States in concrete fiscal relationships in taxation, debt and illicit financial flows.

19. See A/HRC/55/54. ↩

International assistance and cooperation around international taxation is a work in progress, with varying degrees of success in achieving multilateral coordination versus maintaining existing power asymmetries. Following this, international tax policy is a fundamental infrastructure for either enabling or undermining international assistance and 12 Ibid., para. 4. 13 See A/HRC/55/54. 14 A/HRC/58/51, para. 9. 15 Ibid., para. 25. 16 Ibid., para. 9. 17 Ibid., para. 6. 18 See E/C.12/2016/1. 19 See A/HRC/55/54. GE.25-21221 cooperation. Structural bias transforms what is ostensibly technical cooperation into mechanisms for wealth extraction rather than assistance. Despite formal compliance with Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) standards, a 12.5 per cent corporate tax rate and previous intellectual property box regime represent a systematic undermining of a State’s fiscal capacity. The advocacy for a United Nations tax convention, however, represents an attempt to institutionalize more inclusive and equitable international assistance and cooperation mechanisms. The proposed convention’s emphasis on “equitable taxation of multinational corporations” and “effective taxation of the super-rich” positions tax policy as a redistributive mechanism serving global rather than narrow national interests.²⁰

20. A/HRC/58/51, para. 43. ↩

The right to access information is expressed in tax matters through the Automatic Exchange of Information²¹ framework, operationalized primarily through the OECD Common Reporting Standard,²² and represents one of the most comprehensive attempts at systematic international tax cooperation. Over 100 jurisdictions have committed to it, creating what proponents describe as unprecedented global financial transparency. However, the initiative’s effectiveness as international assistance and cooperation remains constrained by significant exclusions, such as the capacity of developing countries, and domestic and regional tax and human rights legislation that contradicts the approach.

21. See https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/automatic-exchange-of-information_7655bed0-en.html. ↩
22. See https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/consolidated-text-of-the-common-reporting-standard-2025_055664b1-en.html. ↩

Two further developments inside the Automatic Exchange of Information framework demonstrate both momentum and fragmentation. First, the Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework,²³ together with amendments to the Common Reporting Standard, extends automatic exchange into the digital asset economy. Dozens of jurisdictions have now signed the multilateral competent authority agreement to implement the Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework, and the European Union has transposed the Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework through its DAC8 reforms,²⁴ with application from 1 January 2026. The Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes has begun dedicated capacity-building around the Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework to help developing countries bridge technical and regulatory gaps. Second, the United States of America still does not participate in the Common Reporting Standard, relying instead on the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act and a patchwork of bilateral arrangements that deliver highly asymmetric reciprocity. For developing States, this means that, even as they invest to join the Automatic Exchange of Information club, a significant part of the global system remains out of reach.

23. See https://www.oecd.org/en/about/news/announcements/2024/10/crypto-asset-reporting-framework-and-amended-common-reporting-standard-oecd-releases-it-format-for-transmitting-information-and-issues-interpretative-guidance.html. ↩
24. Directive on Administrative Cooperation (tax transparency for crypto-assets), see https://taxation-customs.ec.europa.eu/taxation/tax-transparency-cooperation/administrative-co-operation-and-mutual-assistance/directive-administrative-cooperation-dac/dac8_en. ↩

Country-by-country reporting,²⁵ established under Base Erosion and Profit Shifting action 13, requires multinational enterprises with consolidated group revenue exceeding €750 million to report annually on their global allocation of income, taxes paid, and economic activity. This mechanism theoretically enables tax authorities to assess transfer pricing risks and identify potential base erosion and profit-shifting activities. The country-by-country reporting framework operates through both domestic legislation and multilateral agreements, with more than 90 jurisdictions having implemented reporting requirements. However, the initiative’s international assistance and cooperation potential remains constrained by restrictive sharing provisions that limit developing countries’ access to information about multinational enterprises operating within their territories. The requirement for bilateral agreements or multilateral frameworks before information can be shared creates additional barriers that many resource-constrained jurisdictions struggle to navigate effectively. In 20 A/HRC/58/51, para. 43. 21 See https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/automatic-exchange-of-information_7655bed0-en.html. 22 See https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/consolidated-text-of-the-common-reporting-standard2025_055664b1-en.html. 23 See https://www.oecd.org/en/about/news/announcements/2024/10/crypto-asset-reporting-frameworkand-amended-common-reporting-standard-oecd-releases-it-format-for-transmitting-information-andissues-interpretative-guidance.html. 24 Directive on Administrative Cooperation (tax transparency for crypto-assets), see https://taxationcustoms.ec.europa.eu/taxation/tax-transparency-cooperation/administrative-co-operation-and-mutualassistance/directive-administrative-cooperation-dac/dac8_en. 25 See https://www.oecd.org/en/topics/sub-issues/country-by-country-reporting-for-tax-purposes.html. GE.25-21221 addition, the absence of a global fiscal authority or repository to house these data impedes its success.

25. See https://www.oecd.org/en/topics/sub-issues/country-by-country-reporting-for-tax-purposes.html. ↩

Beneficial ownership transparency²⁶ initiatives represent another domain where international assistance and cooperation aspirations confront practical limitations. Various frameworks – from the European Union’s anti-money laundering directives to national beneficial ownership registers – attempt to pierce corporate veils and identify ultimate controllers of legal entities. The theoretical international assistance and cooperation benefits include enhanced capacity for tax authorities to identify tax avoidance structures and for law enforcement authorities to trace illicit financial flows. However, implementation reveals significant coordination challenges, including varying standards for a definition of beneficial ownership, different thresholds for reporting requirements, and inconsistent access provisions, creating a fragmented landscape that sophisticated actors can exploit while imposing compliance costs on legitimate activities.²⁷

26. See https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/networks/global-forum-tax-transparency/effective-beneficial-ownership-frameworks-toolkit-en.pdf. ↩
27. See https://www.transparency.org/en/news/countdown-to-new-eu-beneficial-ownership-rules. ↩

The Multilateral Convention to Implement Tax Treaty Related Measures to Prevent Base Erosion and Profit Shifting²⁸ represents perhaps the most ambitious attempt at systematic treaty modernization through multilateral cooperation. Rather than requiring bilateral renegotiation of thousands of existing tax treaties, the Multilateral Convention enables jurisdictions to simultaneously modify their treaty networks to implement agreed anti-base erosion and profit-shifting measures. Over 95 jurisdictions have signed the Multilateral Convention, with more than 70 having ratified it, creating a comprehensive framework for coordinated anti-avoidance measures. The Multilateral Convention’s innovative approach to multilateral treaty modification demonstrates the potential of international assistance and cooperation by reducing transaction costs and enabling smaller jurisdictions to access sophisticated anti-avoidance provisions without extensive bilateral negotiations. However, the Multilateral Convention’s complex reservation and notification system allows jurisdictions to opt out of specific provisions, creating a variable geometry that impedes comprehensive coordination. Moreover, the technical complexity of the Multilateral Convention’s provisions requires substantial administrative capacity that many developing jurisdictions lack, potentially limiting their ability to benefit from the enhanced treaty protections.

28. See https://www.oecd.org/en/topics/sub-issues/beps-multilateral-instrument.html. ↩

The OECD Two-Pillar Solution²⁹ to address tax challenges arising from digitalization represents the most recent and potentially transformative international assistance and cooperation initiative. However, the withdrawal of the United States from Pillar One negotiations in early 2023, citing concerns about discriminatory treatment of United States companies, shows the persistent tensions between national interests and multilateral cooperation.³⁰ The absence of the world’s largest economy from the profit reallocation mechanism significantly reduces its effectiveness, while potentially triggering retaliatory unilateral measures that could fragment rather than enhance international assistance and cooperation. Pillar Two’s implementation reveals different but equally significant challenges for international assistance and cooperation. While many jurisdictions³¹ have enacted the Global Anti-Base Erosion Rules, varying implementation approaches and differing dates of coming into force create a compliance complexity that favours sophisticated multinational enterprises over smaller jurisdictions’ enforcement capacity. The mechanical nature of the Global Anti-Base Erosion Rules, while reducing discretion and potential disputes, also limits developing countries’ ability to design tax policies suited to their specific economic circumstances. Furthermore, the 15 per cent minimum tax rate, while representing unprecedented global coordination, may prove insufficient to address the scale of the revenue losses documented in recent research on international tax avoidance.³²

29. See https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/topics/policy-issues/beps/statement-on-a-two-pillar-solution-to-address-the-tax-challenges-arising-from-the-digitalisation-of-the-economy-october-2021.pdf. ↩
30. See https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/the-organization-for-economic-co-operation-and-development-oecd-global-tax-deal-global-tax-deal/. ↩
31. See https://www.pwc.com/gx/en/services/tax/pillar-two-readiness/country-tracker.html. ↩
32. See https://taxinitiative.southcentre.int/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Understanding-the-Pillar-2-GloBE-Rules-Emmanuel-Eze-EN.pdf, https://www.icrict.com/international-tax-reform/2021-12-2-global-corporate-taxation-the-new-bare-minimum/ and https://taxjustice.net/2024/11/21/joint-statement-its-time-for-the-oecd-to-walk-the-talk-on-human-rights/. ↩

The most significant recent development in international tax cooperation involves the establishment of the United Nations framework convention on international tax cooperation,³³ following the adoption of General Assembly resolution 78/230 in December 2023. This initiative represents a fundamental challenge to OECD-dominated international tax governance, by creating an alternative forum where developing countries possess equal voting rights rather than peripheral consultative status. The proposed convention’s mandate includes addressing tax avoidance by multinational corporations, enhancing beneficial ownership transparency, and establishing binding mechanisms for international tax cooperation. However, the initiative faces substantial resistance from OECD countries, which argue that existing frameworks provide adequate cooperation mechanisms. The United States of America, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and other major economies voted against the resolution, highlighting persistent tensions between inclusive multilateral cooperation and established institutional arrangements that favour wealthy countries’ interests.

33. See https://financing.desa.un.org/unfcitc. ↩

These various initiatives, although not exhaustive, collectively demonstrate both the potential and the limitations of international assistance and cooperation in international tax cooperation. While technical cooperation has advanced significantly by enabling automatic information exchange, coordinated anti-avoidance measures and shared minimum standards, the fundamental power asymmetries within international tax governance remain largely unchanged. OECD-dominated processes continue to prioritize wealthy countries’ revenue interests while imposing compliance burdens on developing jurisdictions without corresponding benefits. The emergence of United Nations-based alternatives reflects growing recognition that international assistance and cooperation requires institutional arrangements that provide meaningful voice and influence to all parties affected, rather than consultation opportunities within predetermined frameworks.

The persistent challenges facing international tax cooperation illustrate broader tensions within contemporary international assistance and cooperation approaches. Technical solutions – information exchange, coordinated standards and multilateral instruments – prove insufficient when implemented within institutional arrangements that systematically favour powerful actors’ interests. Effective international assistance and cooperation requires not merely coordination among willing parties but transformation of governance structures to ensure that cooperation serves universal rather than particular interests. The ongoing debates surrounding the United Nations tax convention versus OECD-based processes represent competing visions of what international assistance and cooperation should entail in practice. Use of the human rights-based approach to international assistance and cooperation, twinned with the need to cure tax inequality globally through the treaty, may provide a potential middle ground and solution.

International debt cooperation has evolved through multiple institutional arrangements reflecting competing visions of creditor-debtor relationships as well as varying commitments to multilateral assistance. The current architecture represents a complex overlay of formal and informal mechanisms, each embodying different approaches to international assistance and cooperation, while often reproducing rather than challenging fundamental power asymmetries between creditor and debtor nations.34 32 See https://taxinitiative.southcentre.int/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Understanding-the-Pillar-2GloBE-Rules-Emmanuel-Eze-EN.pdf, https://www.icrict.com/international-tax-reform/2021-12-2global-corporate-taxation-the-new-bare-minimum/ and https://taxjustice.net/2024/11/21/jointstatement-its-time-for-the-oecd-to-walk-the-talk-on-human-rights/. 33 See https://financing.desa.un.org/unfcitc. 34 See https://afrodad.org/sites/default/files/publications/Afrodad-The-legal-foundations-081120231.pdf. GE.25-21221

The Paris Club,³⁵ established in 1956, represents the oldest and most institutionalized form of official creditor cooperation in debt management. Operating as an informal forum of major creditor governments, the Paris Club coordinates debt restructuring arrangements for countries experiencing payment difficulties. This institution’s approach emphasizes case-by-case treatment, conditionality linked to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) programmes, and burden-sharing among official creditors according to established principles. Over its six-decade existence, the Paris Club has negotiated over 478 agreements with 102 debtor countries, providing debt relief exceeding $600 billion.³⁶ The Paris Club’s procedures embody certain international assistance and cooperation principles through their emphasis on coordinated creditor action and standardized treatment across similar cases. However, the institution’s creditor-centric governance structure fundamentally limits its capacity to serve assistance functions. Debtor countries participate only as supplicants requesting relief rather than as equal partners in negotiating sustainable arrangements. Moreover, the Paris Club’s traditional focus on flow relief rather than stock relief has often proved insufficient for addressing underlying debt sustainability challenges, requiring repeated rescheduling arrangements that may worsen rather than improve debtor countries’ long-term fiscal positions.

35. See https://clubdeparis.org/. ↩
36. See https://reliefweb.int/organization/paris-club. ↩

The heavily indebted poor countries (HIPC) initiative,³⁷ launched in 1996 and enhanced in 1999, represented a significant departure from traditional debt restructuring approaches, by explicitly targeting debt stock reduction rather than mere flow relief. The initiative established systematic criteria for debt sustainability and linked relief to poverty reduction strategies, theoretically aligning debt treatment with development objectives. Forty countries have qualified for HIPC relief, receiving debt service reductions averaging 1.8 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) annually.³⁸ The initiative’s emphasis on poverty reduction and social spending protection reflects international assistance and cooperation principles by prioritizing human development over creditor interests. However, the HIPC framework’s restrictive eligibility criteria and lengthy completion processes have limited its reach, while maintaining extensive conditionality that constrains debtor countries’ policy autonomy. The requirement for satisfactory implementation of poverty reduction strategies, while ostensibly beneficial, effectively enables creditors to dictate domestic policy priorities as a condition for debt relief. Further, the initiative’s focus on “traditional” creditors has become increasingly obsolete, as new creditor groups fall outside its scope.³⁹

37. See https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/debt/brief/hipc. ↩
38. See https://www.afdb.org/en/topics-and-sectors/initiatives-partnerships/debt-relief-initiatives. ↩
39. Tito Cordella, Maia Cufre and Andrea Presbitero, “The HIPC initiative and China’s emergence as a lender – post hoc or propter hoc?”, IMF Working Papers, vol. 2025, issue 33 (January 2025), available at https://www.elibrary.imf.org/view/journals/001/2025/033/article-A001-en.xml. ↩

The Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative,⁴⁰ established in 2005, complemented HIPC by providing additional debt stock relief from major multilateral institutions including the World Bank, IMF and the African Development Bank. This initiative cancelled approximately $50 billion in debt for eligible countries that had completed the HIPC process, representing resource transfers rather than mere accounting exercises. This initiative demonstrated international assistance and cooperation potential by acknowledging that even post-HIPC debt burdens remained unsustainable for many countries, while providing unconditional relief based on completion of the earlier programme. However, the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative’s limitation to specific multilateral creditors and its requirement for prior HIPC completion maintained restrictive access that excluded many countries facing severe debt distress. Furthermore, the initiative’s one-time nature provided no systematic framework for addressing future debt accumulation or preventing return to unsustainable positions.

40. See https://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/mdri/eng/index.htm. ↩

The G20 Common Framework for Debt Treatments⁴¹ beyond the Debt Service Suspension Initiative, established in November 2020, represents the most recent attempt at comprehensive international debt cooperation. The Common Framework extends beyond traditional Paris Club membership to include major non-traditional creditors, particularly China, while establishing principles for coordinated debt treatment, including burden-sharing across all official creditors. The Common Framework’s recognition that debt challenges require participation from all creditor groups represents a significant evolution in the international assistance and cooperation architecture. However, implementation has revealed persistent coordination challenges that limit the Common Framework’s effectiveness as an international assistance and cooperation mechanism. Only four countries – Chad, Ethiopia, Ghana and Zambia – have requested treatment under the Common Framework,⁴² with processes proving lengthy, complex, and uncertain in outcome. The treatment of Chad, completed in late 2022, required more than two years of negotiations and provided relatively modest relief compared to the underlying sustainability challenges. The Common Framework’s requirement for comparable treatment from private creditors has proved particularly problematic, as commercial creditors often refuse to participate in coordinated arrangements, while benefiting from official creditor concessions that enhance their recovery prospects.

41. See https://clubdeparis.org/en/common-framework. ↩
42. David Christianson, The G20 Common Framework for Debt Treatments: Limits of Reform, 2 October 2025, available at https://www.tralac.org/blog/article/16913-the-g20-common-framework-for-debt-treatments-limits-of-reform.html. ↩

The Debt Service Suspension Initiative,⁴³ implemented from May 2020 until December 2021, represented an emergency response to the fiscal impacts of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) on developing countries. The initiative demonstrated rapid multilateral coordination capacity while establishing precedents for linking debt relief to emergency circumstances. However, the initiative’s temporary nature and restriction to bilateral official creditors limited its effectiveness, while potentially worsening long-term debt dynamics. Suspended payments ($12.9 million)⁴⁴ were merely deferred rather than cancelled, creating larger future payment obligations, while excluding multilateral and commercial creditors who often represent the largest shares of developing-country debt portfolios. Furthermore, several eligible countries declined to participate due to concerns about credit rating implications, showing how market pressures can undermine even well-intentioned cooperation initiatives.

43. See https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/debt/brief/covid-19-debt-service-suspension-initiative. ↩
44. Ibid. ↩

The debt sustainability framework of IMF⁴⁵ provides an analytical foundation for international debt cooperation, by establishing methodologies for assessing countries’ capacity to service debt without compromising growth or poverty reduction objectives. The framework incorporates probabilistic analysis, stress testing and country-specific factors to generate sustainability assessments that theoretically guide creditor decisions about appropriate debt treatment. This analytical approach represents international assistance and cooperation potential, by providing objective criteria for debt relief decisions while incorporating development priorities into sustainability calculations. However, the framework’s application often reflects creditor rather than debtor priorities, with sustainability thresholds calibrated to maintain debt service capacity rather than to maximize development outcomes.⁴⁶ The framework’s emphasis on maintaining market access may inappropriately prioritize creditor confidence over debtor countries’ human rights obligations, particularly regarding minimum essential service levels during fiscal adjustment periods.

45. See https://www.imf.org/en/About/Factsheets/Sheets/2023/imf-world-bank-debt-sustainability-framework-for-low-income-countries. ↩
46. Hasan Cömert, Güney Düzçay and T. Sabri Öncü, “Navigating debt sustainability: an in-depth analysis of the IMF’s debt sustainability framework and its critique”, International Development Economics Associates Ltd. (IDEAS) working paper, March 2024, available at https://www.networkideas.org/2024/12/15/navigating-debt-sustainability-an-in-depth-analysis-of-the-imfs-debt-sustainability-framework-and-its-critique/. ↩

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) Principles on Promoting Responsible Sovereign Lending and Borrowing,⁴⁷ developed through multi-stakeholder consultations, attempt to establish normative frameworks for sustainable debt relationships. The Principles emphasize transparency, accountability and sustainability throughout the debt cycle while recognizing both creditor and debtor responsibilities. This approach reflects international assistance and cooperation thinking, by acknowledging shared obligations rather than placing responsibility solely on debtor countries. However, the Principles’ voluntary nature and lack of enforcement mechanisms limit their practical influence on creditor behaviour. Moreover, the Principles’ emphasis on “responsibility” may inadvertently legitimize existing debt burdens, by suggesting that sustainability challenges result from poor governance rather than structural inequalities within the international financial architecture. The UNCTAD Debt Management and Financial Assistance System’s community of practitioners and the Debt Management Conferences are a hub for ongoing South-South cooperation.⁴⁸

47. See https://unctad.org/topic/debt-and-finance/Sovereign-Lending-and-Borrowing. ↩
48. Submission by UNCTAD. ↩

The Principles for Stable Capital Flows and Fair Debt Restructuring,⁴⁹ of the Institute of International Finance, represent private creditor attempts at self-regulation in sovereign debt markets. The Principles establish voluntary guidelines for good faith negotiations, information-sharing and coordinated restructuring processes. While representing acknowledgment that cooperation can serve creditor interests in avoiding disorderly defaults, the Principles maintain creditor-centric approaches that prioritize debt recovery over sustainability or development objectives. The voluntary nature and private creditor control over implementation limit the Principles’ capacity to serve international assistance and cooperation functions.

49. See https://www.iif.com/portals/0/Files/content/2_Updated Debt Principles_vf.pdf. ↩

Recent regional initiatives have attempted to develop alternative approaches to debt cooperation that may better serve developing-country interests. The African Union’s African Peer Review Mechanism⁵⁰ includes debt sustainability assessments, while various South-South cooperation arrangements provide alternative financing sources that may reduce dependence on traditional creditors. However, these initiatives generally operate at smaller scales and with limited resources compared to established creditor-dominated mechanisms.

50. See https://au.int/en/aprm. ↩

The emerging discussion around a United Nations framework convention on sovereign debt⁵¹ reflects growing recognition that existing debt cooperation mechanisms are inadequate for addressing contemporary challenges. Proposals for such a convention emphasize legal rather than diplomatic approaches to debt resolution, potentially including debt arbitration mechanisms and binding sustainability criteria. This initiative represents a fundamental challenge to creditor-dominated debt governance, by proposing multilateral legal frameworks where debtor countries would possess an equal voice rather than supplicant status. However, major creditor countries have generally opposed such proposals, maintaining that existing mechanisms provide adequate cooperation frameworks while avoiding binding legal obligations that might constrain their sovereignty over lending decisions.

51. See https://www.eurodad.org/un_framework_convention_on_sovereign_debt. ↩

Contemporary debt cooperation mechanisms collectively show the persistent tensions between formal cooperation commitments and practical power relationships that favour creditor interests. While technical cooperation has advanced through improved analytical frameworks, coordinated procedures and expanded creditor participation, the fundamental asymmetries between creditor and debtor countries remain largely unchanged. International assistance and cooperation in debt management requires transformation of governance structures to ensure that cooperation serves development and human rights objectives, rather than merely maintaining creditor confidence and debt service capacity. The ongoing debates surrounding United Nations-based alternatives versus creditor-dominated mechanisms represent competing visions of what international assistance and cooperation could entail when fundamental interests conflict, especially in the recently agreed debtors’ club.

Seville marked an inflection point in the politics of debt cooperation, even if not yet in its legal content. The Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development adopted the Sevilla Commitment,⁵² paired with a Platform for Action. On debt, governments and institutions announced the Global Hub for Debt Swaps for Development,⁵³ led by Spain and the World Bank, the Debt Pause Clause Alliance⁵⁴ to mainstream disaster-related payment suspensions, and the Sevilla Forum on Debt to help countries coordinate restructurings. Paragraph 50 (f) of the Sevilla Commitment, calling for a United Nations-led intergovernmental process to make recommendations on gaps in the debt architecture, was contentious enough that several advanced economies dissociated themselves from it, signalling the unresolved politics of moving debt governance into a universal forum.

52. Benno J. Ndulu and Stephen A. O’Connell, “Africa’s development debts”, Journal of African Economies, vol. 30, issue supplement 1 (November 2021). ↩
53. See https://financing.desa.un.org/ffd4/outcome. ↩
54. See https://www.un.org/en/desa/sevilla-forum-debt-launched-unctad16-tackle-entrenched-debt-crisis-developing-countries. ↩

African agency has been increasingly visible in this field of cooperation. The African Union convened its first debt conference in Lomé in 2025 and has advanced proposals for regional risk-sharing and fiscal stability mechanisms.⁵⁵ Research and advocacy networks such as the African Forum and Network on Debt and Development and the African Sovereign Debt Justice Network have pressed for debt sustainability assessments that incorporate climate and human rights considerations, for binding private-creditor participation, and for domestic legislation in key jurisdictions to curb holdouts. The experiences of Ghana and Zambia under the Common Framework for Debt Treatments, the agreement in principle by Ethiopia in 2025, and the early treatment of Chad underlined both the potential of multilateral coordination and the costs of delay for African economies seeking to restore growth without sacrificing social investment.⁵⁶

55. See https://au.int/en/newsevents/20250512/african-union-conference-debt. ↩
56. See https://afrodad.org/sites/default/files/publications/Afrodad-The-legal-foundations-08112023-1.pdf. ↩

International assistance and cooperation against illicit financial flows has developed through overlapping and sometimes competing frameworks that reflect different conceptual approaches to the problem, while revealing persistent tensions between sovereignty concerns and effective enforcement. The architecture of anti-illicit financial flows cooperation encompasses criminal justice, regulatory, tax administration and development perspectives, each embodying distinct visions of what international assistance and cooperation should entail in practice.

The Financial Action Task Force,⁵⁷ established in 1989, which operates through peer review mechanisms, technical assistance programmes and coordinated standard-setting, has developed comprehensive recommendations that more than 200 jurisdictions have committed to implement. This model demonstrates international assistance and cooperation potential through its combination of standard-setting, monitoring and assistance functions, which serve collective rather than narrow national interests. However, the governance structure of the Financial Action Task Force reflects G7 dominance in its founding, while developing countries participate primarily as standard-takers rather than standard-setters.⁵⁸ The organization’s focus on compliance with predetermined standards may inadequately address how structural features of the international financial architecture facilitate illicit financial flows while imposing administrative burdens that disproportionately affect smaller jurisdictions with limited regulatory capacity, and how its ranking is being used to implement unilateral coercive measures by member States on each other.

57. See https://www.fatf-gafi.org/en/home.html. ↩
58. Lovina Otudor and Mahmood Bagheri, “Legitimacy of power exercised by FATF under international law”, Journal of Financial Crime, vol. 31, No. 3 (November 2023). ↩

The United Nations Convention against Corruption, adopted in 2003, provides the most comprehensive legal framework for international assistance and cooperation against corruption-related illicit financial flows. Its provisions represent particularly significant international assistance and cooperation innovation, by establishing legal frameworks for returning stolen assets to countries of origin and by providing technical assistance for capacity-building in requesting States. The Stolen Asset Recovery Initiative,⁵⁹ jointly operated by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the World Bank, provides operational support for the Convention’s implementation through technical assistance, training programmes and coordination mechanisms.⁶⁰ Many developing countries lack judicial systems capable of pursuing complex corruption cases, while requested States often maintain restrictive approaches to asset recovery that favour bank secrecy over international assistance and cooperation. The Convention’s State-centric approach inadequately addresses how private sector actors, including professional service providers and financial institutions, facilitate corruption while benefiting from legal protections in developed jurisdictions.

59. See https://star.worldbank.org/. ↩
60. UNODC, State of Implementation of the United Nations Convention against Corruption, available at https://www.unodc.org/documents/treaties/UNCAC/COSP/session7/V.17-04679_E-book.pdf. ↩

The United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime,⁶¹ supplemented by protocols addressing human trafficking, migrant smuggling and firearms trafficking, provides additional legal foundation for cooperation against illicit financial flows. The Convention establishes mutual legal assistance frameworks, extradition procedures and joint investigation mechanisms that enable coordinated responses to cross-border criminal enterprises. The Convention’s emphasis on mutual legal assistance reflects international assistance and cooperation principles by requiring States to provide investigative cooperation, while establishing safeguards against abuse of such mechanisms. The Convention’s focus on traditional organized crime inadequately addresses contemporary illicit financial flow patterns, which often involve sophisticated financial structures and professional facilitators operating within legal frameworks.

61. See https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/organized-crime/intro/UNTOC.html. ↩

The work of OECD on illicit financial flows⁶² encompasses multiple initiatives, including the Automatic Exchange of Information framework, beneficial ownership transparency standards, and guidance on due diligence for financial institutions. The Common Reporting Standard facilitates the automatic exchange of financial account information that can help identify tax evasion and related illicit financial flows, while OECD guidance on beneficial ownership and enhanced due diligence provides operational frameworks for preventing illicit financial flows’ abuse of financial systems. However, OECD initiatives emphasize compliance with predetermined standards rather than addressing structural features that facilitate illicit financial flows, while its membership limitations restrict developing-country participation in standard-setting processes.

62. Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, Measuring OECD Responses to Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries (December 2013), available at https://policycommons.net/artifacts/11335017/measuring-oecd-responses-to-illicit-financial-flows-from-developing-countries/; and OECD, Illicit Financial Flows: The Economy of Illicit Trade in West Africa (OECD Publishing, Paris, 2018), available at https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/reports/2018/02/illicit-financial-flows_g1g679f5/9789264268418-en.pdf. ↩

The High-Level Panel on Illicit Financial Flows from Africa,⁶³ established in 2012, provided comprehensive analysis of how illicit financial flows affect African development, while proposing coordinated international responses. The Panel’s report documented annual illicit financial outflows from Africa exceeding $50 billion, and identified systemic weaknesses in international assistance and cooperation mechanisms which enable such flows. This initiative represents South-led analysis of illicit financial flow challenges, while proposing concrete international assistance and cooperation improvements that could benefit African development. However, implementation of the Panel’s recommendations has proved limited, particularly regarding proposals that would require significant changes to developed-country financial systems and regulatory approaches.

63. See https://au.int/en/documents/20210708/report-high-level-panel-illicit-financial-flows-africa. ↩

The Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes⁶⁴ is another significant international assistance and cooperation mechanism that addresses tax-related illicit financial flows through peer review and technical assistance programmes. 59 See https://star.worldbank.org/. 60 UNODC, State of Implementation of the United Nations Convention against Corruption, available at https://www.unodc.org/documents/treaties/UNCAC/COSP/session7/V.17-04679_E-book.pdf. 61 See https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/organized-crime/intro/UNTOC.html. 62 Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, Measuring OECD Responses to Illicit Financial Flows from Developing Countries (December 2013), available at https://policycommons.net/artifacts/11335017/measuring-oecd-responses-to-illicit-financial-flowsfrom-developing-countries/; and OECD, Illicit Financial Flows: The Economy of Illicit Trade in West Africa (OECD Publishing, Paris, 2018), available at https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/reports/2018/02/illicit-financialflows_g1g679f5/9789264268418-en.pdf. 63 See https://au.int/en/documents/20210708/report-high-level-panel-illicit-financial-flows-africa. 64 See https://www.oecd.org/en/networks/global-forum-tax-transparency.html. GE.25-21221 Over 160 jurisdictions participate in the Global Forum, making it one of the most inclusive international tax bodies. However, the Global Forum’s focus on information exchange inadequately addresses how tax planning structures facilitate broader illicit financial flow patterns, while its technical approach may insufficiently address power imbalances that enable some jurisdictions to maintain competitive advantages through limited transparency.

64. See https://www.oecd.org/en/networks/global-forum-tax-transparency.html. ↩

Trade-based money laundering has emerged as a significant illicit financial flows concern requiring specialized cooperation mechanisms. The World Customs Organization has developed frameworks for sharing trade data,⁶⁵ conducting joint investigations, and coordinating enforcement responses to trade-based illicit financial flow schemes. These initiatives recognize that effective anti-illicit financial flows cooperation requires coordination across multiple agencies, including customs, tax, financial intelligence and criminal justice authorities. However, trade-based illicit financial flows cooperation faces particular challenges from commercial confidentiality concerns, varying data standards, and resource constraints that limit developing countries’ capacity to analyse complex trade patterns for illicit financial flows indicators.

65. See https://www.wcoomd.org/DataModel. ↩

Regional development banks and multilateral organizations have increasingly incorporated anti-illicit financial flows considerations into their governance and operational frameworks. The African Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank have established integrity frameworks, enhanced due diligence procedures, and asset recovery mechanisms that support regional anti-illicit financial flows efforts.⁶⁶ These institutions provide technical assistance for governance strengthening, judicial capacity-building, and regulatory improvement that addresses underlying conditions enabling illicit financial flows. However, multilateral development bank anti-illicit financial flows efforts often emphasize governance reform in borrowing countries, rather than addressing how the international financial architecture facilitates illicit financial flows through secrecy jurisdictions and regulatory arbitrage opportunities.

66. See https://www.afdb.org/en/documents/bank-group-strategic-framework-and-action-plan-prevention-illicit-financial-flows-africa-2017-2021, https://www.adb.org/who-we-are/integrity/due-diligence, https://idbinvest.org/sites/default/files/2022-11/The Inter-American Investment Corporation’s INTEGRITY FRAMEWORK.pdf and https://baselgovernance.org/sites/default/files/2019-02/dfid_brochure_final_version_for_print.pdf. ↩

Financial intelligence units represent crucial operational infrastructure for cooperation concerning international illicit financial flows, through the Egmont Group⁶⁷ network, which facilitates information-sharing, joint analysis and coordinated investigations. The Egmont Group connects over 160 financial intelligence units worldwide, while providing training, technical assistance and operational support for information exchange. This network demonstrates operational international assistance and cooperation by enabling direct cooperation between specialized agencies while bypassing diplomatic channels that may impede timely information-sharing. However, the effectiveness of cooperation between financial intelligence units depends heavily on domestic regulatory frameworks, institutional capacity and political support, which vary significantly across jurisdictions. Moreover, information-sharing flows predominantly from developing to developed countries, without corresponding reverse flows that could support developing-country investigations.

67. See https://egmontgroup.org/. ↩

UNODC provides comprehensive technical assistance for anti-illicit financial flows capacity-building, through training programmes, legal drafting support and institutional strengthening initiatives.⁶⁸ The UNODC approach emphasizes criminal justice responses, while providing practical support for implementing international legal frameworks. The field presence and regional expertise of UNODC enable context-specific assistance that addresses particular challenges facing developing countries in combating illicit financial flows. However, UNODC programmes often focus on downstream enforcement, rather than addressing upstream structural factors that facilitate illicit financial flows, and resource constraints limit the scale and sustainability of its technical assistance programmes.

68. See https://www.unodc.org/unodc/international-cooperation/technical-assistance.html. ↩

Contemporary challenges to international illicit financial flows cooperation include the rapid evolution of digital payment systems, cryptocurrency technologies, and artificial intelligence tools that enable sophisticated financial crimes while outpacing regulatory responses. These technological developments require enhanced cooperation mechanisms that can address cross-border challenges in real time while respecting sovereignty and privacy concerns. Various initiatives, including the Financial Stability Board’s⁶⁹ work on crypto-asset regulation⁷⁰ and the Financial Action Task Force’s virtual asset guidelines,⁷¹ attempt to extend traditional cooperation frameworks to new technologies. However, the pace of technological change often exceeds regulatory adaptation, while decentralized technologies challenge traditional enforcement approaches that depend on intermediary institutions.

69. See https://www.fsb.org/. ↩
70. See https://www.fsb.org/2025/10/thematic-review-on-fsb-global-regulatory-framework-for-crypto-asset-activities/. ↩
71. See https://www.fatf-gafi.org/en/publications/Fatfrecommendations/Guidance-rba-virtual-assets-2021.html. ↩

The effectiveness of international illicit financial flows cooperation remains constrained by fundamental tensions between sovereignty concerns and enforcement requirements. Effective anti-illicit financial flows measures often require intrusive monitoring, extensive information-sharing and coordinated enforcement actions that may conflict with traditional sovereignty protections. Also, illicit financial flows cooperation frequently involves requests for assistance that may involve politically sensitive issues or challenge powerful interests within the requested States. The persistence of secrecy jurisdictions, regulatory arbitrage opportunities and professional facilitator networks suggests that existing cooperation mechanisms, while extensive, remain insufficient for addressing the structural features of the international financial architecture that enable illicit financial flows.

Regional initiatives increasingly recognize that effective illicit financial flows cooperation requires addressing development, governance, and structural challenges, rather than merely improving enforcement capacity. The African Union’s initiatives on illicit financial flows, including the Mbeki Panel recommendations and the subsequent implementation efforts as set out in the report of the High-level Panel on International Financial Accountability, Transparency and Integrity for Achieving the 2030 Agenda,⁷² emphasize comprehensive approaches that address trade mispricing, tax avoidance and governance weaknesses simultaneously. Similarly, regional bodies in Asia, Latin America and other regions have developed integrated approaches that recognize illicit financial flows cooperation as a component of broader development and governance challenges.

72. See https://factipanel.org/. ↩

The emergence of beneficial ownership transparency as a central component of anti-illicit financial flows cooperation reflects growing recognition that corporate secrecy enables various forms of illicit flows while creating systemic risks for financial systems. Numerous initiatives, including European Union directives⁷³ and Financial Action Task Force recommendations,⁷⁴ establish frameworks for identifying ultimate controllers of legal entities. However, implementation reveals significant challenges, including definitional inconsistencies, verification difficulties and access restrictions that may limit cooperation effectiveness while imposing administrative burdens.

73. See https://www.global-amlcft.eu/areas-of-technical-assistance/beneficial-ownership/. ↩
74. See https://www.fatf-gafi.org/en/publications/Fatfrecommendations/Guidance-Beneficial-Ownership-Legal-Persons.html. ↩

International illicit financial flows cooperation mechanisms collectively demonstrate both significant progress and persistent limitations in addressing cross-border illicit flows. Technical cooperation has advanced substantially through information-sharing agreements, coordinated standards and capacity-building programmes, which enable enhanced enforcement cooperation. However, the fundamental structural features of the international financial architecture that facilitate illicit financial flows, including secrecy jurisdictions, regulatory arbitrage and professional facilitator networks, remain largely unchanged. 69 See https://www.fsb.org/. 70 See https://www.fsb.org/2025/10/thematic-review-on-fsb-global-regulatory-framework-for-cryptoasset-activities/. 71 See https://www.fatf-gafi.org/en/publications/Fatfrecommendations/Guidance-rba-virtual-assets2021.html. 72 See https://factipanel.org/. 73 See https://www.global-amlcft.eu/areas-of-technical-assistance/beneficial-ownership/. 74 See https://www.fatf-gafi.org/en/publications/Fatfrecommendations/Guidance-Beneficial-OwnershipLegal-Persons.html. GE.25-21221 International assistance and cooperation against illicit financial flows requires transformation of these structural features, rather than merely improved cooperation within existing arrangements. The ongoing debates about beneficial ownership transparency, automatic information exchange and multilateral legal frameworks represent competing visions of how comprehensive such transformation should be and whether it can be achieved through voluntary cooperation or requires binding international obligations.

International financial institutions represent the most visible and well-resourced manifestation of international assistance and cooperation, yet their actual contribution to multilateral cooperation remains deeply contested. These institutions embody competing visions of global economic governance, while revealing persistent tensions between formal cooperation mandates and governance structures that maintain asymmetric power relationships between developed and developing countries.

IMF exemplifies these contradictions, through its dual role as global financial stabilizer and conditional lender. Established in 1944 to promote international monetary cooperation and exchange stability, IMF theoretically serves collective interests through surveillance, financial assistance and capacity-building functions. IMF lending programmes provide liquidity support during balance-of-payments crises, and IMF technical assistance helps member countries to strengthen fiscal institutions, monetary frameworks and financial sector regulation. The IMF article IV surveillance process creates systematic monitoring of global economic developments,⁷⁵ while the Financial Sector Assessment Programme⁷⁶ provides comprehensive analysis of financial stability risks. These functions demonstrate international assistance and cooperation potential, through their emphasis on systemic stability and shared analytical frameworks that serve collective rather than narrow national interests. However, the governance structure of IMF fundamentally undermines its cooperative credentials, through weighted voting systems that provide the United States with effective veto power, and European countries controlling approximately one third of the seats on the Executive Board.⁷⁷ This governance arrangement enables major shareholders to shape IMF policies in accordance with their interests, while constraining developing countries’ influence over programmes that disproportionately affect them.

75. See https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/ar/2025/what-we-do/economic-surveillance/. ↩
76. See https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fssa. ↩
77. See https://thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/global-north-imf-inequality/. ↩

The conditional lending practices of IMF reveal particularly stark contradictions between cooperation rhetoric and operational reality.⁷⁸ Structural adjustment programmes typically require fiscal consolidation, monetary tightening and market liberalization measures that may conflict with borrowing countries’ development priorities and human rights obligations.⁷⁹ The emphasis of IMF on debt sustainability often prioritizes creditor confidence over social spending requirements, while its fiscal targets may force countries to reduce public services below minimum essential levels. These conditionality practices contradict basic international assistance and cooperation principles, by subordinating borrowing countries’ policy autonomy to external requirements, and imposing costs primarily on vulnerable populations rather than on those responsible for creating crisis conditions.

78. See https://taxjustice.net/2018/07/06/the-damage-of-international-monetary-fund-conditionality-call-for-urgent-rethink/. ↩
79. See https://www.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/AUJlHRights/1994/5.pdf and https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?params=/context/mjil/article/1261/&path_info=uc.pdf. ↩

The World Bank Group encompasses multiple institutions with varying approaches to development cooperation, from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s middle-income lending to the International Development Association’s concessional finance for the poorest countries. The World Bank’s evolution from post-war reconstruction towards poverty reduction and sustainable development reflects engagement with international assistance and cooperation principles through its emphasis on country ownership, results measurement and partnership approaches. The World Bank’s analytical work, which includes poverty assessments, public expenditure reviews and governance diagnostics, provides essential technical assistance, while its operational programmes address infrastructure, health, educational and environmental challenges, on a substantial scale. The International Finance Corporation’s private sector focus attempts to mobilize commercial investment for development purposes,⁸⁰ while the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency⁸¹ provides political risk insurance that can facilitate private capital flows to challenging environments.

80. See https://www.worldbank.org/en/about/annual-report/ifc?dropid=mobilize. ↩
81. See https://www.miga.org/. ↩

However, the World Bank Group’s governance structure reproduces similar asymmetries to those of IMF, with developed countries maintaining effective control through weighted voting and developing countries having primarily recipient rather than partner status. The World Bank’s operational policies often reflect donor country priorities regarding environmental standards, procurement requirements and social safeguards, which may impose inappropriate costs on borrowing countries while serving developed-country commercial and political interests. Moreover, the World Bank’s emphasis on technical solutions may inadequately address structural features of international economic arrangements that perpetuate poverty and inequality. The institution’s lending model, though more concessional than commercial alternatives, still requires repayment obligations that may constrain borrowing countries’ fiscal space for domestic priorities.

Regional development banks, including the African Development Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, represent attempts to create more regionally-responsive cooperation mechanisms. These institutions theoretically provide developing-country members with a greater voice and adapt global development approaches to regional circumstances and priorities. The regional banks’ governance structures typically provide borrowing member countries with larger voting shares than in global institutions, while their operational focus reflects regional development challenges and cultural contexts. The African Development Bank’s emphasis on African ownership and leadership,⁸² the Asian Development Bank’s focus on infrastructure and regional integration⁸³ and the Inter-American Development Bank’s attention to inequality and governance issues⁸⁴ demonstrate potential advantages of regional approaches to development cooperation.

82. See https://acetforafrica.org/research-and-analysis/insights-ideas/a-new-era-at-the-african-development-bank-bold-leadership-needed-in-uncertain-times/. ↩
83. See https://www.adb.org/publications/infrastructure-and-regional-cooperation. ↩
84. See https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/economics-econometrics-and-finance/inter-american-development-bank. ↩

However, regional development banks face significant resource constraints compared to global institutions, while often depending on developed-country funding which may compromise their independence. The governance structure of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development provides OECD countries with majority control despite its focus on emerging market economies, while even more regionally-oriented institutions must navigate donor country preferences regarding operational policies and strategic priorities. Furthermore, regional banks may lack technical capacity and analytical resources compared to global institutions, potentially limiting their effectiveness in addressing complex development challenges.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) focuses on trade rules rather than financial assistance, yet its decisions significantly affect developing countries’ economic prospects and fiscal capacity.⁸⁵ The emphasis that WTO places on non-discrimination, reciprocity and binding dispute settlement theoretically creates level playing fields that could serve developing-country interests. Special and differential treatment provisions attempt to recognize developing countries’ different circumstances, while technical assistance 80 See https://www.worldbank.org/en/about/annual-report/ifc?dropid=mobilize. 81 See https://www.miga.org/. 82 See https://acetforafrica.org/research-and-analysis/insights-ideas/a-new-era-at-the-africandevelopment-bank-bold-leadership-needed-in-uncertain-times/. 83 See https://www.adb.org/publications/infrastructure-and-regional-cooperation. 84 See https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/economics-econometrics-and-finance/inter-americandevelopment-bank. 85 See https://collections.fes.de/publikationen/ident/fes/04888. GE.25-21221 programmes provide capacity-building support for trade policy implementation.⁸⁶ The role of WTO in facilitating South-South trade through reduced barriers and enhanced predictability demonstrates potential international assistance and cooperation contributions.

85. See https://collections.fes.de/publikationen/ident/fes/04888. ↩
86. See https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/devel_e/dev_special_differential_provisions_e.htm. ↩

However, the agenda of WTO often reflects developed-country commercial interests, while imposing regulatory burdens that may exceed developing countries’ administrative capacity. The WTO dispute settlement system, while technically neutral, favours countries with sophisticated legal resources, while sanctions primarily affect trade relationships rather than addressing underlying asymmetries. Furthermore, the focus of WTO on market access may inadequately address how trade rules interact with fiscal policy, debt sustainability and human rights obligations in ways that could support rather than constrain development cooperation.

The Bank for International Settlements, a private company in Switzerland, serves as a central bank for central banks, while facilitating cooperation among monetary authorities through its hosting of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, the Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures and other standard-setting bodies.⁸⁷ The Bank for International Settlements provides analytical support, operational services and coordination mechanisms that enable central bank cooperation on financial stability, payment systems and regulatory standards. The Basel frameworks for banking regulation demonstrate international assistance and cooperation through their emphasis on systemic stability, and their technical assistance programmes help developing countries to implement international standards.⁸⁸ However, the membership and the governance structures of the Bank for International Settlements reflect developed-country dominance, while its regulatory standards often impose inappropriate compliance costs on developing-country financial systems. The Basel frameworks’ emphasis on risk management and capital adequacy may constrain developing countries’ capacity to use financial policy for development objectives, while the Bank for International Settlements’ focus on financial stability may prioritize international investor confidence over domestic development requirements.⁸⁹ The Bank for International Settlements’ central bank focus may inadequately address how monetary cooperation interacts with fiscal policy and development objectives.

87. See https://www.bis.org/. ↩
88. See https://www.bis.org/basel_framework/. ↩
89. See https://www.bis.org/publ/arpdf/ar2025e1.htm. ↩

The Financial Stability Board, established after the 2008 financial crisis, coordinates regulatory responses to systemic risks, while promoting international financial stability through enhanced supervision, resolution frameworks, and macroprudential policies. The Financial Stability Board’s emphasis on systemically important financial institutions, shadow banking oversight, and cross-border coordination demonstrates recognition that financial stability requires international assistance and cooperation.⁹⁰ Its peer review processes and implementation monitoring create accountability mechanisms, while technical assistance programmes support regulatory capacity-building. However, the Financial Stability Board’s membership remains dominated by G20 countries, while its regulatory agenda often reflects the concerns of advanced economies rather than developing-country priorities.⁹¹ The Board’s emphasis on financial stability may inadequately address how regulatory requirements affect financial inclusion, development finance and fiscal policy effectiveness in developing countries. The Financial Stability Board’s technical approach may insufficiently consider how international financial regulation interacts with broader development and human rights objectives.

90. See https://www.fsb.org/uploads/r_111027a.pdf. ↩
91. See https://dspacemainprd01.lib.uwaterloo.ca/server/api/core/bitstreams/4cbd9c63-0ea1-489d-9b77-cafadd6e8848/content. ↩

Specialized climate finance institutions, including the Green Climate Fund, the Climate Investment Funds and the Adaptation Fund, represent recent attempts to create dedicated mechanisms for climate-related cooperation.⁹² These institutions theoretically embody international assistance and cooperation principles, through their emphasis on developing-country access, programmatic approaches and results-based financing, while addressing global challenges that require collective responses. The Green Climate Fund’s governance structure provides equal representation between developed and developing countries, and its operational approach emphasizes country ownership and transformational impact. However, climate finance institutions face significant challenges, including limited resources compared to global needs, complex access procedures that favour countries with sophisticated project preparation capacity, and governance arrangements that may still reflect donor rather than recipient priorities.⁹³ The predominance of loan financing rather than grant financing in climate programmes may exacerbate rather than alleviate developing countries’ debt burdens, while conditionality requirements may constrain policy autonomy. Moreover, the proliferation of specialized climate institutions may fragment rather than coordinate international assistance and cooperation, while imposing additional transaction costs on recipient countries.

92. See https://www.greenclimate.fund/sites/default/files/decision/b39/decision-b39-15-b39-a05.pdf. ↩
93. See https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212096325000087. ↩

Islamic financial institutions, including the Islamic Development Bank, the Islamic Corporation for the Development of the Private Sector⁹⁴ and various regional Islamic institutions represent alternative approaches to development cooperation, based on sharia-compliant principles and South-South solidarity. These institutions emphasize equity participation, trade financing and technical assistance, while avoiding interest-based lending that may conflict with Islamic principles. The Islamic Development Bank’s focus on member country priorities and its governance structure reflecting developing-country membership demonstrate potential advantages of alternative institutional approaches, but the requirement for sharia compliance may constrain operational flexibility, and governance challenges and political considerations may limit effectiveness. Also, the specialized nature of Islamic finance may limit its broader relevance for approaches to international assistance and cooperation.

94. See https://icd-ps.org/. ↩

Despite this, the World Bank Group and the Islamic Development Bank have partnered, with an aim of mobilizing $6 billion by 2026.⁹⁵ This signals a notable shift in how Bretton Woods institutions engage with alternative financial paradigms. Historically, the International Finance Corporation and its parent World Bank have operated within distinctly Western capitalist frameworks, promoting liberalization, privatization and market-based approaches to development that often imposed significant conditionalities on recipient countries. The incorporation of Islamic finance principles into operations of the International Finance Corporation represents an acknowledgement, however belated, that the universalist claims of conventional development finance may not adequately address the cultural, religious and political realities of predominantly Muslim societies.

95. See https://www.ifc.org/en/pressroom/2025/ifc-announces-first-islamic-financing-in-sub-saharan-africa-partnership-with-banqu. ↩

There is also multilateral development bank coordination through institutions such as the Coordination Committee of Multilateral Development Banks,⁹⁶ which attempts to enhance cooperation effectiveness through harmonized policies, joint programming and shared analytical work. These coordination mechanisms recognize that fragmented institutional approaches may impose transaction costs on recipient countries while reducing overall effectiveness. However, coordination often remains limited to technical levels, whereas fundamental governance and operational differences persist across institutions.

96. See https://www.themcdf.org/en/who-we-are/governance/coordination-committee/index.html. ↩

The emergence of the New Development Bank⁹⁷ 97 represents challenges to the established international financial architecture. This institution emphasizes developing-country ownership, reduced conditionality and alternative approaches to development cooperation. The New Development Bank’s emphasis on member country priorities demonstrates potential for institutional innovation that better serves developing-country interests. 93 See https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212096325000087. 94 See https://icd-ps.org/. 95 See https://www.ifc.org/en/pressroom/2025/ifc-announces-first-islamic-financing-in-sub-saharanafrica-partnership-with-banqu. 96 See https://www.themcdf.org/en/who-we-are/governance/coordination-committee/index.html. 97 See https://www.ndb.int/. GE.25-21221

97. See https://www.ndb.int/. ↩

The main patterns regarding international assistance and cooperation, when examined across tax, debt and illicit financial flows, reveal systemic structural deficiencies that undermine rather than support the progressive realization of human rights. These patterns demonstrate that international assistance and cooperation does not merely suffer from inadequacy or insufficiency in its current manifestations. Rather, the architecture itself operates through fundamentally deficient frameworks that produce harm through asymmetrical power relations, extractive financial flows from global South to global North, opacity in decision-making processes, and institutional arrangements that systematically prioritize creditor interests and capital accumulation over States’ capacity to fulfil their human rights obligations. Current international assistance and cooperation mechanisms function as instruments of resource extraction and fiscal policy constraint, rather than as genuine cooperation oriented towards mutual benefit and the progressive realization of human rights. Developing countries possess no effective forum within which to advocate for their needs in international tax cooperation or financial architecture reform. International tax measures designed predominantly by OECD members serve global North interests, while over two thirds of global corporate tax abuse risks emanate from OECD jurisdictions and their dependencies. This creates an international assistance and cooperation framework where those requiring assistance hold minimal influence over the structures purportedly designed to assist them.

The reconstitution of international assistance and cooperation around the seven principles of fiscal legitimacy – accountability, transparency, responsibility, efficiency, effectiveness, fairness and justice⁹⁸ – provides a normative framework through which to transform international assistance and cooperation from an extractive architecture into genuine cooperation for human rights realization. These principles, grounded in international human rights law and emerging from State practice, offer operational guidance for restructuring institutional mandates, reforming decision-making processes, and establishing accountability mechanisms that centre human dignity rather than creditor protection. The application of these principles across taxation cooperation, debt architecture and anti-illicit financial flows frameworks requires the following concrete measures:
(a) Accountability requires establishing that government officials in both borrowing and lending countries maintain fiduciary duties to protect public interest, with judicial and quasi-judicial mechanisms to hold decision makers answerable for budgetary and debt policies. Lenders must recognize that suborning government officials to breach these duties constitutes wrongful conduct. States must ensure prompt repatriation of illicitly acquired assets and coordinate mechanisms for asset recovery.
(b) Transparency demands full disclosure of debt agreements, beneficial ownership registers, and public country-by-country reporting by multinational corporations. The UNCTAD Principles on Promoting Responsible Sovereign Lending and Borrowing establish that States misrepresenting their fiscal situation cannot subsequently claim creditor moral responsibility for debt workouts. Transparency must extend beyond State borrowers to encompass creditor due diligence processes, international financial institution decision-making, and the full terms of bilateral and multilateral assistance.
(c) Responsibility necessitates that sovereign financing operate through comprehensive legal frameworks with clear procedures and responsibilities and with democratic oversight. Low-income and small high-income countries require genuine participation in international tax reform negotiations and in the deliberations of supranational institutions. The proposed United Nations framework convention on international tax cooperation represents an essential mechanism for realizing this principle. Furthermore, human rights impact assessments must precede all debt strategies, relief programmes and restructuring negotiations, with the findings informing policy design.
(d) Efficiency requires that creditors conduct realistic assessments of borrowers’ repayment capacity using the best available information and objective technical rules, incorporating contingent liabilities within national accounts frameworks. States must conduct transparent needs assessments before obtaining new loans, reassessing existing budgetary allocations to ensure that additional funding cannot be met through reorientation. The cost-benefit analysis must account for prospective social returns, not merely narrow economic indicators.
(e) Effectiveness demands that fiscal choices comply with international human rights obligations at all times, including during economic stabilization. Tax policy must prioritize progressive direct taxation and wealth redistribution, while international assistance and cooperation must combat tax evasion and avoidance and illicit financial flows, through binding multilateral frameworks. Debt policies require consistency with the Sustainable Development Goals and human rights realization, meaning that conditionalities that mandate austerity, privatization or deregulation undermine effectiveness when they produce adverse human rights consequences.
(f) Fairness necessitates that States mobilize the maximum available resources, widening tax bases for multinational corporations and high net worth individuals while improving collection efficiency. Where domestic resources prove insufficient, the duty to seek international assistance becomes operative. However, that assistance must take grant rather than loan form, with the global North fulfilling official development assistance commitments at 0.7 per cent of gross national income. Climate financing requires separation from development assistance, given its character as reparative rather than concessional.
(g) Justice requires a comprehensive redefinition of debt sustainability to incorporate economic, social and environmental dimensions. Debt cannot be considered sustainable when its servicing produces human rights violations or undermines human dignity. Sustainability analyses must integrate human rights impact assessments, recognizing that debt servicing becomes illegitimate when disproportionate to financial capacity or when diverting resources away from minimum core obligations. International benchmarks establish that 15 to 20 per cent of expenditure should fund education and health, at least 7.5 per cent of GDP should achieve universal health coverage, and a minimum 8.5 per cent of GDP should provide basic social protection. Debt servicing that prevents these allocations fails the justice test.

98. See A/HRC/55/54. ↩

The fundamental reorientation required positions human rights realization and a focus on assistance within the concept of international cooperation, rather than creditor protection, as the paramount objective of international assistance and cooperation. The current architecture, designed through historical processes that excluded colonized territories and women, requires wholesale reconstruction through participatory processes that embed fiscal legitimacy principles within institutional mandates, operational frameworks and accountability mechanisms.