Global justice also depends on who pays and who is heard
From the story of female farmers whose crops stopped growing due to a reforestation project to the rules that allow for the taxation of multinational corporations, the conference organized by Dejusticia and TREES from October 26 to 28 explored in depth how decisions, resources, and the burdens of crises are distributed.
In Zimbabwe, some rural women couldn't understand why their beans and squash had stopped growing under the trees planted as part of a reforestation program. The government, for its part, didn't understand the population's lack of enthusiasm for the project. Geri Augusto, who spoke with them during her years working in southern Africa, said that an entomologist later helped her understand that the problem stemmed from the fact that the trees were eucalyptus trees brought from Australia that were drawing water from those dry lands.
Augusto recalled that experience during his keynote address at Global Justice: Challenges and Possible Paths, the event organized by Dejusticia and TREES at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá. Those women, she explained, had been her teachers. Their crops and their knowledge of the land allowed them to see what the reforestation program was overlooking.
The story gave concrete form to a concern that was raised throughout several sessions of this meeting: what happens when decisions are made without listening to those who bear the consequences. Over the course of the three days, this discussion came up when talking about international institutions, digital platforms, the energy transition, taxes, and care.
How do we deal with crises?
From the outset, Diana Guzmán, director of Dejusticia, had proposed the task of “moving from diagnosis to devising solutions.” She described climate, socioeconomic, and political crises that are intertwined and affect different populations unequally. The question was what tools to use to address them when the institutions responsible for protecting rights are also being weakened.
That concern also came up on Monday, October 26, during the event's opening panel discussion on Theoretical Foundations of Global Justice. There, Rodrigo Uprimny, a senior researcher at Dejusticia, explained that international human rights law has made progress in combating discrimination, but has weaker tools for addressing economic inequality.
This issue was also a central focus of the remarks by Steve Price-Thomas, Director of Advocacy and Engagement at Oxfam International, who warned that the concentration of wealth allows for the accumulation of power over the economy, politics, and the media, and influences the rules that should limit it. “We cannot continue with this model that concentrates wealth and power in the hands of a few,” he said. For this reason, he proposed placing the reduction of inequality at the center of national policies and international cooperation, and measuring economic success by people’s access to public services.
Defend existing institutions and discuss their limitations
Lilibeth Cortés Mora, a specialist with the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, emphasized the need to improve responses to victims’ demands and to clarify what the justice mechanisms can offer. For her part, during the panel Rethinking the State and Multilateralism to Address Global Challenges, Sandra Borda, an associate professor in the Department of Political Science and Global Studies at the Universidad de los Andes, noted that these forums make it possible to build mechanisms for coordination among actors with differing interests. “Multilateralism is a space where one negotiates differences, not abandons them,” she explained. Its necessity persists precisely in a divided world.
In the discussion on What can we do to strengthen international human rights law?, Magdalena Rochi, a program officer at the Global Initiative for Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, proposed viewing international law as a system. Funding a rights-based policy, addressing climate change, or discussing international trade requires connecting areas that are often treated separately.
In that conversation, Geri Augusto referred to the concept of “”place of speech", which means being aware of the perspective from which we speak and listen. She invited us to ask ourselves how communities understand dignity, justice, and human rights, and to recognize the differences between their experiences and knowledge. “We are bodies that think, not just bodies that act,” she stated. Her reflection also called for examining our own position as we enter these conversations and asking ourselves what we bring to them and what we are willing to learn from others.
Toward a Fair Global Digital Order
On Tuesday, October 27, several experts highlighted the challenges of regulating entities that operate on a larger scale than many nations. Liam Herrick, chief commissioner of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, questioned the effectiveness of fines in reining in large platforms and described the pressures their influence places on regulation. Vitória Oliveira, senior consultant at ARTICLE 19’s Legal Reference Center for Brazil and South America, called for an examination of artificial intelligence business models and their ties to large tech companies. She also questioned the benefits attributed to data centers when the affected communities lack a voice and control over their data.
The gap between the promise of progress and the reality on the ground resurfaced during the panel discussion at Environmental Justice. Yuvelis Morales Blanco, an environmental leader and winner of the 2026 Goldman Environmental Prize, introduced herself as a woman from the riverside community of Puerto Wilches and the daughter of artisanal fishermen from Colombia’s Magdalena Medio region. She spoke of a region with a long history of hydrocarbon exploitation, where shortages of drinking water and basic sanitation persist.
She explained that, with the arrival of fracking, the community began to conduct research alongside the global anti-fracking movement. Drawing on that experience, she called for a responsible and committed academic community and questioned an energy transition that could cause further harm to rivers and communities. Lyla Mehta, a professor and researcher at the Institute for Development Studies (IDS) at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, added that adopting the communities’ perspective does not mean placing the entire burden of addressing the climate crisis on them.
Resources to Fund Rights
On Wednesday, October 28, the conversation about Global Tax Justice He addressed the issue of the resources needed to fund human rights. José Antonio Ocampo, a professor at Columbia University, advocated for rules that would allow multinationals to be taxed where they conduct business, even if they do not have a physical presence there. He also called for greater transparency regarding their operations and the actual owners of their assets.
Ocampo argued that the United Nations should play a central role in international tax cooperation and questioned why that role falls to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development: “The OECD is not a global institution.” The discussion thus centered on who has the authority to collect taxes and who participates in drafting the rules.
María Emilia Mamberti, a professor at Torcuato Di Tella University in Buenos Aires, highlighted the regional coordination efforts and civil society participation in the Tax Cooperation Platform for Latin America and the Caribbean. José Manuel Castro Arango, director of the Externado Center for Fiscal Studies and professor at Externado University, noted that tax justice also requires asking how the collected funds are spent.
The meeting of Global Justice: Challenges and Possible Paths concluded with the panel discussion Facing the Care Crisis: How Do We Reimagine the World Through the Lens of Care?, which made it possible to reestablish the link between public resources and well-being. Alma Espino, president and coordinator of the Development and Gender Division at the Interdisciplinary Center for Development Studies in Uruguay, explained that the activities that sustain life form the foundation of the economic system and fall primarily on women, through both paid and unpaid work.
Vasna Ramasar, an associate professor of Human Ecology at Lund University, linked these burdens to ecological damage and fiscal policy: “Through taxes, we can create collective well-being.” From this perspective, funding health care and education is also a matter of care.
Verónica Moreno Uribe, a professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Veracruz, shared experiences from care communities in Veracruz: women who support survivors of violence, food networks, and organizations that protect rivers or preserve languages. At the same time, she cautioned against the risk of romanticizing these practices in contexts of precariousness. Recognizing them requires addressing the conditions under which people provide care.
In her closing remarks, Diana Guzmán revisited the risk of fragmentation—the idea that each struggle is independent or that those who carry it out are on their own. She proposed strengthening relationships and exercising political imagination. “In history, in the collective practices of many communities and many people, we find fundamental keys to imagining a better future.”.
The story of the women farmers in Zimbabwe provided a starting point for that task. Before deciding what to plant, it was necessary to listen to those who knew why the crops had stopped growing.
