The SkattJakt Network. Videreføres gjennom prosjekt 263392.

Important development objectives such as poverty alleviation and sustainable development are not possible without national revenue. It is, therefore, crucial for poorer countries that they are able to establish effective tax regimes and institutions. This has, however, proven to be a challenging task as historical evidence sugegst that this is one of the most difficult parts of the process of state building. This challenge is even more difficult to overcome in the current global economy: an economy not only characterised by swiftness, speed and flexibility, but also by significant capital flight from poorer countries through tax havens and financial secrecy jurisdiction. The SkattJakt-network that consists of Norwegian research environments working on such issues financed by the Norwegian Research Council therefore aims to strengthen the Norwegian impact in these areas. The SkattJakt-network will bring together the Norwegian competence and international research and activist networks in Europe and Africa in order to create a common platform for further research and policy development. The Bergen conference 21-22 November 2016 will in this regard bring together Norwegian, international,and Aftrican researchers on such a platform. The network are therefore creating a unique platform for debates about taxation, taxation regimes and development in Norway while simultaneously supporting different Global South partners capacity-building within this field. This will represent an added value for Norwegian research environments, Global South partners and Norwegian public authorities such as NORAD that works on these issues and a daily basis. The SkattJakt-network will achieve its objectives through a series of conferences, smaller targeted seminars and designed meetings between researchers and relevant Norwegian users of such research such as NORAD, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Økokrim. KRIPOS, Skatte direktoratet and the Ministry of Finance. Examples of such activites include well-attended seminars by researchers from the Global South in Norway on insurgency financing, taxation and democratisation, tax avasion, conflict minerals, and in Oxford during the DSA conference in September where Morten Bøås and Odd-Helge Fjeldstad organised two panels about the New Politics of Development in Africa: Extractives, Global Wealth Chains and Taxaation that also included researchers from Kenya. These well-received panels were also noticed by Routledge and we are currently discussing a book on this issue with this publisher. Reserchers connected to the network also produced a number of op eds in this period in influential outlets such as Foreign Affairs, Washington Post and Aftenposten, and the two seminars on conflict minerals (Dirk-Jan Koch , the Netherlands and Aloys Tegera, DR Congo) led to extensive articles in Bistandsaktuelt. For further details see the SkattJakt homepage located at www.nupi.no

The SkattJakt network will faciliate dissemination, dialogue and the exchange of results to a number of actors. The network will achieve its objectives through a four year programme of activities that will combine larger conferences with smaller targeted meetings and a biannual newsletter (news from ongoing research activities). NUPI will provide the hub function and faciliate contact between relevant users of research and the particpants in projects financed by Norwegian Research Council's TaxCapDev programme