Commitments. France and russia have stepped up calls for an immediate cease fire between our media and azerbaijan there for a single for the disputed nagornokarabakh region all sides voting to continue fighting i mean here says 2 french journalists have been have been injured in a series shelling while as about jan says a train station was badly damaged in armenian attacks. At least 60 people have been detained in hong kong accused of define a ban on gatherings in kohls online for protests to mark Chinas National Day police blocked off streets and alleys in a major shopping area where previous demonstrations have been held there is a ban on Mass Gatherings because of the pandemic well chief executive carol lam hailed beijing strict security law for bringing peace to the territory. A 2nd woman has died in india after being gang raped in the state of utah pradesh 2 separate cases are reigniting protests about Sexual Violence and countrys caste system both women are from the marginalised dollops community. And Child Marriage rates of service to their highest levels in 25 years because of the pandemic a report from save the children says 2500000 more young girls are at risk of being forced into marriage by 2025. Brazil has recorded more than a 1000 daily coronavirus stats for 2nd time in a week total number of fatalities to nearly 144000 resumes the worst affected country latin america which is the global epicenter of the pandemic thats it for me stay with us now jazeera inside story is next. To financial hammer thats what the United Nations says is happening to africa a new report shows the continent has lost hundreds of billions of dollars from illicit Financial Transactions what can be done just stopped and how much has it held africa back this is the inside story. Welcome to the program africa lost 836000000000. 00 between 22015. 00 in whats being termed capital flight thats the finding of a report from the United Nations that says africa would be debt free if it hadnt lost the money the u. N. Says the problem is robbing of a continent and its people of the future thats a view echoed by nigerian president. Has has. Funds in for often come from jurisdiction with scarce resources for Development Financing and depleted foreign reserves drastic reduction in collectible revenue tax underpayment or evasion and poor investment inflows the un says these illicit financial flows now cost africa 88600000000. 00 every year but what exactly are they well march of the last is through corruption tax evasion and mis invoicing of exports such as gold for example zambia reports that more than 50 percent of its copper exports go to switzerland but switzerland doesnt record any of it being imported this means african governments have much less to spend on things like Health Education and infrastructure in sierra leone for instance the lives of more than 2000 children could be saved every year if these practices were stopped and the money reinvested. Lets bring in our guest in geneva junior davis is the lead author of the report from the United Nations conference on trade and development in capetown solution is a Senior Research fellow at the institute for Global Dialogue is south africa based think tank in london edwin kuria is the africa executive director at one Global Movement campaigning to and extreme poverty welcome to the program junior you are the lead author of the report just give me what was your 1st reaction when you solve those staggering figures. No thank you for inviting me i mean yes they are staggering because the motivation for this report really it was to i basically come to be a tool of going and and recent initiatives to tackle this a financial flows both at the multilateral and domestic levels in africa. And we wanted to try to improve and have a better understanding of the key channels through which these mechanisms are conducted and how they affect the try and Sustainable Development prospects for the continent. Now you know these things very very important because they stop countries of. Much needed Financial Resources to. Boost investment in building their own productive capacity is supporting their social welfare systems and investing for the future so they are critical to their Economic Development and just to find such a large amount of money every year equivalent to run 3. 7 percent of the g. D. P. Is basically leaking out of their economy. Is quite stunning. So militia hundreds of billions of dollars evaporating in the african continent could this be the reason why the off the continent is always suffering mrs social development and Sustainable Development benchmarks. I think you its part of the problem and i think it does actually speak to the devastation that illicit transaction flows have on the economic social economic landscape of the country i mean just reading the report and looking at the numbers are staggering and i think its with what my colleague has suggested that amounts to 3. 7 percent of africas g. D. P. I think one of the important takeaways for me is that africa does not have to be a debtor its actually a creditor to the world everyone else is benefiting out of africas Natural Resources around these illicit french world flows and its not necessarily african elite that are basically suffering but is because africas ordinary citizens people on the ground who dont have access to sustain life out who dont have access to clean Running Water affordable sanitation. Access to. Just basic amenities and are constantly in a state of social economic struggle and and live on the periphery of the margins of society i think that in itself is just so unconscionable i think deciles what this report does it exposes the unconscionable lity of the fact that the money that is supposed to be within africa where we dont have to have for example you mentioned zambia zambia is one of the 1st countries in a covert phase of of the continent thats going to default on its loan we dont have to have that situation right now doing a someones complaining to and extreme poverty this must be something very depressing to blame for the situation. I would say the blame there is enough for the blame to go around and i dont want to say it is 11. 00 particular set of people but i would say 1st of all. That the story it didnt start today so he hasnt had the trend came from colonialism right a system as they put in place where the constant on the development of the commodity sector on the african continent you know was done in such a way that you really cant have even when africans to go over governance of their own countries they still didnt have the capacity to put in place the right processes and tax and taxing arrangements that would enable them to really account for what leaves the continent so there is that capacity gap in terms of not not even have it not knowing what to do to really control this flows and then theres of course the difficult trade of the people who actually trade in in this business and for most of them for people who are going to be taken commodities im focusing on the commodity part of things for those who are taking commodities out of the african continent aid to other countries right and not small players this multinational corporations these are people who are involved in International Trade so there is there is those they the multinationals themselves that you want to put some blame on then there is the system that allows that there is the International Trading system the tax and system that allows for 4 processes or trade in process that allows for mis invoice and because of the lack of cooperation or the lack of you know aggregation and the ability of data you just talked about you know dont be a saint x. Amount of gold or copper was sent was sold through to sweden or switzerland and then it doesnt have a cog in the other and it and so does the blame goes around for ok but on the commodity yeah junior the the un. In this with pulls you out of the time mccaffrey to tell me knology like the us the illicit financial flows the way i see it is a theft of public funds could you explain to our International Audience to the people who are watching us in Subsaharan Africa north africa in zambia in zimbabwe in south africa what do you mean by the. Ok in the report we define as the financial flows as movements of money in assets across borders and basically illegal in source transfer or use now as weve just discussed. These are significant country was shit problem. Both the developed and developing countries now there are at least 4 categories of illicit financial flows that can take the form of tax in commercial practices illegal markets. Terrorist or criminal financing and corruption now the tax and commercial practices which people who were dilutive to the other guest accordion entity or in the areas of for example trade missing voicing tax avoidance and the basin and these probably most estimates say these account for 65 percent around 50 percent of the illicit financial flows. That we see taking place. In africa. And since most countries in africa are commodity dependent they are exposed and they mainly export commodities and these commercial flows. Very very much related to these commodity exports and thats why its a focal area in our study on the use of financial flows. I would say and we place much more emphasis on the the channels for cross border transfers of these illicit financial flows. And i guess because most of this appears to be coming from the extractive sector we place quite a bit more emphasis there that we do for example in Financial Services one or telecoms so were talking about extractive commodities such as diamond gold platinum other woman that could have turned africa into a thriving always is unfortunately what you see is poverty unemployment instability war and famine i mean couldnt this be the opportunity to Start Talking about the need to plump down all of these practices. Indeed i think the opportunity has always been there and i want to go back to a point that was made by one of my fellow colleagues and that was its not just now that we seeing these flows and the intensity of what these fellows have done to africa but its been there for a long period of time even before independence of many african countries and its just the way the world works i think its the systemic and the systematic practices and the way the Global Economy is heavily skewed and biased in many ways in terms of pricing mechanisms and so forth and the cross border flows and i completely agree i think the time has come to reimagine some of these governance compaqs i mean one of the things that i found very disconcerting when i was reading the report was the whole question of the fact that this is not just a group of people that are basically engaging in lissa transaction flows this goes really deep its almost like a mafia that operates a kind of illuminati of the of the world that basically looks at how to make profit extract profit and maximize profit for selfish gains and dont care about whats happening to other people around the world but talk about Poverty Reduction talk about alleviation talk about development in a very rhetorical way and i think the time has come for example to reimagine Global Compact like the kimberly process i mean i thought diamond was one of the commodities mentioned in the report as part of that 6. The 65 percent that was referred to think this is an ideal opportunity to redefine the definition of of the fact that damage and not just about the communal process should not just be about conflict diamonds it should be about the role of illicit transfer of diamonds that contribute to different dynamics around enriching people that basically have no interest in stopping the richmond and i think thats the challenge for the for for us and secondly i think its that it may be ideal to also ask the question is why havent we seen a kind of world jewry cation body like a similar kind of i. C. C. An International CriminalCourt Bringing to book these multinationals think that the big players who essentially are quite embedded and entrenched but never come to book and never become accountable for their activities and i think that is really the political will do and this is what baffles me most of the time is when the u. N. Talks about the 2030 agenda and Sustainable Development goals the African Union steps in and says yes by 20 or 30 we absolutely going to guarantee that poverty is going to be eradicated but when you see this figures it looks like the biggest hoax of all times the biggest lie of all times. This lets take it lets start from where what we are passing through an out of mccovey as we speak right now developed countries are spending trillions of dollars to stimulate the economy right to provide salary support to what are called pay support to provide you know checks to their citizens african countries cannot afford that in fact they cant even afford to tests for copied they can get only one have a Health Infrastructure to you know to take in if we had seen the same numbers that we have seen in other climes if we had seen them in africa the African Health system would have collapsed completely but the question is that why do we have constant on the investment in the sectors that affect the poorest people the simple truth is that there is no resources and so we have all the talk about financing for development so finance it as the genes have been estimated to cost about 200000000000. 00 annually right. If africa is bleeding out it is 6000000000 of that how on earth are we ever going to have the investments you know to make the edges realizable and this is that this is the challenge so finance in the s. Digits is a core part of achieving the esta g. s and that is why on. The overseas Development Assistance you know for a direct investment all the kind of mechanisms that people are talking about in the private Sector Investment to help achieve that has just been touted but a question is when domestic resource mobilization is constantly you know hampered by this illicit financial flows there is no way no magic will enable us to achieve the early stages and this is the reason why this report you know heats up the core of the matter if africa does not develop itself does not mobilize the resources it needs to to even effect or to actually have the s. T. G. There is no help from outside that can help us achieve that that is the reality julia many people are saying that this report should have begun a step further in a sense that it should have shown us how embezzlers of public fund funds are to cry its gangsters are stealing the money from africa sending this money to western countries which are very good at lecture in africa on democracy and transparency and then by the end of the day when you read the report you dont get that sense of that if the embezzlers are to be held accountable those who are on the recipient and should also be held accountable. No i hear what i hate the you know what you say and that and i and i and i and i think you are you have a point in a sense. You know the determinants was it financial flows are complex and that. There are a whole panoply of factors evil ranging from multinational and trade that isnt government officials at tax advice on Financial Institutions lawyers accountants banks other Financial Institutions. So of course in the middle we do recognize that you know my levels of corruption are nice to tuition problem where you have a weekly situation and governance capacity to enforce the rule of law. Together with low levels of transparency in economic and Financial Transactions or. A political instability then of course. The incidence of illicit financial flows can be worse but i think weve tried to to to look at the issue also from i suppose a multilateral level. An institutional level and also a region of the domestic level ok. You know i mean because these activities are by themselves inherently difficult to requote and they are silly tainted by lack of transparency a legal regulator a frameworks which you know government different elements of this. And across different jurisdictions you know ease something quite challenging. To address and i think as i said before it is a ship problem and it will be quiet she ate solution the problem was a pick up but its also d a problem in europe absolutely its a problem that all europe has to reconcile with solution the reason why im asking this particular question is is that we do understand that it will take ages and ages to reconcile with a democracy and transparency in the meantime what do you think should be the immediate measures to be taken. Into place to put an and to what is happening. I think firstly its going to be difficult to end it immediately i think weve already seen initiatives and interventions set by the African Union through the annal on the illicit transfer of capital flows led by the former south african president thabo mbeki i do feel that that panel needs to get a little bit more. Action to to through its to its to what it can achieve and i think that in terms of its recommendations except for there needs to be at the a level a serious political dimension i mean we keep referring to the term political will and it becomes very tiresome to keep saying it but i think that as long as at this end of the spectrum with the flows leaving the continent if we see a little bit more kind of punitive action sanctions taken and trying to get that money back i mean i dont i dont necessarily believe that just saying that we need to return the money is going to happen whether or not we africa is able to play some kind of colonial after some kind of tax. Or some kind of punitive action or transactional value to how you get that money back is going to be important because i think we could end up in a situation where were going to be able to know the full capacity the full depth of this i think this report tells us that its just the tip of the iceberg and we havent even looked at the informal dynamics of any transaction flow we have young girls to cover here and when very refeed if you dont mind do you have any concerns that if this pattern continues then the ones who are going to pay most. Particularly those in touch with the Health Systems it occasion and infrastructure on the continent will continue to lag far behind particular income so those 3 particular vital sectors. Of course i think the most important way to end extreme poverty is to empower people and empowerment comes to education and if you dont invest in education Public Access to education in africa as well as we speak and its at this point the last study is that the aggregate study in africa show that more than 90 percent of the kids between 6 and 9 years old are 6 to 10 years or toward god the Ellie Ellie Ellie great could not read a sentence and that basically just shows a lot of the failure in the system and the failure is caused by lack of investment i dont teach or training and equipment or access in general quality of the infrastructure so that is a key part because domestic resource is key to supporting the social sectors in education and health if this continues we will continue to have on day investment in those sectors around and in extreme poverty will continue to be a challenge so does has to end needs the cooperation of the International Community you mentioned the passage of the International Banking system or the other or the complexity of the whole institutional mechanisms which govern the whole thing but many people say at the same time that its easy to set up a monitoring mechanism that can easily spot the red flags not if i those concerned in the European Community in the African Community named those abusers shame them and that could play a significant role in reducing the amount of money that goes into different markets. I think that does that to a on the one hand i think we should not and the glen the role d that africa the steps the African Union and african governments themselves and there are several governments that i could name that are quite notable in 1000 these efforts to try and scale up you know african led and Money Laundering initiatives i mean in this regard for example the africa carry me give you making mechanism which is a voluntary pointing mechanism for haiti Member States you know it needs to be given a stronger mandate to devise binding legislative to that can address maddened matter corruption Money Laundering moving to the issue. Of how we can secure in the continent more capacity to keep their revenue base them ethically generated i think that african countries must themselves play a much more active role in the International Code of tax reform. In having a kind of a stronger intergovernmental position basically the o. E. C. D. And the g 20 proposals on the International Tax code have to be loike and their. Solutions i mean the report says that curbing illicit capital flight could generate something. Enough cash by 20 or 30 to finance 50 percent of the 2. 00 trillion dollars needed to tackle the ramifications of Climate Change we dont think this is going to happen anytime soon and Climate Change is potentially the biggest challenge facing the continent what whats next how do you see the continent in 1020 years from now. I think if we dont stop putting these processes into place were going to end up even worse in terms of the Climate Change youre right as a disruptor Climate Change is not stopping i mean we seeing different aspects of desiccation issues of climate refugees and so forth so i think if it doesnt if we dont address it i dont think we should be thinking of 2030 because 28 that is just around the corner and we we still in of a very difficult situation in africa and i think the problem has also the fact that whilst we want to upgrade an upscale certain initiatives in africa theres also a question of hollow africa can get its voice heard on the International Arena and i think the g 20 as much as as much as that africa is there it needs to have more traction in terms of opening up african thank you to the g 20 and dealing with these issues unfortunately were running out of time general davis a really appreciate the fact that you have worked on that report and made it public so that people understand whats happening so and it went i love the way your continue your fight to make africa a better continent by the way i come from africa thank you we appreciate that thank you for what you can see the program again and the time by visiting our website dot com for further discussion go to facebook our Facebook Page thats facebook dot com forward slash a. J. Inside story you can also join the conversation on twitter handle is. A j inside story from the house of obama and the entire team here in doha i for now. I. 2 planes from studio and 15 checked you know what tell mr youre my missing for 5 days it is possible to fully clean the premises all forensic evidence but what you then leave is evidence that you have 40 clean stumped mystery wanted to give an exit from evidence of the wrong stuff and speaking about the hole in the books before even the saudi government would just have Jamal Khashoggi murder in a saudi consulate on aljazeera trying to enjoy his nice words and managers im not sure we all die joel finds a beauty is brown is good up going to be a he doesnt say we need to call this book news or this just we just see its glad. I am mentioning it ive only done a few. Of. My nigeria on aljazeera. We know whats happening i read and we know how to get that they feel that others can often fires are still going on the way they tell the story isnt what can make a difference. Ready. Im about to send in doha the top stories on the al jazeera the European Union has announced its launching legal action against the u. K. Over plans to breach parts of the brags that agreement it says a bill now before the British Parliament would violate International Law when it comes to trade rules in Northern IrelandPrime Minister bars johnson has admitted it breaks the rules but says its necessary to protect jobs and the integrity as he calls it of the u. K. s internal Market European Commission president ocilla von delaine said made the announcement this morning and the commission has decided to send a letter farmer