GENEVA (9 April 2025) – Time is running out to save the
financing of the sustainable development agenda, an
independent human rights expert* warned today, calling on
world leaders to seize the opportunity at the upcoming 4th International
Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4) to act
decisively to address multiple challenges.
“Instead
of funding a war economy, States should invest in people and
the planet by financing sustainable development, including
to end poverty and hunger, reduce inequalities, eliminate
child labour, take climate action, and promote peaceful,
inclusive and just societies,” said Surya Deva, the UN
Special Rapporteur on the right to development.
As
negotiations preceding the 2025
ECOSOC Forum on Financing for Development and the Fourth
Preparatory Committee for the FfD4 unfold, the expert
issued a Negotiation
Brief, outlining key considerations that should underpin
negotiations of the outcome document.
“The right to
development provides a transformative pathway to overcome
key existing challenges to financing for development. It is
time for States to use principles of fair distribution,
intersectionality, self-determination, intergenerational
equity, international cooperation and disarmament to leave
no one behind,” the expert said.
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Many
countries, especially Least Developed Countries (LDCs), Land
Locked Developing Countries (LLDCs) and Small Island
Developing States (SIDS), face large funding gaps,
aggravated by heavy debt burdens, trade barriers, declining
Official Development Assistance (ODA), good governance gaps,
unfair international financial architecture, and corporate
tax avoidance and evasions.
“It is
important that States mobilise financing not for any kind of
development, but for inclusive, participatory and
sustainable development,” Deva said. “States should
reinforce the nexus between the three UN pillars of peace
and security, sustainable development and human rights in
the outcome document. And, since women and girls comprise
about half of the world’s population, the FfD4 outcome
document should mainstream achieving substantive gender
equality as an overarching goal.”
The Special
Rapporteur also stressed the need for the FfD4 outcome
document to address the unsustainable debt burden of
developing countries by invoking a range of measures such as
debt swaps for climate action, long-term concessional loans,
grants and debt service suspension during disasters. Steps
should also be taken to reduce the high cost of borrowing
faced by developing countries.
In his Brief, Deva has
suggested several other measures to facilitate access to
affordable, safe and green technologies, leverage additional
innovative sources of financing, strengthen good governance
and reform international financial
architecture.
“Developed countries must work
together for a more targeted, coordinated and efficient ODA
process and honour the commitment to provide ODA of 0.7 per
cent of gross national income (GNI) to developing countries
and 0.15-0.20 per cent of GNI to LDCs,” the expert
said.
*The expert: Mr. Surya Deva,
Special
Rapporteur on the right to
development
