The gloomy reality of the current world disorder forced some of the leaders gathered in Seville to park the bureaucratic language. “Financing is the engine of development and that engine is drowning,” the UN Secretary General, António Guterres started in the morning, at the Fairground of the Andalusian capital. And he launched an evening threat: “We have a clear message for power: it is better for them to live the system reforms now than to wait and suffer at some point the resistances later, when power relations change.”
Guterres asked governments not to cut their help to dedicate it to military spending, in full global rear. The American demand for NATO members of their armies has caused substantial cuts for development aid, as in the United Kingdom. Spanish Foreign Minister José María Albares confirmed this newspaper on Sunday night.
“I think that what is natural is that if a country considers that you have to increase defense expenses you must use its own resources for that and not finance the increase in defense spending with the reduction of humanitarian aid to the most unprotected peoples in the world,” Guterres added.
Pedro Sánchez, president of the Spanish Government, host of the summit, launched a message similar to that of Guterres, which links with the idea of why via finance security. The president asked to overcome the “myopia of the present” by remembering that global stability is also played in the global south.
“We have a clear message to power: it is better for them to live the system reforms now than to wait and suffer at some point the resistances later, when power relations change”
António Guterres, UN Secretary General
The funding hole adds four billion dollars a year, according to the UN. It is necessary, they estimate, to meet in 2030 the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). But it is not just money, as is repeatedly heard in Seville. The conference tries to introduce tangible reforms into a state where that, however, resists change.
To avoid this, in addition to the final text that was approved by consensus, this conference has a novelty, the so -called platform for the action of Seville, which Sánchez and Guterres launched, in which governments, private organizations and private sector will present concrete initiatives to advance development in development. , he asked that the meeting leave “a new roadmap based on concrete, in the tangible and in the realizable.”
Concrete measures
Debt exchanging programs, the creation of borrower forums, debt moratorium in cases of catastrophe, an international taxation that guarantees fair tributes of large fortunes or a specific rate to executive class tickets and jets Private are some of the 130 initiatives that Sánchez announced they had received.
Sanchez joined the discouraging radiography of the state of the world in which the leaders gathered here. “We attended increasing commercial barriers, an increasing inequality, diminishing cooperation budgets and with threatened multilateralism.” Despite this, the Spanish president asked to act to reverse an equation that is not irremediable. “Resources exists. There is a lack of will and courage, but you have to act already,” said Sánchez, who made a series of ads, with which the Spanish government wants to demonstrate that it goes to action. One of them, for example, is the opening in Madrid of the United Nations House, aimed at hosting offices from several UN agencies. “Given the weakening of multilateralism, in Spain we will dedicate ourselves to defend it,” said Sánchez. Faced with the aid cuts from countries such as the USA, the United Kingdom, Germany or France, Sánchez reiterated as marked by the Cooperation Law approved in 2023 and an increase of 130 million euros for Gavi, the World Alliance for Vaccines. And he announced that Spain will contribute 145 million euros to the World Fund, which fights AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria for the 2027-2029 period, an amount that represents an increase with respect to its previous contribution.
“Today, development and its great promoter, international cooperation, face very strong winds against. We live in a world where trust is falling apart and multilateralism is under tension,” Guterres warned, to highlight the importance of this summit. “It is the largest international meeting ever organized in our country (…) and a milestone in the chronicles of multilateralism,” added Sánchez.
The president of Cabo Verde, José Maria Neves, insisted on the idea that Seville’s commitment will be positive if he is supported by firm, measurable and financed commitments conveniently. “Our moment is critical. The four billion dollars that we lack are not a figure, they are a world alarm signal and the reflection of asymmetries that punish developing countries.”
The need for action is even more pressing after the decision of the United States, the largest donor in the world, to dismantle USAID, his cooperation agency. These cuts, according to various studies, will cause millions of dead, mainly in the global south. Washington is also the great absentee of this summit, from which he turned away during the negotiations.
Against another of the decisions of Donald Trump, the imposition of tariffs on trade charged the French president, Emmanuel Macron, who considered the commercial war “a form of blackmail”, which torpedo the development of the countries.
Filipe Nyussi, the president of Mozambique claimed “a more inclusive international financial architecture.” That reform that is spoken of years ago has now become urgent in the face of the huge debt crisis that the global south is going through. Pandemia, the Ukraine War, the increase in interest rates and more recently commercial barriers and the help cut strangulate some 60 countries in which they pay more for debt than in education or health. “A paradigm shift is needed,” said the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro.
