The US will even be the only UN country absent from Seville, after being withdrawn from the negotiation of the “Seville Commitment” statement, although they did not veto it requiring a vote
More than 60 world leaders and 4,000 civil society representatives meet from Monday in Seville to relaunch development aid, which currently has a deficit of four billion annual, according to the UN.
It will be the 4th International Conference for Development Financing (FFD4) of the United Nations (UN), which runs in Seville, Spain, until Thursday, ten years after the previous one in Ethiopia, in 2015.
The goal now is to “renew the framework of global development financing”, at a time of “serious geopolitical tensions and conflicts” and when “the objectives agreed by the international community are seriously delayed on the 2030 Agenda, reads” Seville Commitment “, the declaration already negotiated within the UN that will formally adopted this week.
“We are running out of our goals and facing the adverse impacts of climate change. (…) The gap between our sustainable developmental aspirations and financing to realize them has continued to increase, particularly in developing countries, reaching an estimated value of 4 billion annually” (about 3.4 billion euros) reads in the text.
According to UN accounts, the current deficit in development aid is 1.500 billion more than ten years ago and by 2024 official development aid has first dropped in the last six years, with a new drop from 20% to 2025.
In a world with more war conflicts and new tensions and geopolitical discourses, resources are being diverted to military and security budgets, with special impact the cutting of funds for humanitarian aid and UN agencies by the United States, since Donald Trump returned to the country’s presidency, which represented 42% of all donations last year.
The US will even be the only UN member country absent from Seville, after being withdrawn from the negotiation of the “Seville Commitment” statement, although they have not vetoed it requiring a vote.
Among the confirmed leaders in Seville are the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and Spain Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who will be the host, along with UN Secretary-General António Guterres.
The Prime Minister of Portugal, Luís Montenegro, will be at the conference today and will also be in Seville leaders from other Lusophone countries, namely the presidents of Angola (João Lourenço), Cape Verde (José Maria Neves), Guinea-Bissau (Umro Sissoco Embalo) and Mozambique (Daniel Chapo).
During the four days of the conference will also pass the leaders of major international financial organizations, such as the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund, responsible for development agencies and programs, organisms and protagonists of the private sector and non-governmental organizations (NGO).
In the statement already negotiated, the international community assumes commitments to create new mechanisms for mobilization of development aid, investment application and sovereign debt management of the most vulnerable or development countries, recognized in the document as one of the major obstacles to sustainable development.
Throughout 68 pages, “Seville commitment” also emphasizes that only the reinforcement of multilateralism can respond to the urgent need for poverty eradication and facing the impacts of climate change.
The document should be complemented with unilateral advertisements from various countries during the conference and more concrete actions to be developed under the “Seville for Action Platform”, which will be presented these days.
The Seville Conference “is a unique opportunity to reform the international financial system”, which is now obsolete and dysfunctional, said António Guterres recently.
