Development Finance & Tax Justice - Archive

By Bodo Ellmers

On 10 March 2025, the UN circulated the new version of the draft global financing framework that the international community is due to adopt at the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4) in Sevilla in early July. The new version reflects interventions by Member States and other stakeholders made at the third session of the Preparatory Committee (PrepCom3) at UN headquarters in February. It is the basis for the actual line-by-line text negotiations that are [...]

By Bodo Ellmers

From 26 to 28 February 2025, the first key events of the South African G20 presidency took place as Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors held their inaugural meeting in Cape Town, the country’s coastal metropolis. The fifth edition of the Finance in Common Summit, the world’s major gathering of public development banks, took place at the same time, attracting around 2,000 delegates. South Africa is trying to pursue several important streams of financial architecture reforms during [...]

By Bodo Ellmers

The third session of the Preparatory Committee for the International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4) took place at the United Nations (UN) headquarters from 10-14 February 2025. It marked the first round of negotiations on the actual outcome, as the zero draft of the conference’s outcome document – intended as the world’s key multilateral agreement on development finance – was released in mid-January. 

UN Member States and other stakeholders made the most of the five-day session [...]

The international community has made significant strides on the road to the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4). On 17 January 2025, the UN released the draft outcome document for the upcoming Sevilla Conference. The set of multilateral agreements included in the document will become the main global policy framework for development finance, complementing earlier agreements such as the Addis Ababa Action Agenda and the Monterrey Consensus. So what does the zero draft include? 

Debt takes centre [...]

The Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4) will take place in Seville in June 2025. This is against the backdrop of massive delays in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda, not least due to deficits in development financing. The Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) financing gap, which was estimated at US$ 2.5 trillion in 2015, has not been closed or reduced over the last decade. Instead, it has grown to over US$ 4 trillion annually. In addition, the decade [...]

The international community gathered at the United Nations (UN) headquarters from 3-6 December for the second Preparatory Committee meeting for the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4), which is set to take place in Sevilla, Spain, in late June 2025. Discussions in New York clarified country priorities and positions on FfD, building on concrete proposals outlined in a previously circulated Elements Paper. The meeting also served as a test of the level of ambition.

The New York [...]

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The 4th International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4) will take place in Sevilla, Spain from June 30 to July 3, 2025. FfD4 is expected to catalyse the urgently needed policy change to mobilize the necessary funds for sustainable development and climate action. Therefore, it is expected to also set milestones in terms of reforming the [...]

The UN has launched the "Elements Paper" for next year's Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4) in Sevilla, Spain. The paper will form the basis for discussions at the upcoming second meeting of the FfD4 Preparatory Committee (PrepCom), which will take place from 2 to 6 December 2024 at UN Headquarters in New York. Here are my personal top 10 policy reforms, copied and pasted directly from the paper:

The Elements Paper Top 10:  [...]

Brazil’s first G20 presidency culminated in the summit in Rio de Janeiro from 18-19 November. The main highlight is that the taxation of high net worth individuals was put on the international policy agenda. The ongoing process of reforming the Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) received further impetus with the adoption of a new roadmap. The Brazilian government sought to better link G20 policy-making with the United Nations and established new formats for stakeholder engagement, notably the G20 Social Summit. 

The  [...]

The international financial architecture is in urgent need of reform. In the words of UN Secretary-General António Guterres, it is "outdated, dysfunctional and unjust". The main institutions were created 80 years ago in a transatlantic agreement, at a time when many of the world's nation-states of today were still colonies. Moreover, the institutions have failed in their mission to prevent and mitigate crises and to mobilize sufficient financing for internationally agreed development goals.

The reform of the international financial architecture [...]

Last week´s Annual Meeting of the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) that took place in Washington, D.C. were the first major gathering of policymakers after the UN Summit of the Future (SotF), and one of the few remaining milestones before the international community gathers for the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4) in Sevilla in summer 2025. However, neither the outcome of the SotF has been reflected in the international financial institutions‘ [...]

*Watch the video of the report launch*

What to expect?

• Perspectives on international financial architecture reform.
• LAUNCH OF THE NEW CIVIL SOCIETY REPORT: Building new foundations: Reimagining the International Financial Architecture

With:

• Juan Pablo Bohoslavsky - Researcher at Argentina's National Scientific and [...]

The United Nations has concluded tough negotiations on the Pact for the Future. The comprehensive multilateral agreement was adopted on 22 September at the opening session of the Summit of the Future. Under the heading ‘Transforming Global Governance’, the Pact contains a list of policy measures to reform the international financial architecture. This area has been a priority for developing countries, which are marginalised in the current institutional framework for global economic governance. The UN Secretary-General has been a strong [...]

The Global People's Assembly 2024 will take place in person from 22-24 September at the UN Church Center in New York. In the PROGRAMME you will find event descriptions for everything happening over the three days. Because of technical challenges people will be able to follow online only the first day of the assembly.

Please click here to register to attend in New York in person

Please click here to register to attend the first day online

Tax dodging and harmful tax competition remain major challenges to mobilising sufficient resources for development and public services. A landmark agreement reached in New York on 16 August 2024 could finally provide the international community with an effective tool to tackle these problems. After three weeks of intense negotiations, an ad hoc committee of the UN General Assembly agreed on the Terms of Reference (ToR) for the new UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation. The adopted ToR outline [...]

By Bodo Ellmers

From 22 to 26 June 2024, the international community gathered in Addis Ababa for the first session of the Preparatory Committee (PrepCom) for the UN's Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4). The well-attended meeting took place against the backdrop that time is running out to close the financing gap for the SDGs. At the same time, high debt levels in many developing countries are making it increasingly difficult to find suitable financing instruments. 

Wrapping up [...]

By Bodo Ellmers

When the Bridgetown Initiative for the Reform of the International Financial Architecture (IFA) was released in autumn 2022, it caused quite a stir, especially in the climate finance community. Promoted by Mia Mottley, the strong-willed prime minister of Barbados, the initiative influenced the UN climate summit in Sharm-el-Sheikh and inspired the Summit for a New Global Financing Pact organised by French president Macron in Paris in June 2023. The second version, Bridgetown 2.0, was released in [...]

By Bodo Ellmers

As the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) celebrate their 80th anniversaries, the pressure is mounting to reform these two central pillars of the international financial architecture (IFA). In debates at the UN, such as the 2023 SDG Summit, emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs) in particular have reiterated their calls for a major overhaul of the IFA. The G24, the body of EMDE´s at the Bretton Woods institutions, has presented a comprehensive list of [...]

By Bodo Ellmers

Debt, taxes and geopolitics took centre stage in this year´s UN Financing for Development (FfD) Forum. The debates and negotiations took place as the preparatory process for the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4) was already underway. They preceded the first negotiating session of the UN General Assembly´s new Ad Hoc Committee on International Tax Cooperation, which began immediately afterwards. Fiercely negotiated were the outcome document´s paragraphs on international tax cooperation and [...]

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Location: IMF HQ2-03B-768B 

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The debt crisis is no longer a risk but a reality in many countries. It is therefore key to restore debt sustainability in a way that it ensures governments capacity to guarantee human rights, gender equality and climate action while also looking at the crisis from a structural perspective [...]

In December 2023, the United Nations General Assembly finally gave the mandate to convene the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4). In a challenging economic and geopolitical environment, high expectations are placed on the conference. On the one hand, ways and means are to be found to mobilize additional funds in order to at least significantly reduce the enormous financing gaps in development and climate action. On the other hand, FfD4 is also intended to be a milestone [...]

By Bodo Ellmers, Global Policy Forum and Ute Straub, Brot für die Welt 

(Article first published on www.germanclimatefinance.de)

A new target for climate financing is to be agreed internationally before the end of the year. If it is to meet the challenges of climate change, it must be significantly higher than the previous USD 100 billion target for international climate finance. There are several relevant processes on the international political calendar for 2024 that deal with how more funds [...]

By Bodo Ellmers

International financial architecture (IFA) reform has been a hot topic lately. Numerous expert groups have made policy recommendations, and the developing countries among the UN member states in particular are calling for faster and more fundamental reforms. In the run-up to the Summit of the Future, scheduled for September this year, civil society organisations have been campaigning for a wide range of changes. The latest Spotlight on Global Multilateralism highlighted campaigns for more inclusive global tax [...]

Calls for reforms of the international financial architecture are becoming ever louder. Governments, UN institutions, expert groups and civil society organizations are criticizing the fact that the network of institutions and rules that currently determine global monetary and financial policy and control global financial flows are not up to the current crises. The international financial architecture is “outdated, dysfunctional and unfair”, according to UN Secretary-General António Guterres.

In view of these challenges, the UN Member States made the reform of [...]

The adequate mobilization of climate finance remains one of the greatest challenges of our time. Under the United Nations (UN) climate agreements, rich countries have pledged to support the global South in the fight against climate change and the associated human rights violations through financial transfers. However, the repeated failure to meet the corresponding target of providing US$ 100 billion per year has led to diplomatic tensions and is one of the main reasons for the lack of success in [...]