By Bodo Ellmers

Negotiations on the outcome document of the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4) came to a sudden close on 17 June 2025, when the UN Preparatory Committee adopted the 'Compromiso de Sevilla' (Seville Commitment). Until the last moment, it was unclear whether the outcome document could be adopted by consensus, particularly given the USA's obstructive role in the final stages of the process. A draft document had been circulated to the parties under a so-called silence procedure to see if anyone had any objections, but silence was broken on almost every paragraph. During the final session of the Preparatory Committee, when the US asked for the floor, their delegate announced that the USA was withdrawing from the preparatory process and would not participate in FfD4. This walkout made adoption by consensus possible by the remaining parties.

However, while the zero draft of the Compromiso de Sevilla was already 29 pages long, the final version is an additional 9 pages longer. And, of course, it is written in the dreadful language of fiercely negotiated UN agreements. The following is an attempt to summarise the key elements in three pages; this is necessarily a subjective selection. I tried to select the elements that are relatively concrete and have operational implications. Careful readers will realise that even the elements I selected are, in many cases, not really concrete and it is not guaranteed that they will have operational implications.

Domestic Public Resources

The tax chapter contains commitments to: 

• Promote progressive tax systems and addressing tax evasion and avoidance by high-net-worth individuals.
• Evaluate budgets with a gender perspective.
• Collectively at least double the support for domestic resource mobilization (DRM) to developing countries by 2030.
• Evaluate the creation of a central public database for country-by-country reports of transnational corporations.
• Engage constructively in the negotiations on a United Nations Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation and its protocols.
• Consider the feasibility and utility of a global beneficial ownership registry.
• Establish a special meeting of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) on financial integrity.
• Encourage the Financial Action Task Force to continue to mitigate unintended consequences of anti-money laundering measures and ensure meaningful inclusion of developing countries in its decision-making processes.

Domestic and international private business and finance

The private finance chapter includes commitments to:

• Redouble efforts to reduce remittance costs to less than 3 per cent of amounts transferred by 2030.
• Support the establishment and operationalization of an international investment support centre for the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), and a biennial Island Investment Forum.
• Invite Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) to consider establishing a pooled technical assistance platform, building on existing efforts.
• Increase the mobilization ratio of private finance from public sources by 2030 by strengthening the use of risk-sharing and blended finance instruments.
• Encourage the United Nations Capital Development Fund to support LDCs as an early-stage provider of catalytic concessional first-loss capital to de-risk investments.

International development cooperation and development effectiveness

The development cooperation chapter contains commitments to:

• Scale up and fulfill respective official development commitments, including the longstanding commitment by most developed countries to achieve the targets of 0.7 per cent of ODA/GNI to developing countries, and between 0.15 and 0.2 per cent of ODA/GNI to the least developed countries, and on others to do the same regarding their respective ODA commitments.
• Further increase MDB lending capacity with the view to potentially tripling it.
• Contribute to the SDR-based hybrid-capital channeling solutions by the African Development Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, ideally by the end of 2025, and support exploring other voluntary SDR rechanneling initiatives through MDBs.
• Establish sustainable pathways to further replenish concessional windows at the MDBs.
• Revitalize the UN Development Cooperation Forum and use it to take into the account the work of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation, the OECD Development Assistance Committee´s Peer Reviews, the International Forum on Total Official Support for Sustainable Development (TOSSD), and the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI).
• Scale up climate finance from all public and private sources to at least $1.3 trillion per year by 2035. 

International trade as an engine for development

On trade, there remain the commitments to: 

• Reform the mechanisms for investor-state dispute settlements in trade and investment agreements, including through a multilateral approach towards the establishment of an Advisory Centre on International Investment Dispute Resolution.
• Significantly increase aid for trade support for LDCs, which is expected to double by 2031 from 2018 levels and continue to allocate at least 50 per cent to building trade-related infrastructure.

Debt and debt sustainability

The debt chapter saw relevant last-minute changes, the remaining commitments include to: 

• Request the UN Secretary-General to convene a working group, with the IMF and the World Bank, tasked to propose a consolidated set of voluntary guiding principles on responsible sovereign borrowing and lending, and proposals for their implementation. The Working Group will present an update at the 2026 FFD Forum and present its proposals to Member States at the 2027 FFD Forum.
• Promote the use of state-contingent clauses in official lending, including climate-resilient debt clauses and debt pause clauses
• Establish a platform for borrower countries with support from existing institutions, and a UN entity serving as its secretariat. The platform may be used to discuss technical issues, share information and experiences in addressing debt challenges, increase access to technical assistance and capacity building in debt management, coordinate approaches, and strengthen borrower countries’ voices in the global debt architecture.
• Operationalize the Small Island Developing States (SIDS) Debt Sustainability Support Service
• Strengthen an existing facility for liquidity support, for liability management and reducing the cost of capital, for scaling up debt swaps and maximizing their impact, for developing term sheets for debt rescheduling, and for providing developing countries with technical assistance, capacity support and legal advice.
• Initiate an intergovernmental process at the UN, to make recommendations for closing gaps in the debt architecture and explore options to address debt sustainability, including through holding a dialogue among Member States, the Paris Club, and other official creditors and debtors, and other relevant actors.

International financial architecture and systemic issues

The international financial architecture chapter includes commitments to: 

• Invite the Governors of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to consider increasing basic IMF votes.
• Adjust IMF surcharges in response to disasters and exogenous shocks.
• Expand policy dialogues on mechanisms to protect people’s well-being during shocks.
• Voluntarily rechannel at least half of the Special Drawing Rights (SDR) allocation of countries in a position to do so to developing countries, including through MDBs
• Design a special drawing rights playbook that provides operational guidance and strengthens the role of SDRs during crises and shocks, in line with the IMF Articles of Agreement.
• Encourage the IMF to supplement existing reserve assets through allocations of special drawing rights, to review the role of SDRs and their place in the international monetary system.
• Adjust borrowing limits in all layers of the global financial safety net.
• Support the operationalization of the African Financing Stability Mechanism.
• Establish a recurring special high-level meeting on credit ratings under the auspices of ECOSOC, including updates on the Secretary General’s efforts to engage with credit rating agencies, discussion on the use of credit assessments, exchanges on good practices for regulation of credit rating agencies, and sharing of perspectives on credit assessment methodologies.
• Invite relevant international organizations and standard setting bodies to prepare a report on risk weightings and present findings, including policy implications, at the ECOSOC FFD Forum
• Encourage the FSB to present policy proposals and recommendations to enhance the resilience of non-bank financial intermediation, including the asset management industry, at the FFD Forum.
• Conduct further research and analysis on the potential impact of risk-weightings on finance, such as for MSMEs, infrastructure, and trade finance.

Science, technology, innovation and capacity building

Key commitments here are to: 

• Enhance the capacity of the United Nations Technology Facilitation Mechanism and the United Nations Technology Bank for LDCs with adequate resources.
• Undertake an assessment of the major obstacles that hamper international diffusion of technologies for the Goals, including zero- and low-emission technologies, and to provide recommendations to overcome these obstacles.

Data, Monitoring and follow-up 

The final chapter includes commitments to: 

• Develop a framework of measures of progress on sustainable development that complement or go beyond GDP.
• Deepen substantive discussions at the ECOSOC FFD Forum through an in-depth review and reporting on national and global commitments of the action areas of the financing for development outcomes in a biennial cycle.
• Discuss the global financing framework on an annual basis, and discuss different action areas of the Financing for Development process in a biennial review cycle.
• Hold a special high-level meeting that engages with WTO and UNCTAD, in the year trade is under in-depth review within the ECOSOC FFD Forum; and hold a dialogue on debt among other relevant actors.
• Appoint national focal points for financing for development in our finance and other relevant ministries and consider establishing cross-departmental platforms for financing for development policy coordination.   
• Invite countries to report on progress and challenges in implementing the FFD outcomes in the ECOSOC FFD Forum.
• Consider by 2029 the need to hold a follow-up conference on financing for development.