Antonio Guterres
During this month, leaders meet in Seville, Spain, to carry out a rescue task of assisting in evaluating the way the world follows in investing in sustainable development.
The challenges presented in this regard are not after the challenges. After a decade has passed since the adoption of the sustainable development goals and the pledge of many required obligations at the global level to finance them, progress in achieving two -thirds of the specified goals remains stumbling. The world is witnessing palaces in providing the resources that developing countries need to fulfill these promises by 2030, representing more than 4 trillion dollars annually.
Meanwhile, the global economy enters a slowdown stage, commercial tensions grow, and the budgets of assistance are reduced while the increase in military spending intensifies, and international cooperation is unprecedented.
The global development crisis is not an abstract crisis. It is actually embodied in the suffering of families from hunger, the lack of pollination of children, the having to leave the school, and the deprivation of entire local communities of basic services.
So we must correct the path. This correction process begins at the Fourth International Conference on Financing Development in Seville, during which an ambitious plan must be adopted by global support in order to invest in sustainable development goals.
This plan should include three basic elements.
First, the Seville Conference should contribute to raising the frequency of the flow of resources to the countries that are desperate, urgently.
The countries must take over the leadership of leadership in this regard, so that within a framework of international cooperation they work to mobilize local resources by enhancing the collection of revenues and confronting the evasion of paying the tax, laundering money and illegal financial flows. This would provide resources that are intensified to give priority to spending on areas that have the greatest impact, such as education, health care, employment, social protection, food security and renewable energy.
Meanwhile, the efforts of national development banks and regional and multilateral development banks must be combined to finance major investments.
To support these efforts, the ability of these banks to lend three times in order for developing countries to obtain better means on capital on affordable conditions and in accordance with longer time.
The enhancement of the means of obtaining this capital should include redirect non -conditional reserve assets – or private withdrawal rights – to developing countries, preferably through multilateral development banks so that they have a double impact.
The private sector investments are essential to the same extent. Resources can be released by facilitating the financing provided by the private sector to support bank financing development projects and promote solutions that reduce the risk of exchange rate and associate between public and private financing more effectively.
The donors must meet at all stages their development promises.
Second, we must reform the global debt system. It is a unfair and disrupted system.
The current borrowing system is not sustainable and only has slight confidence from developing countries. Not surprisingly. The cost of debt service, which is a huge whirlpool that swallows development gains, is more than $ 1.4 trillion annually. Many governments are forced to spend more to pay debts than they spend on what are required together as basic sectors such as the health and education sectors.
The Seville Conference must result in concrete steps to reduce borrowing costs, and to facilitate the restructuring of the debt in a timely manner for the benefit of the heavy debt countries, and to prevent it from the occurrence of debt crises.
On the eve of the conference, a number of countries offered proposals to alleviate the burden of religion to developing countries. These proposals include facilitating temporary endowment to serve religion during emergency periods; And the creation of a unified record of debt registration to enhance transparency; Improving how to evaluate the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and credit -merits for risks in developing countries.
Finally, the Seville Conference must resulted in the sound of developing countries and enhancing their influence at the level of the international financial system in order to better meet their needs.
International financial institutions must reconcile their governance structures to enable developing countries to hear their voice and share more in managing the institutions that depend on them.
The world also needs a more equitable global tax system, a system formed by all governments, and not only the most rich and most influential countries.
And the establishment of a “club for borrowers” in which the two countries are healing to coordinate the follow -up approaches and learn from each other, it is another promising step towards correcting the imbalances in the balance of power.
The Seville conference is not a conference concerned with charitable work. Rather, it is a conference concerned with justice and building a future in which the countries are allowed for prosperity, construction, trading and achieving prosperity together. In our world, which is increasingly interconnected, it does not preach a future in which there are affordable parties and other non -existent parties except with more global security that will remain a burden that weighs the pace of all parties to progress.
By renewing commitment and work globally, the conference can unleash a new momentum that enables restoring a degree of confidence in international cooperation and achieving sustainable development for peoples and for the planet.
So leaders must work together during the conference in order for this rescue task to be successful.
* Secretary -General of the United Nations
