Development Finance & Tax Justice - Archive

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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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 [...]

By Bodo Ellmers

The recent 2023 Annual Meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Marrakesh received a lot of attention. It was only the second time that the two Bretton Woods Institutions met in Africa – the continent that is most dependent on their loans. Africa is also perhaps the continent that has suffered most from the policy conditionality and structural adjustment programmes associated with these loans. It was fitting then that World Bank reform [...]

The World Bank is considered to be the most important multilateral development bank (MDB). Since it was founded in 1944 at the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference to finance the reconstruction of war-torn Europe, it has reinvented itself several times. The most significant change was the transformation from a reconstruction bank to a development bank. Today, the World Bank finances exclusively in countries of the global South, while continuing to be controlled by the economic powers of the global [...]

This expert discussion takes place as part of the Civil Society Policy Forum at the joint Annual Meetings of International Monetary Fund and World Bank Group in Marrakesh (Morocco). 

The objective is to discuss debt architecture reforms that are needed to address the new wave of debt crises, and how to take these reforms forward at the major multilateral institution-building opportunities that are upcoming.

Global Policy Forum Europe is co-organizing with a large coalition of debt specialist organisations and CSO [...]

A key theme for the High-Level Political Forum (HLPF), 10-20 July 2023, was the issue of the current international financial architecture (IFA) that disproportionality disservices low and middle-income countries.

Reforms to IFA, tackling debt difficulties for vulnerable countries, the SDG Stimulus, and references to SDG Summit, Summit of the Future and Summit for a New Global Financing Pact were highlighted by various Member States and other stakeholders at the HLPF and at the Summit for a New Global Financing Pact [...]

By Bodo Ellmers

Countries around the world continue to lose almost US$ 500 billion every year to tax dodging and global tax abuse. At the request of United Nations Member States, the UN Secretary-General has now presented his report on “Promotion of inclusive and effective international tax cooperation at the United Nations”. The report recommends a major upgrade of the international tax architecture. In the best case, the gaping governance hole created by the absence of fully inclusive [...]

By Bodo Ellmers

The mid-term review of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) implementation looks sobering. When heads of state meet at the United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York on 18 and 19 September for the SDG Summit, the central topic will be how to give the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development new impetus for the second half of the 15-year term. A key proposal for refocusing SDG implementation is the SDG Stimulus Package, which was unveiled by the [...]

By Bodo Ellmers

The much-hyped Summit for a New Global Financing Pact took place in Paris during the third week of June. Convened by French President Macron in loose cooperation with Mia Mottley – the Prime Minister of Barbados and the mother of the “Bridgetown Initiative to reform the International Financial Architecture” – the objective was to find new ways to fill the mounting gaps in cross-border development and climate finance.

In the run up to the Summit, two other [...]

By Bodo Ellmers

A fundamental reform of the international financial architecture is crucial for effective development financing and the fight against climate change. This is one of the greatest challenges of multilateralism.

Almost 80 years after the Bretton Woods system emerged from the catastrophe of World War II, the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General has taken up the issue and made a wide range of reform proposals in a recent policy brief. These include the modernization of existing institutions, such [...]

The United Nations Financing for Development Forum 2023, which was recently held over four days in New York, was dominated by multiple crises. Setbacks to the 2030 Agenda have increased political pressure to make substan­tial progress on financing for development. The chapters in the outcome document on taxation and debt issues were particularly vigorously negotiated. African countries in particular want to further strengthen the UN’s work on taxation. With the escalating debt crisis, it is also becoming more important [...]

By Bodo Ellmers

In November 2023, the UN passed a landmark resolution on international tax cooperation. It opens an intergovernmental negotiation process that many hope will lead to a UN tax convention of universal application. The special session of the UN Economic and Social Council on March 31, 2023, was the first diplomatic probing of the negotiating groups.   

Tax cooperation is perhaps the most poorly regulated area of global economic governance. A specialized International Tax Organization is as non-existent [...]

By Bodo Ellmers

In the first week of March, the international community will gather for the 5th UN Conference on the Least Developed Countries (LDC5) in Doha. The conference takes place in the context of multiple crises that have hit LDCs far harder than richer and more resilient countries. It coincides with the SDG midterm, and by definition, no group of countries is as far from SDG achievement as LDCs. The conference presents a significant opportunity to mobilize more [...]

By Bodo Ellmers

Mia Mottley, the Prime Minister of Barbados, presented a comprehensive approach to development finance last summer. Developed in collaboration with the United Nations, the Bridgetown Initiative is a three-step plan to mobilize short-term liquidity for crisis response and long-term funding for sustainable development. Originally unveiled in the run-up to the UN climate summit in Sharm El Sheikh, it was not a flash in the pan, but is now being taken up by French President Macron as a [...]

As Agenda 2030 passes its mid-way point, ambitious reforms will be required during its second phase if the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are still to be achieved. A lack of financial resources is one of the main reasons why their implementation has fallen so far behind. The UN’s latest Financing for Sustainable Development Report has identified the “financial divide”, i.e. the lack of access to funds at favourable interest rates for countries of the Global South, as a key problem [...]

Since the adoption of the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development, development finance has operated under conditions of low interest rates and high liquidity in global financial markets. This has changed with the recent turnaround in interest rates. This briefing paper describes the current trends, analyzes the implications for financing sustainable development in the Global South, and formulates policy recommendations on how countries in the Global South and their financing partners in the North can respond to the interest rate increases.

This GPW Round Up #1, entitled “The Debt Crisis and Illicit Financial Flows” looks at the UN Secretary-General’s proposals in his report Our Common Agenda to address this crisis, starting with a Biennial Summit between the G20, ECOSOC and IFIs, and asks “Does Our Common Agenda provide solutions?”

At a time when Africa has lost US$ 1 trillion over 50 years to IFFs, more than it has received in development assistance, the Round Up features Member State statements [...]

By Bodo Ellmers

The implementation of the 2030 Agenda has fallen massively behind. Insufficient development finance is a major reason for this, as the slowly subsiding COVID-19 crisis had led to a simultaneous collapse of all sources of finance. This year's UN High Level Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) should have been dedicated to building back better after the crisis. The title did retain the "building back better." De facto, however, the HLPF was overshadowed by a new wave of [...]

By Bodo Ellmers

The G7 summit in Elmau was the highlight of the German G7 presidency in 2022. Contrary to the original intentions of the German government, security policy and geostrategy dominated the process, due to the conflict in Eastern Europe. By contrast, the G7 largely abandoned its claim to coordinate global economic issues. Financial commitments to third countries were made primarily in the areas of food and infrastructure. However, the former do not seem commensurate with the scale of [...]