World leaders, senior government officials and high-level representatives from businesses, civil society and other sectors are participating at the 2023 Financing for Development (FfD) Forum which is taking place at UN Headquarters in New York.

The participants of the four-day forum are expected to urgently set in place concrete measures to scale up financing for the Sustainable Development Goals, the pathway to a more inclusive, prosperous and stable world.

The Forum will echo the call for an SDG Stimulus of 500 billion USD a year, launched by the UN Secretary-General in February 2023, to scale up affordable long-term financing for countries in need.

The aim of the event is to push forward policies to address global developmental issues, from crippling debt, to under-development, and food insecurity.

The Forum takes place at a time of unprecedented global challenges. The war in Ukraine, the climate emergency, the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and tightening financial conditions have upended the global economy and deepened the great finance divide between developing and developed countries and derailed progress on the SDGs.

If left unaddressed, the finance divide will translate into a lasting sustainable development divide, as emphasized by the 2023 financing for Sustainable Development Report, which will be presented at the Forum, according to the UN Economic Commission of Africa (ECA).

Fifty-two low- and middle-income developing economies are either in debt distress or at high risk of debt distress, accounting for more than 40 percent of the world’s poorest people.

Developing economies cannot fund progress on the SDGs if they are borrowing up to 14 percent while also paying more than 20 percent of revenue for debt servicing.

UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, said “One recent report on inequality found that since the pandemic, the richest one per cent of people around the world have captured nearly twice as much new wealth as the rest of the world combined.”

“Inequalities within some countries are regressing towards early 20th century levels – to a time before women were allowed to vote; and before widespread acceptance of the concept of social protection. This shames us all.” he added.

This year’s Forum is an opportunity to channel the resources in the right direction, while reinvigorating commitments to Official development assistance and climate finance.

“In the longer term, we will not solve today’s challenges by relying on the financial system that helped to cause them. The global financial architecture was created for a world that no longer exists. It cannot address the challenges faced today by developing countries,” said the UN Chief.

Established as a part of the Addis Abba Action Agenda, the ECOSOC FfD Forum is an annual intergovernmental event mandated to review the Addis Ababa Action Agenda and other financing for development outcomes to advance the implementation of the SDGs.

Source: Ethiopian News Agency