The first Financing for Development Conference took place in 2002, and brought all UN member states together with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation for the first time. It resulted in the Monterrey Consensus - a blueprint for finance to support the development commitments and aspirations of the international community.

The finance-development nexus has changed considerably in the two decades since, with FfD4 taking place at a time of complex and interconnected crises. The Covid-19 crisis came with a jump in the number of people living in extreme poverty. By 2022, 3.3 billion people lived in countries that spent more to service their debts than on education and health. Austerity measures in countries in default or on the brink of it, have further undermined the ability of their peoples to access basic goods and services. Public sector cuts have devastating impacts on women in particular. Climate chaos and environmental degradation has added additional pressure to infrastructure and livelihoods. It has increased expenditures for countries already borrowing at unfairly high interest rates even as the cost of their debt has risen because of inflation control measures in the global north; food and energy prices increases in the aftermath of the Russian war in Ukraine; and economies weakened by pandemic-control measures. 

Emergency interventions like the Debt Service Suspension Initiative (DSSI), the creation of a Resilience and Sustainability Trust, the issuance of IMF Special Drawing Rights of the value of US$650 billion, the Common Framework for Debt Treatments and the Debt Round Tables have provided some relief. However, the continued structural weaknesses and inequalities in international financial architecture have caused all measures to fall short of what would be needed to tackle the current perma-poly-crisis. Geopolitical tensions and divisions have paralysed the Bretton Woods Institutions and the G20, promoted as the preferable and efficient spaces to deal with these issues. 

On the other hand, thanks to the momentum created at the third Financing for Development Conference in Addis Ababa in 2015 and most importantly, the leadership of the Africa Group at the UN, negotiations for a UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation successfully started in 2024. It is a historic landmark, shifting the locus of power and decision-making on an essential pillar of global economic governance to the UN. It has proven that the United Nations can provide the leadership and space for the international community to enter into constructive dialogue in a tension-fraught world.

FfD4 is therefore not just a beacon of hope to uphold the spirit of Monterrey. Its success can also serve to solve some of the deepest challenges facing international financial architecture reform efforts.