The Civil Society FfD Group's reaction to the 2021 Financing for Development Forum

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This year, the ECOSOC Financing for Development Forum took place virtually from 12 and 15 April.

Eurodad, in coordination with our members and partners via the Civil Society Financing for Development Group, participated in multiple panels and side-events. Our hope? An ambitious and multilateral response to the deep health, economic and social crises that are particularly impacting countries and communities in the global south.

Specifically, we advocated for an agreement on a UN Summit on Financing for Development, which we believe to be key to advancing systemic and urgent reforms of the global financial architecture. As well as:

  • the establishment of a Sovereign Debt Workout Mechanism under the auspices of the UN that would comprehensively address unsustainable and illegitimate debt
  • a UN Tax Convention to comprehensively address tax havens, tax abuse by multinational corporations and other illicit financial flows through a truly universal, intergovernmental process at the UN, with broad rights holders’ participation
  • a moratorium on Investor-State-Dispute-Settlement (ISDS) cases, if these conflict with public policy objectives, including economic and health objectives, during the pandemic.

As civil society, we are deeply disappointed that the international community was not only incapable of advancing towards these actions, but also that they were only able to adopt an outcome document filled with rhetoric, zero action and sticking to business as usual.

This status quo threatens the wellbeing of billions of people and makes the possibility of realising the Sustainable Development Goals and responding to the expanding climate emergency more remote than ever.

Excerpt from the joint CSO response to the FfD Forum outcome document