The Fourth United Nations Conference on Financing for Development that took place in Sevilla, Spain, in mid-2025 marked a significant milestone in the agenda set from Monterrey in 2002 to Addis Ababa in 2015. The Compromiso de Sevilla (the Sevilla Commitment, referred to below as the Commitment) sets a comprehensive agenda that, if fully implemented, would represent a major advance in global cooperation. Its main limitation is the reluctance of the United States to endorse what is otherwise a consensus document. This essay highlights the Commitment’s significant advances, but also some of the important gaps. The reflections also consider the recommendations of the International Commission of Experts on Financing for Development (ICE) that I was privileged to chair.
Some of the Commitment’s major strengths lie in its objectives and principles. It reaffirms the pledge to strengthen international cooperation, global solidarity, and the implementation of Agenda 2030 and its Sustainable Development Goals. It sets as its major goal to enhance the financial support for developing countries to finance their economic, social and environmental needs, recognizing in this regard the special challenges faced by vulnerable states. These statements are noteworthy at a time of controversies about multilateralism and the roles of the United Nations.
Domestic and International Commitments to Development Finance
The Commitment starts by emphasizes the need to strengthen the domestic public resources of developing countries. To this end, countries must create transparency and accountability in fiscal systems, notably on spending, as well as progressive tax systems and effective taxation of natural resources. To support these processes, the Commitment requests increased international support for capacity building, including for subnational finance. It also underscores the need to strengthen international tax cooperation, particularly through the UN Framework Convention being negotiated, which should include fair taxation of multinationals in the countries where their activities take place, and the development of beneficial ownership information registries and exchange of information among them. The Commitment also emphasizes the need to combat illicit financial flows, including with the effective implementation and enforcement of existing obligations under the UN Convention against Corruption, as well as international cooperation in asset recovery and it calls for a special meeting on financial integrity of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).
Development finance is arguably the area of the Commitment’s greatest advance. This includes, first of all, an issue raised in the section on domestic public resources: exploiting the potential of national development banks. It also underscores the need to expand the activities of the multilateral development banks (MDBs), supporting in this regard the G20 Capital Adequacy Framework, which would imply tripling the level of their financing. It encourages MDBs to continue to develop innovative measures, including hybrid capital, private co-investment and guarantee platforms. It also asks for concessional windows, especially from IDA, as well as lending with longer maturities, grace periods, lower interest rates, and broader use of the domestic currencies of the borrowing countries. It supports the need to protect ecosystems, including agreements on climate change and biodiversity and the corresponding environmental funds. And it welcomes the decision of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to approve the use of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) to finance development objectives, though preserving the reserve character of these assets.
The Commitment acknowledges that the major challenge in development cooperation is declining Official Development Assistance (ODA). It reaffirms, however, the longstanding UN target of 0.7% of Gross National Income of the developed countries, and 0.15-0.2% for Least Developed Countries. It also points out that South-South is a complement, not a substitute for North-South cooperation, and recognizes the role of triangular cooperation.
Increase the Global South voice in Bretton Wood Institutions
The Commitment advances important proposals for the governance of the Bretton Woods institutions –the World Bank and IMF. To increase the voice and representation of developing countries, it proposes changes in quota/capital shares, including increased basic votes. as well as to increase the size of the executive boards by allowing for more members from the developing world. To counter the gentleman’s agreement of always giving World Bank leadership to a US candidate and IMF leadership to a European candidate, the Commitment emphasizes the need for open election of the heads of these institutions. The Commitment also advocates for strong regional and cross-regional financial arrangements, a goal that has been achieved for the system of MDBs but not for international monetary cooperation.
Private sector engagement needed to support sustainable development
The Commitment underscores private sector engagement to support sustainable development. This includes promoting strong domestic banking systems and capital markets –though with no specific reference to the domestic bond markets recommended by ICE. Such developments should include appropriate financing for small firms. In relation to the role of national development banks, they should involve equity and equity-like instruments, guarantees and securitization, and mechanisms to manage foreign exchange risks. Private firms should integrate sustainability into their decision making and, although financial regulations in this area should be country-specific, it proposes that they should aim at their international interoperability.
The Sevilla Commitment reaffirms critical role of the World Trade Organization
The international trade chapter emphasizes revitalizing WTO, including a fully and well-functioning dispute settlement system. These statements are essential in the midst of the current trade war generated by the US tariff policy, and the fact that the WTO dispute settlement mechanism has not been operational since 2019 due to the fact that the US has not allowed the nomination of members of its appellate body. The proposals also underscore the need for special and differential treatment for low-income countries, which must be precise and operational. It also asks for policies to increase the value added of developing countries’ commodity exports.
Science, technology and innovation
On science, technology and innovation, the Commitment urges the Bank for International Settlements, the IMF and other relevant institutions to support developing countries in expanding their digital financial services and to upgrading their payments infrastructure. At the same time, it asks for regulation of digital markets, to accelerate transfer of environmentally sound technologies and, more broadly, to support technology transfer and capacity building for their technological research and innovation systems. It also recognizes the important role of intellectual property regimes, such as the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) but, surprisingly, does not recognize the need to enhance the flexibilities of this system in times of crises, as it was done during the HIV-AIDs pandemic but surprisingly not during the COVID one.
Weaknesses in relation to international monetary cooperation
Three areas show some weaknesses in the Commitment: in international monetary cooperation, the management of the debt crisis currently faced by a large number of developing countries, and some institutional issues. In relation to the first issue, it correctly underscores the need to strengthen global macroeconomic coordination and policy coherence, to increase IMF quota to guarantee sufficient resources, to review the Fund’s facilities, including precautionary facilities, and backs its recent review of its surcharge policy. However, there is no discussion of the need to manage the procyclical pattern of private capital flows that emerging and developing countries face, and therefore the need to create an Emerging Market Fund that would allow the IMF to intervene in the bond markets of these countries during crises, as proposed by the ICE, and to launch the IMF currency swap arrangement that has been proposed in recent years. It supports the role of the Financial Stability Board in issuing rules to manage the stability risks of non-bank financial institutions, and climate stress testing in financial regulation and supervision, but no global regulation rules on financial risks associated to climate events issued by the Board.
Strengths and weakness of proposals on debt
On debt issues, the Commitment endorses important standards but offers weak mechanisms to enforce them. These standards include larger financing by official creditors in the domestic currencies of borrowing countries and state-contingent clauses in official lending to suspend debt service during crises, disasters and shocks, that should also be used in private lending. It also embraces legislation to limit holdouts and the adoption of collective action clauses, and supports the creation of a global debt registry managed by the World Bank and refining the debt sustainability assessments done by this institution and the IMF.
However, although supporting working toward debt restructurings that are timely, orderly, effective and negotiated in good faith, it only proposes strengthening the G20 Common Framework, which has had a poor track record. The best proposal, according to ICE, is to create a permanent institutional mechanism to manage the restructuring of sovereign debts, which could operate in the United Nations or the IMF with the proviso that, in the latter case, the decisions of the relevant institutional body would be independent of the IMF Executive Board and Board of Governors.
The Commitment also suggests that credit rating agencies should refine their methodologies and lengthen time horizons for their credit analysis, but that their independence should be respected, rather than setting global regulations for them, as proposed by ICE. On a positive note, it proposes convening a working group with the IMF and the World Bank to design guiding principles on responsible sovereign borrowing and lending. The Sevilla Platform for Action approved during the Conference also proposes a global hub for debt swaps for development managed by the World Bank, and a Borrowers’ Forum run by UNCTAD to facilitate exchanges of knowledge and experience on debt management, debt restructuring and other emerging issues.
No proposal for governance for international tax cooperation
On institutional issues, the Commitment does not make a proposal for an appropriate system of governance for international tax cooperation. The best alternative, according to ICE, is the transformation of the UN Committee of Experts on International Cooperation in Tax Matters into an intergovernmental organ, or to create a new United Nations institution in charge of such cooperation. Also, beyond the national beneficial ownership information registries and exchange of information among them proposed by the Commitment, ICE considers that a Global Asset Registry should be created, also based on beneficial ownership information.
Follow-up and implementation of the Sevilla Commitment are complex
The follow-up to these commitments will be a complex task. It will involve the 130 Sevilla Platform for Action initiatives that countries and other stakeholders agreed to implement the agreement. Timely, reliable and disaggregated data would also be essential, which should be coordinated by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs. The Commitment also asks for the Inter-Agency Task Force on Financing for Development to continue to report annually on progress in implementing the financing for development outcomes, a process that has worked well over the past decade, and that ECOSOC should continue to hold the annual high-level meeting with the Bretton Woods Institutions.
Going forward, it also suggests that ECOSOC should discuss the global financing framework on an annual basis, and different action areas of the financing for development process in a biennial review cycle. Equally, it proposes to revitalize the Development Cooperation Forum (established in 2007), taking into account other coordination mechanisms, including the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation, coordinated by OECD and UNDP, and OECD’s Development Assistance Committee. It is also essential that the MDBs and other public development banks work as a system, including through the strengthened cooperation among the MDBs, which could be supported by the International Development Finance Club of the French Development Agency. Finally, the Commitment also proposes regional follow-up processes, as part of the regional forums on sustainable development led by the UN regional commissions.
About the author:
José Antonio Ocampo is Professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, and chair of the Independent Commission of Experts on Financing for Development that was convened to provide recommendations for the Conference.
The views and opinions expressed in this think-piece are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of SIPA or Columbia University.
Photo Credit: The image was made with ChatGPT.