Financing for Development Conference: last word from Seville
Last week, Bond and more than 20 of our members, travelled to Seville alongside government, UN, global civil society and business representatives for the Fourth International Financing for Development Conference (FfD4).
Expectations for the conference were low after negotiations concluded and the outcome document passed by consensus on 17 June in New York, two weeks prior to the conference starting.
This was the first Financing for Development conference where an outcome document was agreed before the Conference began, and civil society has been highly critical of the measures taken to reach consensus ahead of Seville. Negotiations moved behind closed doors early in the process, making it very difficult for civil society to fulfill its essential function of ensuring transparency, accountability and ambitious outcomes.
The impossible working conditions continued at the Seville Conference, which received significant backlash for inadequately including civil society. The main issues included initial restrictions in accessing the key negotiation spaces and limited civil society representation in the Conference’s official programme, particularly the so called ‘multi-stakeholder roundtables’, which initially excluded civil society representation. In the limited interventions civil society were eventually able to make from the floor, CSOs felt compelled to use their speaking time to call out the restrictions placed on civil society at the conference, detracting from the urgent policy debates we travelled to engage in.
The collective assessment from global civil society is that the conference outcome document, the Compromiso de Sevilla, falls significantly short of the level of ambition required to address the intersecting global challenges we currently face. Key proposals tabled by low- and middle-income countries, including the need for urgent and lasting debt reform, were significantly weakened in the final rounds of negotiations.
This was largely due to intervention from northern countries who doubled down on their efforts to uphold decision-making processes where they hold disproportionate power. While many member states presented the agreement as a win for “saving multilateralism”, it’s clear that the version of multilateralism being preserved skewers toward northern interests, and upholds the major decision making foras such as the G20, OECD, and IMF/World Bank, where rich countries wield outsized influence.
Although the outcome document of the conference offers some potential openings for progress, meaningful change will require robust and sustained follow-up. In many respects, the conference is only the beginning, and attention is now focused on how exactly the openings offered by the text can be operationalised as the fight for debt reform, the democratisation of multilateral institutions, climate and tax justice wages on.
The UK government was criticised for its notable lack of high-level representation at the Conference. While 50 countries sent their head of state, Minister Chapman represented the UK delegation, opening the UK to criticism that more senior leadership would have helped to convey more genuine development ambitions. The UK did not seem to have any formalised speaking slot on any of the roundtable discussions including those covering debt, tax, and revitalising international development cooperation.
In our reaction to the statement delivered by Minister Chapman at the Conference, Bond and members noted the UK’s offering centered heavily on private sector-oriented solutions, often at odds with wider conversations being had around democratising and reforming the global economic system. When talking about investment for climate and development agendas, lower-income countries present have been very clear that private finance investments need to be additional to and not a replacement for Official Development Assistance (ODA). And with a slashed ODA budget, the UK’s offering last week felt diminished.
More broadly, the presence of the private sector at FfD4 felt outsized. Six thousand private sector representatives attended FfD4, making up 40% of all attendees and signifying a concerning deepening of the a private finance first mentality, despite the limited demonstrable development impact of private finance over the last decade. Dominance of the narrative that development equals growth and bankable projects is very worrying as it undervalues the role of public goods to achieve thriving and sustainable economies, as well as a just global transition in the context of climate change. Moreover, growing emphasis on international private finance to almost substitute the decreasing ODA is opposite what LMICs are asking for – public grant development and climate finance which Global North countries owe. This shift is justified by the claims that “Partners from Africa […] want to move on from receiving aid from the UK”. However, it is not the concessional finance that is the issue but the way it has been given – mostly as a paternalistic plaster rather than a driver for deep, holistic and long term transformation and economic sovereignty.
Over 130 initiatives were launched at FfD4 claiming to turn Sevilla Commitment into action. However, there was very little detail shared on how Sevilla Platforms for Action (SPAs) will be funded and implemented and, more importantly, how aligned they are and whether they reflect the urgency and direction of urgent reforms.
UK supported or led SPAs on: SCALED (Scaling capital for sustainable development), Global Coalition to scale up pre-arranged financing reaching target by 2035 , FX EDGE: foreign private capital mobilisation and currency hedging initiative, public markets mobilisation for development and Debt Pause Clause Alliance. All of them have a strong City of London stake in it which raises a question if the UK’s future development finance offer is aligned with and driven by the greatest needs of LMICs or interests of the UK’s finance sector.
The UK has a real opportunity to get behind the Sevilla agreements to make international decision-making fair and stand in solidarity with the Majority World. We look forward to continuing work with Bond members and the UK government as we strive to operationalise the outcome document and collectively push towards transforming the global financial system to better serve people and planet.
Member’s perspectives from on the ground in Seville
Rachel Noble, Senior Policy Advisor, Women’s Economic Justice, Oxfam GB
For gender justice, Sevilla was a mixed bag. The negotiations and conference took place in the context of ongoing rollbacks of gender rights globally, with numerous countries fiercely opposing gendered language in the text. Despite this, a dedicated ‘gender paragraph’ survived, which includes positive commitments to redress women’s disproportionate unpaid care and domestic workloads through investments in the care economy, as well as to eliminate gender-based violence. Overall, however, the Compromiso falls far short of what is needed to meaningfully address gendered injustices perpetuated by the global financial architecture.
At the conference, feminist movements and gender justice advocates were out in force, with numerous side events and vibrant activism. However, gender remained glaringly absent from most of the other discussions, including the opening plenary, raising concerns about the supposed commitment to promote gender-responsive solutions across the FFD agenda. Sevilla also saw the launch of two special multistakeholder initiatives aimed at catalysing greater financing towards gender equality – one on investing in care systems, and one on investing in gender equality more broadly.
Whilst it’s encouraging the UK government has signed up to the care initiative, their private finance first approach, combined with their failure to support meaningful global action on debt and taxation, not to mention the aid cuts, directly undermine the public financing of public services that is urgently needed to achieve substantive gender equality, especially women facing intersecting forms of marginalisation. In her official statement, Minister Chapman stated the need to “put women and girls at the heart of everything that we do”. As well as backing a public financing first agenda, this also requires the UK to be a much bolder, louder and visible advocate for gender justice in spaces such as FFD4 as well as its implementation.
Gary Forster, CEO, Publish What You Fund
At FFD4 in Seville, the push to scale blended finance and private capital mobilisation rang out clearly not only from the investment banks but also from the donor governments. Yet behind the enthusiasm lies a critical concern: despite ambitions to raise hundreds of billions in development finance, these approaches continue to lack the fundamentals of development effectiveness – transparency, accountability, and demonstrated impact.
Much of this finance flows through the private sector arms of multilateral development banks (MDBs) and bilateral development finance institutions (DFIs). This form of finance is good for lots of things, but no one is expecting it to pay for the kind of things that traditional official development assistance (ODA) does such as vaccines, education, or humanitarian aid. As such it’s not really filling the gap resulting from the recent ODA cuts. The claim that private finance mobilisation is a substitute for concessional funding is not supported by evidence.
MDBs and DFIs report that they’ve mobilised approximately half a trillion dollars in private finance since FFD3 in Addis. Yet, despite significant public investment in mobilisation and blended deals, there is limited visibility on the actual costs to the public purse or the development impact achieved. The 2025 DFI Transparency Index, launched just before FFD4, showed that no private sector MDB – and only one bilateral DFI – consistently publishes impact results.
Contrast this with traditional ODA investments, such as those to Gavi, where independently verified results link donor contributions to outcomes – including, for example, the projection that FCDO’s funding alone will save hundreds of thousands of lives over five years.
We are not anti-private sector. These investments can bring real benefits in terms of jobs, tax receipts and vital infrastructure. We can also see the incentive (and arguable conflict of interest) for cash-strapped donors to be lured by private sector promises of multiplying financing and impact. But as it stands, to rely on blending and mobilisation as a replacement for ODA, or to use ODA to scale private finance without robust evidence or oversight, risks sacrificing effective, proven interventions in favour of opaque, unevaluated promises. There is also a risk that we hit financing targets without hitting impact ones. Of course – if we had more transparency on the investments of MDBs and DFIs we’d be able to understand these risks. But we don’t, so we can’t.
Jon Sward, Environment Project Manager, Bretton Woods Project
At FfD4, developing countries and civil society once again demanded reforms to the international financial architecture (IFA) to make it more just and equitable – and more fit for purpose in order to face the multiple, overlapping crises we face. This included calls to increase the Global South’s voice and vote at the international financial institutions, in addition to centreing discussions on much-needed tax and debt reform at the UN, where countries have more equal say in decision-making.
There was also a strong call for implementation of the Compromiso de Sevilla’s mandate for an IMF Special Drawing Rights ‘Playbook’, to reform SDRs’ role within the IFA – reflecting the need to address what Professor Jose Antonio Ocampo has called the international monetary ‘non-system’, where developing countries largely have to self-insure against economic or climate shocks.
The UK has an important role to play in ensuring that the language agreed in the Compromiso on IFA reform has the highest possible level of ambition in its implementation. In the midst of an intensifying climate crisis, steep ODA cuts, and a potential lost decade due to high debt servicing costs in many Global South countries, we need bold changes. The UK should establish coalitions of the willing that seek meaningful reforms at the World Bank and IMF, including ending the un-democratic Gentleman’s Agreement that – 80 years on – still dictates World Bank and IMF leadership selection, and should join allies to push for the IMF governance changes needed for an SDRs Playbook that delinks SDR allocations from the IMF quota system.
Mark Barrell, Director of Advocacy, CBM UK
FfD4 took place just two months after the Global Disability Summit 2025, where over 100 member states committed to the Amman-Berlin declaration of 15% of international development programmes pursuing disability inclusion as an implementation objective at country-level.
But with ODA falling, it is unclear how disability inclusion will be financed. FfD4 offered an opportunity to find a sustainable pathway to fund inclusive development and leave no one behind.
While the ‘Compromiso de Sevilla’ did contain some welcome references to people with disabilities in crucial areas like access to finance and economic opportunities, it was disappointing to see that disability inclusion was largely missing from the agenda. Of the 400 sessions, SPAs and side events, only one focused on disability.
With many low-income countries spending more on debt payments than on climate action, health, education, and social protection systems, it was also especially worrying that little action was taken on tackling the debt crisis. As public finances are stretched, people with disabilities and other marginalised groups will be among those worst affected, as debt repayments take priority over spending on initiatives that promote inclusion and accessibility.
The call therefore continues for a full democratisation of financial processes that ensures that people with disabilities are at the heart of establishing just, fair and fully inclusive global financial mechanisms.
Pablo Soriano Mena, Public Policy Manager, CAFOD (Catholic Agency for Overseas Development)
As a former UN delegate, representing a Global South country for nearly 8 years in New York, I knew what I’d signed up to heading to Seville. Having led the G77 negotiators through several annual FfD Forum Declarations in the past, I already knew this 4th Financing for Development Conference was not just about the declaration, nor the hundreds of side-events organised alongside. It was a chance for like-minded people to gather, under one roof, and have meaningful conversations, about much-needed change.
In this Jubilee Year for the Catholic church, CAFOD (Catholic Agency for Overseas Development) is placing a particular focus on the global debt crisis, where we believe relevant and “value-added” action can be achieved in the coming years, for the good of everyone. Looking back on the conference I was pleasantly surprised and am hopeful for the future, though I share the concerns about logistics and freedom of expression, which have already been addressed elsewhere.
A clear sign of the growing consensus that change is needed, was the worldwide coverage of the Jubilee Commission’s report on Debt. Written by over 30 world-leading economists at the request of Pope Francis, and presented at the Vatican just prior to FfD4, its common-sense and economically sound recommendations have been repeatedly quoted in mainstream as well as trade and faith press, and by many actors, from governments, to academics, the UN system and other civil society organisations.
One small step in the right direction, was a vital paragraph in the final text, encouraging the passing of legislation to limit holdouts by private creditors, and – most importantly – the initiating of an intergovernmental process at the UN to make recommendations to address debt sustainability. There’s a long way to go, but it’s a start.
Catherine Pettengell, Executive Director, Climate Action Network UK (CAN-UK)
Under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), countries most responsible for the causes of climate change and with the most financial capacity, are required to provide finance to those least responsible and most impacted. LMICs came to FFD4 directly from the mid-year UNFCCC negotiations session in Bonn (SB62) where their resounding message was that high income countries including the UK are simply not paying the climate debt they owe. But the UK only came to FFD4 with private sector first approaches, that don’t meet the needs of impacted communities.
FFD4 hosted an Informal Ministerial Roundtable Dialogue on Climate Finance for LDCs and SIDS where the messages were very clear:
- FFD4 host, the Government of Spain, stressed that climate action is an investment in stability and prosperity, and the importance of multilateralism, solidarity, and consensus.
- The Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) called out the weakness of the new global climate finance goal (NCQG) agreed last year, stating that the question of provision of climate finance had not been answered yet, and asking, “will these calls be urgently answered”? They called for a substantial provision of grant finance, particularly for adaptation and for loss and damage, and prioritisation of the tripling finance to the vital UN climate funds including the Adaptation Fund and the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage.
- LDCs posed three key questions to the Ministers: how do we ensure climate finance reaches LDCs and SIDS? How do we ensure adaptation finance increases? How do we ensure those least responsible are cushioned from paying the highest costs? They called for the new Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage to be fast, fair, and flexible, and closed by stating “we cannot build resilience on high interest loans or failed promises.”
- Simon Steil, Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, stressed that the NCQG must be “just the beginning”, lessons must be learnt from the “mistakes” of the previous goal on “delivery and transparency”, that there is a need for finance “that meets people where they are” that is not about financial instruments but “about people”. “The climate crisis isn’t waiting; finance must keep pace.”
In response, the UK criticised the fragmented nature of the climate finance system, rather than the cuts made to financing it (including from the UK); promoted attracting private finance as the solution to a lack of adaptation finance, despite evidence that this has only a limited role in meeting adaptation needs; and promoted the work of UK industry experts on currency markets and exchange rate risks.
Minister Chapman came to FFD4 talking about a new chapter in how we finance development, but was essentially empty-handed. Greater focus is needed on what works for communities on the frontline of the climate crisis, and the fair ways that we can increase public spending on climate action at home and overseas. Other countries did come with options to generate the new and additional public finance that is urgently needed to address climate change, with President of France Emmanuel Macron at FFD4 to launch a new aviation solidarity coalition of eight countries on premium flyers (first- and business- class tickets, and private jets). Cuts to public climate finance are harmful and unnecessary, and we call on this government to implement fair polluter pays measures that can raise billions a year for climate action without unfairly costing UK households.
