Will the Future UN Treaty Make the World’s Oldest Multinational System? – World Problems
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 30 (IPS) – While many world leaders attended the Future Conference of the United Nations—a high-level two-day event at UN headquarters in New York—it was aimed at addressing the world’s most pressing challenges of the 21st century. – agree that the aging international system needs to be modernized, not everyone agrees on how to get there.
“We will not succeed in overcoming our current challenges if we are not willing to change the structures of governance around the world that are rooted in the outcome of World War II and are not suitable for today’s world,” said Mia Mottley, the prime minister of Barbados. conference on September 22. “What the world needs now is a reset.”
For the countries that make up the global South—although not a monolith—the path to change begins with correcting the current international financial situation that has trapped developing countries in an unmanageable debt cycle. Still, there are doubts that the reform plan presented in the conference’s non-binding outcome document, the Pact for the Future, goes far enough to mobilize the political will needed for change.
Despite months of difficult negotiations and a last-minute amendment presented by Russia that was rejected, the agreement was adopted by consensus on the first day of the conference.
“The Pact for the Future created a very good structure, but it did not leave many instructions for the construction of the structure,” said Tim Hirschel-Burns, a policy consultant for the Boston University Global Development Policy Center.
With its 56 acts, this agreement, a 42-page document, addresses five areas of global concern: sustainable development and financing, international peace and security, digital cooperation, youth and future generations, and global governance. It also includes two separate annexes, the Global Digital Compact and the Declaration for Future Generations.
But while Hirschel-Burns described the language in the agreement as “weak” and “not very clear,” she told IPS that there is still room for optimism given that “the agreement was signed by heads of state representing the people of the world.” ” and therefore has a “really high authority” for action, he added. Notably, no leaders from the P5 countries—the United States, the United Kingdom, France, China and Russia—spoke at the conference.
One promising element of the agreement calls for the signatories to close the financing gap of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) – estimated at 4.2 trillion annually – in developing countries. Established in 2015, the SDGs serve as a blueprint to end many of the world’s challenges, including poverty, hunger and inequality, by 2030.
However, progress on the SDGs has stalled in countries that are deeply indebted and lack sustainable means of affordable financing. The most recent SDG report estimates that “only 17 percent of SDG targets are on track,” in some cases, with progress stalling or slowing.
Still, Hirschel-Burns told IPS, “Even if the Pact for the Future does not have a clear roadmap for dealing with unsustainable debt, the big results promised in the agreement will not happen without meaningful action on debt relief.”
When accessing financing, countries in the global South traditionally face much higher interest rates than their Western neighbors. According to a recent report by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), “developing regions—Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa—borrow at rates two to four times that of the United States and six to 12 times that of the United States.” times higher than in Germany.”
This trend has led developing countries to accumulate USD 365 billion abroadl debt—money owed to foreign investors, in 2022.” The report found that 3.3 billion people “live in countries that spend more on interest than on education or health.” That is nearly 40 percent of the world’s population of 8 million.
A separate 2023 report published by Debt Justice, a London-based organization that aims to end unfair credit practices, found that “low-income country debt payments in 2023 reached their highest level since 1998.” And foreign debt service “in 91 countries will be at least 16.3 percent of government revenue in 2023, rising to 16.7 percent in 2024, an increase of more than 150 percent since 2011.”
In addition to high interest rates and a lack of political will, however, there are other structural causes of high levels of debt in developing countries, says Iolanda Fresnillo, manager of policy and representation of the European Network on Debt and Development (EURODAD), as inappropriate. trade relations, technological dependence on China and the global North, and the impact of external shocks such as extreme weather events, epidemics and wars.
If countries that are already deep in debt do not have the tools to deal with the effects of hurricanes, earthquakes or changes in oil prices or other things, they have to borrow more, Fresnillo told IPS. Therefore, to pay off their growing debt, countries cut health and education costs and investments in climate change and mitigation, leaving them unprepared for the next major climate event. “We call it debt and bad weather,” he said.
It is worth noting that the countries of the global North emit pollutants that cause climate change, but the underdeveloped countries of the global South face the effects of the debt cycle.
“The international community is very determined to deal with this climate crisis,” said Ralph Gonsalves, prime minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, at the Summit on the Future on September 22. “Other than that, all of us here – we’re going to hell in a hand basket you know, and I know.”
Meanwhile, Fresnillo told IPS that before any international program or future plan can address the problem of debt restructuring, a “general framework” must be established. “Therefore, when we say that the creation of debts needs to be reformed, what we mean is that we need to create debts,” as there are no laws when developing countries are facing a problem that needs to restructure their debts.
“It’s crazy,” Fresnillo said. “If a company goes bankrupt, there are rules that the company must follow in order to fix that bankruptcy,” but that is not the case in other countries. “There is no justice because if that’s the case, the people of the country are the ones who bear the brunt.”
Follow @IPSNewsUNBureau
Follow IPS News UN Bureau on Instagram
© Inter Press Service (2024) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service
