Explainer: What is the UN's development conference in Seville, and what can it achieve?
LONDON, June 26 (Reuters) - Global leaders will kick off the once-a-decade Conference on Financing for Development (FFD4) in Seville, Spain, on Monday, which aims to improve the world's aid and financial architecture.
Ambitious reforms to everything from global tax to climate-focused funding are on the agenda.
What is the event, who will attend, and what can it achieve?
The fourth such conference brings together political, financial and trade leaders to formulate a coherent approach to issues bedevilling global development - from aid to trade to debt.
Leaders will formally adopt a 38-page document, opens new tab - dubbed the "Seville Commitment" - which was painstakingly negotiated and agreed prior to the event. It will be a blueprint for development financing for the coming decade, but it is a political commitment, rather than a legally binding agreement.
The first FFD's "Monterrey Consensus" in 2002 produced targets for rich countries to spend 0.7% of gross national product on official development assistance and supported the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative, which eventually yielded billions in debt relief.
The last FFD, in Addis Ababa in 2015, produced the 17 sustainable development goals that have guided multilateral funding for the past decade, and focused attention on strengthening taxation and stemming illicit financial flows.
This year's backdrop is particularly challenging, with widespread aid cuts across the rich world - and climate change scepticism from U.S. President Donald Trump.
The Seville Commitment focuses on reforms to help poor nations adapt to climate crises, such as debt swaps, natural disasters debt pause clauses and an exploration of "global solidarity levies", which could tax highly polluting activities - or the super-rich - to finance sustainable development.
It also targets progress towards better debt restructuring frameworks and innovations to boost funding, such as multilateral development banks' efforts to leverage special drawing rights.
Leaders will also launch the Seville Platform for Action, which would form alliances to expedite concrete progress on the goals.
UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed said on Wednesday that more than 70 heads of state and government would attend. They include French President Emmanuel Macron, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa - this year's G20 chair - and sustainable finance rock stars such as Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley.
World Bank President Ajay Banga is expected, along with development bank chiefs, the Gates Foundation and other campaign groups.
Notably absent, however, is the United States, which withdrew during negotiations, opens new tab after it tried, unsuccessfully, to strip climate, sustainability and gender equality from the Seville Commitment.
The U.S. absence, and continued discord over the approach to certain other issues, such as debt, could hobble the event's impact.
Trump's opposition to goals such as global tax rule changes could make success on that subject tougher.
Meanwhile, disagreements between African leaders and key lending nations, such as China, over a debt convention also bedevil substantive progress.
But sources said the event could be more successful without U.S. attendees trying to water down objectives, and there is a strong consensus that the world must take urgent action on issues such as climate adaptation funding.
The U.N. pegs the global financing gap for sustainable development at a whopping $4 trillion.
Multilateral lenders are working to boost funding - but the cash they have been able to mobilise thus far is in the hundreds of billions, not trillions.
At the same time, the average interest costs for developing countries as a share of tax revenues nearly doubled since 2014. China's lending to Africa has turned net negative as loan repayments come due, and an estimated 3.3 billion people - and more than half of Africans - live in countries that spend more on debt than health.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
In Tehran, we're asking: what is this madness achieving for the people of Iran, Israel or the US?
On the morning after the 12th day of Israel's war on Iran, those of us who had managed to get some sleep after Monday night's heavy strikes in the heart of the city woke to text messages saying there was a ceasefire. It turned out this was a three-way win, with all the parties congratulating themselves as the victors. Donald Trump managed to fly his B-2s all the way from Missouri without any help. No doubt it was a beautiful bombing. It hit the last target – the behemoth Fordow, deep in the mountains. Benjamin Netanyahu is congratulating himself too, for finally scratching his three-decade itch by striking Iran's nuclear programme, and assassinating top Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps commanders. Most of all, Netanyahu managed to draw Trump, who had promised no more wars, into the fray. The hardline followers of the Islamic republic are also congratulating themselves on their successful strikes against Israel. The strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities brought fear of contamination throughout the week. Our social media were filled with an updated Iranian version of the duck-and-cover campaign from cold war America. In case of exposure to radiation, get inside, we were told, change your clothes, take a shower and tape the windows. Not a single siren has sounded: apparently, we don't have them any more. Those who remember the Iraq-Iran war say there used to be sirens. Nor do we have shelters like Israelis do. Considering we have been at loggerheads with Israel for decades now, why haven't they built some? For the past 12 days we have had a crash course in the sounds of war. The boom of a rocket hitting its target, the sharp ratatat of the ground-to-air defence. You don't see the missiles that blow up, but you see the red dots of the defences when they start at night. The first days were a blur. The big emotional freeze. The frenzy to gather documents and essentials for a speedy departure. The calculus of doom: how much water do I need? How many T-shirts should I pack? When should I leave? How far should I go? What is their scenario for us – Iraq or Afghanistan? Someone said Libya. When my VPN manages to connect me to X, the algorithm suggests a post by a man saying in Hebrew that there is no country called Iran. What?! He has coloured the map of Iran into segments. This is Turkmenistan, this is Balochistan, this is Azerbaijan, here in the south are the Arabs and in the middle are some Persians. How dare he? We are one of the oldest nations in the world. We didn't invade this land – we are not recent immigrants. We are actually from here. We have survived Alexander of Macedonia's pyromania, we have survived Genghis Khan's bloodbath and a brutal Arab invasion, and we are still here. We are the inheritors of the great poets Ferdowsi, Rumi and Hafez, who give us our shared identity even though we speak many languages. I am sure I was not the only Iranian finding solace in Hafez this past week. Now that we have had a moment to breathe, the interminable question of these past few days, 'what will happen now?', is about the long term. Over the past 46 years Iranians have eroded the strict ideology that was imposed on them in order to live a modern life. We have been hoping since 2015 and the signing of the joint comprehensive plan of action for the lifting of sanctions so we could reconnect to the world and fix our corrupted economy. Trump F-worded that chance. Our young people have stood up to the repressive rules that governed their personal lives; some died for it. Now, thanks to Israel and its benevolent bombs, the extreme sections of society, the ideologues who were marginalised, will be newly invigorated by conflict. We are a country at war now. The streets are full of checkpoints. I passed several driving in Tehran the other night. They are courteous now, but we recognise them from the days of protest. Will the Islamic republic forget these past 12 days? Can Netanyahu be contained by Trump? Will Israel and Iran become friends now? We are preparing for a wake in my family. We buried my stepmother in the cemetery south of Tehran three days ago. The road to the cemetery, usually packed with traffic, was almost empty. Tehran empty of its unbearable traffic and noise is suddenly so beautiful. I have never loved this city as much as I do now. The road to the cemetery will now be the route so many families will take to bury their dead. Along the way, I wonder how many Palestinians were killed while the eyes of the world were on us. We have had an exceptionally long and sublime spring in Tehran this year. The geraniums on my porch are still in bloom. It looks like the persimmon tree will have more fruit than any other year. If the relief holds, the questions that kept popping up during the attacks and were waved aside as pointless in an existential crisis will loom large. And the main one will be: what did this madness achieve for the people of Iran, Israel or the US? I mean the people, not the victors. Haleh Anvari is a writer and artist in Tehran
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Trump's F-bomb broke another presidential taboo - but here's why Americans don't give a you-know-what
Ever had one of those days when you're just, like, 'F%#K!!!'? The word that has become part of most Americans' vocabulary is popping up in contexts where swearing used to be verboten. That includes the White House lawn on Tuesday where Donald Trump dropped an F-bomb that echoed around the world. 'We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don't know what the f**k they're doing, the president said about Iran and Israel, venting his frustration with both countries for bombing each other in the hours after he prematurely announced a ceasefire in their 12-day war. Although Trump is the first U.S. president to say 'f**k' to reporters on live TV, he has plenty of company among public figures – including comedians, rappers, and social media influencers – who have normalized the word. Joy Reid and Charles Barkley recently made headlines for saying the word on live news and sports broadcasts. Even Paris Hilton's two-year-old son, Phoenix went viral for repeating it several times in a home video. In a nation bitterly divided by politics, rattled by Trump's much-debated decision to bomb Iranian nuclear sites last weekend, and sweating through this week's heatwave, one linguistic expert says it's time to stop clutching our pearls over language that has become common parlance. Why, he asks, should we feign surprise over politicians and other public figures uttering a word that, for more than 20 years now, polls have found most Americans use in conversation? '"F**k" is here to stay,' Professor Timothy Jay, who has researched the science of swearing for more than 40 years, tells 'To pretend otherwise seems out of touch with reality.' WHERE THE F%#K DID IT COME FROM? Etymologists are quick to debunk a popular myth that the f-word derives from a British royal law under which commoners needed to post a 'F.*.*.K.' sign – an acronym for 'Fornication Under Consent of the King' – on their doors in order to have sex. Although there is some disagreement in academic circles, most scholars believe the word instead has roots in Germanic languages. The German 'ficken' and the Dutch 'fokken' mean to copulate and to breed, respectively. The word is believed to have first appeared in English between the 14th and 15th centuries to mean sexual intercourse, and to have morphed into a derogatory synonym for, say, 'screw' as both a noun and a verb in the 16th century. It took on taboo status in the late 1800s when it came to connote casual sex frowned upon in the buttoned-up, morally strict Victorian Era. And it gained linguistic legitimacy in 1966 when Penguin became the first publisher to include it in an English dictionary. Literally and figuratively a four-letter-word, f**k can be described both as a curse, meaning an expression wishing violence or harm on someone, and as a swear word, one considered profane or offensive to some people. Meanwhile, it has over the decades made its way into all kinds of acronyms. Military terms such as SNAFU (Situation Normal: All F**ked Up) and FUBAR (F**ked Up Beyond All Recognition), for example, were coined among soldiers in World War II. And the letter 'f' has become a common component in internet shorthand such as the faux directive 'STFU' for 'shut the f**k up,' the exclamation 'OMFG' for 'oh my f**king god,' and perhaps the two most existential questions put forth by English-language texters – 'WTF?' meaning 'what the f**k?' and 'WTAF?' meaning 'what the actual f***?' for emphasis. Although moralists have come up with alternatives – effing, farking, flipping, fracking, freaking, frigging, fricking and fudge – f-word purists say those words don't scratch the same itch as the original. A century ago, the word f**k, words for female body parts, along with anti-religious words like damn, hell, god, and Jesus, were considered the most indecent words of all. Today, studies show that, at least in the U.S., the f-word ranks behind slurs for racial, ethnic, religious, and sexual identity groups in terms of offensiveness. 'Swear words change over time,' says Jay, 75, a professor emeritus of psychology at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. 'When I was in high school, we had dress codes and acceptable ways of eating and acting in public that most people now don't worry about anymore.' Grammarians note that the f-word has taken on an especially flexible role in the English language, functioning not only as a transitive and intransitive verb, but also as a noun, adjective, adverb, and interjection. A celebrated testament of its many uses and meanings – and also of its expressiveness and, some might say, poetry – came in the fourth episode of the first season of HBO's The Wire, considered one of the greatest scenes in television history. PRESIDENTIAL PROFANITY Colorful language is nothing new in politics, including among presidents. Andrew Jackson had a parrot who reportedly repeated his swear words during his 1845 funeral service. Harry Truman once referred to General Douglas MacArthur as 'a dumb son of a b***h.' Lyndon Johnson – remembered as by far the country's most vulgar commander-in-chief – once referred to his wife, Lady Bird, as 'the best piece of a** I ever had.' Johnson's successor, Richard Nixon was a regular user of racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic slurs. Tricky Dick became notorious for recording nearly every conversation he had in office. Once those recordings were made public and transcribed, they were filled with expletive-deleted redactions. In a precursor to Trump's comments on Tuesday, Jimmy Carter was reported to have said, 'F**k the Shah' in response to pressure to allow the deposed Iranian leader into the U.S. His successor, Ronald Reagan, famously pounded his fist in anger at Canada's prime minister, saying, 'God damn it, Pierre.' This century, George W. Bush described New York Times reporter Adam Clymer as 'a major a**h**e.' His vice president, Dick Cheney, told Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy to 'Go f**k yourself' on the same day in 2004 that the Senate passed the Defense of Decency Act. Barack Obama described Kanye West as a 'jackass' and Joe Biden was caught on a hot mic calling Fox News reporter Peter Doocy 'a stupid son of a b***h.' Trump became the first president to use the f-word on television in 2020 when preparing to speak to the nation from the Oval Office about the country's response to the coronavirus pandemic. 'Oh f**k,' he said in a hot mic when realizing he had a pen mark on his shirt. C-SPAN inadvertently included the comment in its livestream, but edited it out after. Vulgarity has always been a signature part of Trump's schtick. He infamously referred to Haiti and African nations as 'sh**hole countries.' He simulated performing oral sex on a malfunctioning microphone at a pre-election rally in November 2024. And his first election in 2016 was nearly tanked by a leaked recording of his conversation with Access Hollywood host Billy Bush about pushing himself on beautiful women. 'I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait. And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab 'em by the p***y.' POWER, PAIN, AND PROFANITY Coarse language can serve several different purposes, says Jay, the swearing expert. One is harassment, discrimination and abuse, as he categorizes Trump's 'p***y' comment. He describes the president as a 'pejorative swearer' and 'master at name-calling and insulting.' 'He didn't pioneer bullying. But he has certainly furthered the use of purposely offensive language in our country. That's the political moment we're in, and it's too damn bad,' he says. Similarly, he adds, swearing can be a mark of power – 'a luxury among people unafraid of being fired for doing it.' He notes that Americans at the top of professional and cultural hierarchies can say what they want with impunity, while people at the bottom don't enjoy the same latitude. 'Loose speech can be a sign of wielding power,' he says. Although swearing can be a mark of fluency with language and a tool to emphasize a point, it also, conversely, can be indicative of what he calls impoverished or lazy language. 'People with poor vocabularies tend to swear a lot,' he says. Some scientists say swearing may actually be good for you. Jay, for his part, lauds it as a form of self defense that's far safer than shooting guns or throwing punches. 'In my research, some people said that expressing anger and frustration at people abusing them makes them feel better,' he says. Other experts see swearing as a form of catharsis, a harmless emotional response that lets off steam and lowers cortisol levels. British psychologist Richard Stevens argues that swearing increases one's tolerance for pain. And in his book, 'The F-Word,' writer and slang expert Jesse Sheidlower asserts: 'F**k, is one of the few words in the English language with true medicinal qualities.' Jay's read on Trump is that he swears partly as a political strategy – a way to connect with average Americans and convince them of his authenticity. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt espouses that theory when asked about his profanity. 'One of the things the American people love the most about this president is he often says what they were thinking but lack the courage to say themselves,' she has said. Jay also sees Trump's language as the mark of an emotional and at times impetuous leader who at times lacks a reliable edit button and sense of self-control. He describes the president's F-bomb on Tuesday as an unconscious response to the chaos of the Middle East conflict. As he sees it, Trump broke from presidential norms on Tuesday less through his word choice than through his obvious stress over a high-stakes foreign-policy situation. Psychologically, he adds, it's no coincidence that the president dropped the F-bomb in the hours after he prematurely announced a ceasefire between Iran and Israel and asserted, along with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, that the three nuclear sites he unilaterally decided to bomb in Iran 'obliterated' that country's nuclear facilities. Officials familiar with a classified intelligence report said Tuesday that the bunker-buster bombs that Trump ordered in the attacks sealed entrances to two of the three targets but did not collapse their underground structures. The report also showed that much of Iran's stockpile of enriched uranium was moved before the strikes, indicating that Iran's nuclear program has been set back only by a few months, not indefinitely as Trump and his circle claimed. By saying those countries 'don't know what the f**k they're doing,' Jays says Trump's subliminal message is really that he doesn't know what the f**k they're doing. If the president knew, he adds, he would say so. 'What became clear is that he doesn't know, and the people around him don't understand the complexities. 'It's a sign that he has as little clue about what's going on as the rest of us, even though he has more information than we do,' says Jay. As he tells it: 'You could see the confusion in his face and hear it in his words.'
NBC News
an hour ago
- NBC News
Court orders Costa Rican government to release Asian migrants deported by Trump
Costa Rica's Constitutional Court on Tuesday ordered the government of Rodrigo Chaves to release Asian migrants deported by the Trump administration who have been held in a temporary shelter in the south of the Central American country since February. The majority vote (4-3) of the justices found that the Costa Rican government violated the migrants' rights by failing to provide them with 'timely and sufficient information' about their immigration status or give them access to legal counsel. 'Nor was free contact with the media permitted, nor was there any information from the outset about the possibility of requesting asylum,' the constitutional court said in a statement. The judges gave the Costa Rican government 15 days to release the deported migrants and ordered it to determine their immigration status 'individually' and based on the law, according to the statement. In February, the Donald Trump administration sent 200 Asian migrants to Costa Rica on two deportation flights, including nearly 100 children. The deportees came from countries such as China, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Russia, and Uzbekistan. More than 70 were minors. The agreement between the two countries was reached as Costa Rica feared that President Donald Trump would retaliate if it refused to accept the migrants, according to statements made to the press by the president and the foreign minister. The deportees were immediately taken to the Temporary Migrant Care Center (CATEM), located in the canton of Corredores, seven miles from the border with Panama. They slept cramped in shared, poorly ventilated bunks in a hot, humid region where temperatures often exceed 90 degrees Fahrenheit. As of Tuesday, 28 people remained deported, including 13 minors, from Armenia, Russia, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Turkey, and Iran, Omer Badilla, Costa Rica's Deputy Minister of the Interior and Police, told Noticias Telemundo. The vast majority of the deportees, 107, were repatriated to their countries of origin. Another 35 left the center on their own, and 30 requested asylum in Costa Rica, Badilla said. Costa Rican authorities described the Constitutional Court's ruling as a 'serious error' and assert that the migrants still there 'enjoy complete freedom; they can leave and move freely,' according to Badilla. '(The constitutional ruling) makes no sense. For months, these people have had regular immigration status and complete freedom of movement,' the official said. "From our perspective, the Constitutional Court is mistaken and making a serious error. It clearly doesn't understand the current situation at CATEM,' he added. The constitutional ruling responds to a habeas corpus petition against the Costa Rican government filed by the country's former Minister of Communications, Mauricio Herrera. In late April, Costa Rica granted humanitarian immigration status to the migrants held at the shelter after a group of human rights lawyers filed a lawsuit against the country before the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, alleging that the government violated the rights of 81 migrant minors by detaining them at the shelter without legal counsel or access to education or psychological services. At the time, Costa Rican authorities announced that the migrants, whose passports were confiscated upon arrival in the country, would receive their documents back and were free to leave the shelter and seek options to leave Costa Rica or seek asylum if they so desired. In April, Noticias Telemundo visited CATEM and spoke with some of the migrants, including 36-year-old Russian German Smirnov, who was deported with his wife and 6-year-old son. The man, originally from St. Petersburg, said he worked in his country as an electoral official and witnessed how elections were manipulated in Russia. He said he sought out the organization of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died in a Siberian prison in 2024, to report fraud in the 2024 elections, but authorities under Vladimir Putin's regime discovered him. ["If I return to Russia] they'll put me in jail or send me to war. It's simple, because my country is at war with a neighboring country,' he said. Help the powerful brother of the north In announcing the agreement with the United States, Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves said the country was helping its 'economically powerful brother to the North' and indicated that they feared punishment if they did not accept the migrants. 'If they impose a tax on our free trade zones, they'll screw us,' Chaves said. 'I don't think they'll do it, thank God... love is repaid with love... 200 come, we treat them well, and they leave...' he stated at a press conference. Costa Rican Foreign Minister Arnoldo André Tinoco also expressed the country's fear of Trump's 'pressure,' although he denied that it had materialized. 'What the president [Rodrigo Chaves] meant was that, through a gesture of goodwill, we would somewhat alleviate the pressure if the United States were thinking of imposing some kind of restriction that doesn't interest us. Of course, we're not interested,' André said in an interview with Noticias Telemundo in late March. 'There's no pressure. Possibility? Of course it exists. Yes. Look at what the new US administration is doing around the world [...] You're not going to get me to say that I was pressured by the United States because that's not true,' he asserted.
