Road to Second World Summit for Social Development 2025

Amina J. Mohammed, UN Deputy Secretary-General

“Humanitarian needs are also skyrocketing and the social investments necessary to build genuine resilience and promote equal opportunity continue to be inadequate. There is a lack of coherence between social and economic policies and between policy priorities and financing decisions….

By ushering in a new era of social protection, health coverage, education, and decent work, the Summit can renew commitments, and not just aspirations but realities for all and accelerate action toward achieving all the SDGs.

The Summit can lay a foundation for safeguarding the progress we have made for decades to come, building on the outcomes of the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development in 2025 where Member states will address the financial gaps needed to scale these social investments and make international financial institutions more inclusive and receptive to developing countries’ needs.”

Uganda on behalf of Group of 77 & China underlines the vast financial obstacles to achieving the SDGs

“[First], the developing countries need financial support of at least US$3.3 trillion to US$4.5 trillion annually to achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. For this, resources must be mobilized from all possible sources, for instance, fulfillment of the 0.7 percent Official development assistance (ODA) target; redistribution of the US$650 billion new Special Drawing Rights (SDRs); and concessional finance from the multilateral institutions and development banks are required.

For an inclusive recovery of the global south economy, there is need for universal access to social protection as a priority. For this, developing countries need financial resources in the forms of grants, and not loans, which over-burden the developing countries. These may be provided by the international community through multilateral mechanisms, among others by International Financial Institutions.

…8.4 million people die yearly in low-and middle-income countries because of poor-quality healthcare. More than half of those deaths would have been averted if high-quality healthcare system were possible, therefore, developing countries require fiscal space to provide social protection and universal health coverage to their populations…. There is an imperative need for debt restructuring and review of austerity programmes to support global efforts towards sustainable development, food security and debt long-term sustainability.”

Barbados addresses the range of factors essential for achieving sustainable development and social justice

“Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are primarily former colonies whose wealth was extracted over centuries to support the growth of colonial powers. SIDS therefore have a legitimate claim to assistance in their development today. In the same vein, developed nations have a moral responsibility to invest in building the resilience of SIDS….

If we are to have the national development that is human-centered, the reforms that we have begun to see in the international financial architecture must be intensified. SIDS and indeed other developing countries must be represented and be able to participate in the decision-making in global economic institutions and international financial institutions. We did not exist as sovereign states when these institutions were developed. Reform is therefore necessary if policy prescriptions and the assistance we require for sustainable development are to be appropriate, effective and credible.

The vulnerability of SIDS must be properly assessed. We cannot rely solely on GDP per capita, a measurement that does not recognize that most of us have a single seaport, that we cannot drive from our country to another, that we are located in or close to the hurricane belt, that our economies are small, and that effective economic diversification is not easily achieved. If there is to be genuine access to financing for our development, the instruments cannot threaten that same development. We cannot be spending more on debt service that we spend on education and healthcare….

Finally, the impact of rapid advances in technological development must be recognized and guidelines put in place to ensure that the vulnerable in our societies do not become collateral damage. Rather, there must be a harnessing of technology, including new and emerging technologies, to assist an inclusive, equitable and sustainable development. The intersectionality of climate and technology on the world of work, and the potential impact on realizing development that is human centered must be recognized and addressed. The need for it just technological transition is just as important as the imperative of a just energy transition.”

Ireland addresses need to correct global governance inadequacies and structural failures to achieve the SDGs and social development

“Even before 2019 and 2020, [the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)] were heading off track. We wanted to focus the attention of the world's leaders on the need to get that vision, those goals back on track across the board. Interestingly, what we didn't do last year was do a step by step, line by line analysis of the SDGs. We took a lens to say, where's it falling short? So much of our discussion was on the reform of the international financial architecture. So much of the attention was on the MDBs, their role where they are failing, were delivering, were not delivering – structural issues. Not so much on ODA volumes, but really getting at the structural dimension of challenges in implementing the SDGs. That's why today's discussion is really important: structural barriers, not piecemeal approach, not sticking plaster to solve problem, but really addressing the root causes of inequality, social divisions, and really tackling those and making a genuine change.”

Ireland also highlighted the failures in multilateralism that threatens global solidarity: 

“We're seeing international humanitarian law not being respected in all cases. We're seeing human rights law being pushed back, and civil society space closing down. And we're seeing the difficulty in getting the multilateral system from the Security Council down to actually really operate and to do its job in terms of peace, stability, but also economic, social, cultural rights. We see that with the challenges in implementing the Sustainable Development Goals, agreements entered into and commitments given in terms of climate change, climate financing, etc. Then we see a rising sense of despondency, particularly in the Global South; we saw that through COVID, where so many people felt, 'well, actually, we weren't all in it together'. There wasn't equal access to vaccines, equal access to technology, an equal playing field.”

Member States highlight the need to fulfill commitments to international cooperation and address inadequacies of international financial architecture

Botswana: “We believe the Addis Ababa Action Agenda is key to achieving a balanced financing approach, while enhancing governance and institutional implementation capacities at the country level. We are pleased with the progress achieved in the World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen, but a lot remains to be done to meet our objectives in the field of social development and social inclusion and justice globally.”

Belgium on behalf of the EU: “The EU actively promotes the social dimension of its external action, this includes the Global Gateway strategy, which aims to support the implementation of SDGs. …the EU and its Member States stress the importance of implementing SDG 8 ‘Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all’ and also SDG 10 ‘Reduce inequality within and among countries’. We also support a range of initiatives monitoring and addressing the multidimensional aspects of inequality, like the Inequality Marker and the Distributional Impact Assessment. Several EU Member States have also pledged financial support for the Global Accelerator on Jobs and Social Protection for Just Transitions.”

Trinidad and Tobago on behalf of Caribbean Community (CARICOM): “We are at a critical juncture in this decade of action wherein we must scale up efforts to deliver the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. CARICOM once again reiterates that unprecedented times call for an unprecedented response from the international community. We therefore stress the crucial need for North-South, South-South and triangular cooperation, to support national efforts aimed at building resilience, reducing inequalities and alleviating poverty, and to realize the commitments made in the Copenhagen Declaration and Programme of Action, and those contained in the 2030 Agenda.”

Romania: “The pressing challenges we face cannot be solved individually… This highlights the importance of the ‘global partnership for development’ which serve as a roadmap for sustainable recovery and structural change in synergy with the private sector, civil society and other key stakeholders.”

Kenya: “Social justice is a foundation of reducing inequality within and among countries and advancing equitable social development for all. New unimagined challenges and vulnerabilities such as external debt sustainability create and perpetuate inequalities. It is therefore important to improve international debt mechanisms to support debt review and restructuring and to ensure enhanced representation from developing countries in the decision-making of international economic and financial institutions. This will deliver more effective, credible, accountable and legitimate institutions.”

Guyana: “Guyana’s graduation to upper middle-income status has made concessional lending from a traditional partner scarcer and substantially increased the cost of borrowing. The use of a single statistical artifact per capita GDP in a multidimensional development context severely undermines considerations around sustainable development. The need for the global community to recognise a Multidimensional Vulnerability Index (MVI) in assessing countries is both urgent and overdue bilateral and multilateral partnerships are considered critical to achieving the national development agenda.“

Uganda and Chile on the roles of multilateral financial institutions and private-public financing

Uganda: “[Uganda] has harnessed multilateral programs from multilateral agencies like World Bank, IMF, Africa Development Bank, Export-Import (Exim) Bank and UN agencies to enhance the welfare of the poor people. Such agencies provide a lot in areas of bilateral and multilateral interventions which has extended substantial grants and loans to assist us to enhance our economy and subsequently improve the wellbeing of the citizens.”

Chile: “We need to involve the private [and] public sector, the community and the family in caregiving. There has to be an intersectional and a crosscutting gender approach to these activities. This will promote improved standards of living. A group of six Latin American countries and Chile have put a draft resolution on caregiving to this commission and we invite all countries to consider the agenda of care so that we can promote this particular activity as a key pillar for social development.”

Brazil outlines the difficulties of reducing poverty and inequality

“You can't fight poverty as a lasting thing without very specific help; even if it's basic in times of crisis, we need solid construction with sustainable finance resources, a social basis, mobilization and stabilization through laws. The Global Alliance thinks we can and should unite our efforts so that more and more people that are underprivileged can count on the protection and the strength of this social umbrella in their countries.

Why, then, are we falling behind? The answer lies, again, in inequality. The belief that economic growth alone would reduce disparities has been proven false. As President Lula said, inequality is not a given of nature. It is socially constructed, and fighting it is a choice we have to make every day. However, we all know that the problem is that inequality is reflected in an inequality of means at the international level as well. Many countries have the will but lack the resources or technical capacity to implement appropriate social policies, or to implement them at the appropriate scale. Others have learned a lot in implementation and are willing to share their experience, but also lack the means to do so. Those who deal with development aid issues are well acquainted with yet another set of problems and obstacles: there are few international resources available to fight hunger and poverty. When they exist, they are fragmented, dispersed, misaligned, and very difficult for the most vulnerable countries to employ to support the implementation of large scale national policies.”

Barbara Adams, Senior Policy Advisor, Global Policy Forum

“Rights are not a market commodity. They cannot be provided subject to the ups and downs of supply and demand and the price system. Not only are we undermining public finances, we have somehow undermined accountability. In so doing that for the public sector, we are not maintaining strong public institutions accountable to people. 

We've heard this morning, that we can't be naive about public finance because public finance at the moment is favoring war and instruments of war over peace, sustainable development and human rights…

As a transformative issue, we don't have in the multilateral system any process or forum where [income, non-income and wealth] inequalities [within and between countries] are the focus of policies, programmes and accountability.

As we edge towards a World Summit for Social Development in 2025, let’s be extremely ambitious and work to ensure that the Summit gives us a UN Council mandated to tackle and hold accountable Member States & ourselves to reducing all forms of inequalities."

Dominican Republic and Egypt emphasize the importance of investing in social protections

Dominican Republic: “[A]s established by Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean  (ECLAC), sustainable development is the result of ‘the integrated action of decisions and actions around the 4 dimensions or pillars that affect each other: social, environmental, economic and institutional.’ Therefore, social policies must be considered as an investment and not as an expense, at the moment in which this articulation allows each sector to understand the relationship that the action has with its own development….

On the other hand, public policies for sustainable development must overcome the immediacy of results, since they require an institutionality that makes them sustainable over time, thus allowing us to see the impact on the life cycle around which they are formulated, and without leaving anyone behind.”

Egypt: “[S]ocial protection is perceived as an action to the economic crisis and not as a part and parcel of economic reform and economic empowerment programs. To wrap up, investment in social protections need to go beyond one of crisis response and to be part of the broader and longer-term policies that alleviate poverty, to reduce inequalities and to expand in social justice.”

Malawi on behalf of the Africa Group (Geneva) spotlights education as a multiplier factor for social justice 

“...when we look at social exclusion with economic exclusion, we are looking in effect at Least Developed Countries (LDCs) as being the most excluded… [E]xclusion starts with education and skills-building. Perhaps the shortest route to dealing with exclusion is for us as social partners, led by the ILO, to look again at how we support education in those countries where populations are growing fast as most African countries are facing, and where budgets for education and developing our young people are not there….

If we are going to achieve social justice, we must look again at how different agencies can support across functions and make sure that we all rally around that core investment that will have multiplier effects in all other sectors. Education is just such, especially education that incorporates foundations for good technical education… We need to educate the youth of Africa, which is where the future workforce of the world is. We need to support that in order to end social exclusion and to achieve social justice.”

Botswana, Chile and Colombia highlight the critical role of employment for social development, along with the informal sector and care work

Botswana on behalf of Group of African States: “The critical importance of concrete action to accelerate progress towards poverty eradication, by addressing its interrelationship with social integration and full employment and decent work for all, could never be overemphasized. In addition, regarding social inclusion and income inequalities, in many African countries, development has not made a significant impact on the lives of the majority of the population, especially those in vulnerable situations. Many countries in Africa continue to face social development difficulties. Income and non-income inequalities have increased in many countries over the past decades and Africa remains among the regions with the highest levels of income inequality and highly dependent on the informal sector.”

Chile: “…We believe that having a comprehensive healthcare system with a gender approach is particularly important so that basic services can be provided to people particularly in emergency situations. Given that reality, our main task is to eradicate poverty and promote social inclusion. We have substantive and relative efforts that we've taken to reduce extreme poverty, as well as multidimensional poverty in our country. We recognize the importance of social protection services, in particular in reducing poverty. We would like to highlight the fact that in many cases, women are caregivers and they are outside of the labor market, even though they could be in the labor market. We've had a lower participation of women in the formal labor sector and they’ve worked for a shorter period of times, so we see that they face greater poverty because they have not contributed sufficiently to the social protection services. We must make sure that people in need have caregivers and make sure that no one remains on the margins of our society.

Colombia: “[S]trategies for decent work must be implemented. This requires the commitment of all, so that the job policies can be effective and generations of people may work informal work without precarious conditions. These policies must be based on the promotion of employment and decent income, the extension of social protection, the guarantees of fundamental rights at work, social dialog and tripartism. There should be no distinction between formal and informal work, because when it comes to the effective access to rights, and particularly social security, including the right to safety and to health in the workplace. We also invite the summit to focus more on the effective protection of women, the LGBT+ community, rural workers, ethnic and cultural diversity, as well as policies for decent and dignified work, as well as the creation of spaces for tripartism that are open to the voices of other social players.”

Costa Rica and Dominican Republic discuss challenges in data collection and the potentials of emerging technology

Costa Rica: “It has been made very clear… that it is extremely important that data collection be carried out. But data collection for states has always represented a major challenge. There have been difficulties in collection because of the different methodologies that are used. We have different criteria across Latin America for instance, so very often the same multifactorial analysis can be read in different ways depending on [one’s] methodology.”

Dominican Republic: “In the case of the Dominican Republic, we have some experience such as, in the use of technologies and administrative data for improving data collection, in order to reduce costs when we are gathering data. This is the major obstacle that states have: the cost associated with gathering the data and calculating the cost of these universal payments. Very recently we have used and implemented artificial intelligence (AI) to gather this data and self registration. We have had campaigns to raise awareness amongst the population so that they can carry out these self-assessments or self declarations. We are also using data to identify vulnerable populations and focus where we need to gather the data for national action.”

Belarus and Iran criticize Unilateral Coercive Measures as a hindrance to development

Belarus: “We recognize that the Imposing of the Unilateral Coercive Measures which contradict international law and international human rights law from a social justice and social development perspective, is a matter of serious concern. In this context, once again, we highlight the adverse effect of the UCMs as the main obstacle to realizing the right to development including the ability of states to eradicate poverty as well as the equal and affordable access to digital technology.”

Islamic Republic of Iran: “Regarding the challenges and opportunities and common responsibilities, I am sharing the important issue of imposing unilateral coercive measures against the target[ed] states, including my own, which is totally contradicting with international humanitarian law, international law and international human rights law, all of them together. From a social justice and social development perspective UCM is a matter of serious concern and is the main obstacle realizing the right to development including the ability of the states to eradicate poverty as well as the equal and affordable access to the digital technology and health. UCM impacts the full achievement of economic and social development of the affected countries and hinders their well-being.”

Social Development in Times of Converging Crises: A Call for Global Action - World Social Report 2024

“Vulnerable people and societies tend to be the worst affected, especially those in developing countries and countries in special situations: in early 2024, half of the low-income countries were in, or at high risk of, debt distress….

Due to contagion risks, the overall resilience of the global financial system is determined by the least resilient financial sector in any of the systemically important countries. Systemically important countries derive domestic benefits – such as macroeconomic stability and inclusive growth – from financial stability, so they have strong incentives to provide this…. 

[N]ational-level actions will remain insufficient – even if perfected – to deal with impacts arising from multiple and interrelated global stressors and feedback loops; high interconnectedness within and between systems and countries; and more frequent and correlated shocks. Given the intrinsically cross-border nature of such challenges, joint international actions are essential, with several under different stages of implementation. It is important to observe that while coordinated international actions are necessary, not all countries would contribute in the same way, either in scope or scale, for reasons of both equity and efficiency.”

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By Global Policy Watch (GPW)

Source: Global Policy Watch (GPW).