On March 31st, The CSO Financing for Development Forum (CSOs for FfD), of which the Global Alliance for Tax Justice (GATJ) is a member, has sent a letter to the co-facilitators of this years’ FfD (Financing for Development) follow up process, asking them to start a process that will put the UN back into leadership of a global and intergovernmental process to address “the humanitarian crisis of inestimable proportions” triggered by the Coronavirus pandemic “ which will once again impose its heaviest tolls on the marginalised and most vulnerable”.

The letter calls for “an ambitious UN/FfD-centred process to assess the crisis and agree on responses leading to an International Economic Reconstruction and Systemic Reform Summit under the aegis of the United Nations. The United Nations, through the FfD Follow-up process, would then step up to the challenge and offer a critical space for advancing much-needed short and medium-term solutions aimed at strengthening multilateral cooperation and ensuring adequate fiscal and policy space by all countries, with special reference to developing economies, to tackle the health, food, social, economic and financial dimensions of the crisis. At the same time, the FfD Follow-up process would also raise the level of ambition to advance the removal of structural barriers to socio-economic transformation and systemic reforms of global economic frameworks to realign them with the imperatives of human rights, gender justice, decent work, people-centeredness and sustainable development. This could set the international community back on track to unlock the necessary means of implementation to realize the aspirations of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”.

The letter concludes by reminding the co-facilitators and the UN membership at large to recognise the “need for bold steps that break with normalcy and manifest the resolve of the United Nations to step-up to the exceptional occasion”.

You can find the full letter here.

Illustration adapted from a photo by: Rosario “Charo” Gutierrez