On June 30, 2025, the United Nations’ Fourth International Conference on Development Financing officially opened in Seville, Spain, for a four-day summit. The purpose of this conference is to address global issues such as poverty, climate change, and public health by raising funds to achieve the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals for 2030.
More than 70 world leaders are participating in this conference, including representatives from international financial institutions, development banks, charities, businesses, and civil society. It is noteworthy that the United States did not participate in this summit.
After years of negotiations during the preparatory phase, the conference reached the “Seville Commitment” document before the opening, with the unanimous approval of representatives from over 70 countries. The aim is to close the annual global development financing gap of about $4 trillion through “urgent action.”
Core measures of the summit include tripling the lending capacity of multilateral development banks, increasing national tax revenues to at least 15% of GDP to boost government resources, incentivizing private financing, and encouraging infrastructure investment through incentive measures. Additionally, a mechanism for interest-free crisis loans was established.
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres mentioned in his opening speech, “Financing is the engine of development. Currently, this engine is not running smoothly.”
Reportedly, the United States explicitly rejected the draft of the “Seville Commitment” during a preparatory meeting on June 17 and announced its withdrawal from the formal conference.
Jonathan Shrier, the U.S. representative to the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), stated, “While we remain steadfast in our support for international cooperation, several red lines were crossed in the document,” including issues related to multilateral bank loans, international financial institution governance, global debt structure, and international tax systems, which were seen as “excessive interference.”
In a statement on June 17, Shrier emphasized that the International Monetary Fund, Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs), and other intergovernmental development financial institutions are independently managed by their respective shareholders, and decisions regarding their resources, financing terms, and fund allocations must be made within established frameworks. The U.S. strongly opposed proposals in the outcome document that called for doubling the annual lending capacity of MDBs or suggested that the United Nations could consider increasing the capital of MDBs, seeing such actions as beyond the scope of the meeting and potentially undermining the foundations of these independent institutions.
The statement made it clear that the proposal to involve the United Nations in the global debt structure was unacceptable to the United States, which also does not support the use of the term “gender” when discussing gender-based discrimination or gender-based preferences.
United Nations Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed described the U.S. withdrawal as “unfortunate” and expressed hope for re-engagement with the U.S. after the conference.
Following the U.S. withdrawal, while European Union members participated, they remained cautious. The EU, in particular, maintained reservations about how debt issues are discussed within the United Nations.