European Parliament - Republic of Côte d’Ivoire Event at the Summit of the Future Action Days

Saturday, 21 September, 14:30-15:45 in room CR11

Co-sponsors: Republic of Côte d’Ivoire and EU/European Parliament

Background

The Agenda 2030 with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provides a clear roadmap to achieving sustainable development. However, more than halfway towards 2030, the world is far off track to achieve the SDGs. Progress is slow, uneven and in many cases even negative. An important stumbling block for achieving the Agenda 2030 is the underfinancing of sustainable development. This financing gap only keeps increasing, expanding to over 4 trillion USD according to the last estimates[1]. 

The Summit of the Future (SOTF), through an inter-governmentally agreed Pact for the Future, is an opportunity to create new momentum to solve the big challenges of our time through a global recommitment to multilateralism. Agreements to improve global cooperation arrangements will, in turn, enable the world to deliver on the existing commitments and turbocharge the 2030 Agenda.

The Pact for the Future will include five chapters, with the first Chapter focussing on sustainable development and Chapter five on financing for development, in particular reform of the international financial architecture.

This side event will look in particular at the relevant Actions of Chapters 1 and 5 of the Pact for the Future[2], focusing on the role Parliaments can play in closing the SDG financing gap.  

UNGA resolution 77/159 from December 2022 recognised the essential role of parliaments at all levels of government when it comes to achieving the SDGs: through enacting legislation, adopting budgets and ensuring accountability. Their soft power should not be underestimated either: parliaments are a forum for discussion and input, bringing together state actors, citizens (including, inter alia, youth, women, older persons, or indigenous peoples), the private sector, non-governmental organisations, civil society organisations, and religious, sexual, ethnic and other minorities.

Objectives

This event will look at ways for Parliaments to help ensuring the necessary financing for the SDGs, in line with the aims and actions in Chapters 1 and 5 of the Pact for the Future, and policy brief 6 of the UN Secretary-General on the international financial architecture. It aims at bringing together Representatives from the Global North and the Global South, representatives of international financial institutions, and of NGOs, with the purpose of fostering understanding of each other’s working environment, problems and challenges, exchanging ideas and good practices, and to discuss how Parliaments can help to ensure financing of the SDGs.

Parliaments generally have legislative, budgetary and supervisory powers. They can therefore play a crucial role, such as, by way of example:

• use their political influence and budgetary powers to fulfil official development assistance commitments,
• enact legislation and provide political stimulus to combat illicit financial flows and address corruption, tax evasion and tax avoidance, including through accelerating international tax cooperation,
• help to accelerate reforms of the multilateral development banks and development finance institutions, in particular regarding leveraging and channelling private investment,
• help to enhance capacities and institutions in developing countries to increase the mobilization of domestic resources.

The event will therefore explore and compare different views on how Parliaments can help to ensure sufficient and new ways of financing the SDGs, with the aim of finding common approaches and strategies. This concerns, on the one hand, parliaments’ powers which can directly influence financing for development, and, on the other hand, their positions and actions as regards the reform of the international financial architecture, which has been under increasingly intensive discussion worldwide.

Key Topics

The discussions will focus on the following main areas:

• How can parliaments use their legislative, budgetary and supervisory powers to ensure the financing of the SDGs and massively scale up accessible and affordable financing for development for developing countries?
• How can parliaments push forward the reform of the international financial architecture?
• How can parliaments use their convening powers to involve and build bridges between all different stakeholders, actors of society and levels of government, to create ownership and elaborate new ideas and strategies, with a view to ensuring financing of the SDGs?

[1] https://unctad.org/publication/sdg-investment-trends-monitor-issue-4

[2] https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/sotf-pact-for-the-future-rev.1.pdf