Pedro Sánchez, Ursula Von der Leyen, António Guterres, from left to right, at the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development. Credit: Dati Bendo/European Union
By Michael Galant
NEW YORK, Jul 4 2025 (IPS)
UN Member States adopted the ‘Compromiso de Sevilla’ at the Fourth Financing for Development Forum (FfD4) which concluded July 3– the culmination of months of contentious negotiations that pitted wealthy nations against the developing world in competing visions for reform of the global economic architecture.
The wide-ranging outcome document will be met with both fanfare — from the host countries and UN officials keen to portray the process as a success — and criticism — from civil society groups lamenting the watering down of material commitments into so many toothless words. But buried in its 38 pages is a single paragraph that quietly plants the seed for a more transformative agenda:
We will establish a platform for borrower countries with support from existing institutions, and a UN entity serving as its secretariat. The platform may be used to discuss technical issues, share information and experiences in addressing debt challenges, increase access to technical assistance and capacity building in debt management, coordinate approaches, and strengthen borrower countries’ voices in the global debt architecture.
Uniting borrowing countries has long been a dream of those concerned with the imbalance of power in the global financial system. Creditors are organized into collectives like the Paris Club, they argue; so too should debtors work together to build collective negotiating power, underwritten by the threat of a coordinated default.
With two thirds of low-income and a quarter of middle-income countries in or near debt distress, a common negotiating front could not only obtain better terms of restructuring during times of crisis, but also bolster demands for lasting reforms of a failing system that keeps countries trapped in a vicious cycle of debt and underdevelopment.
This is easier said than done.
Developing countries, and the economic elites that typically govern them, are dependent on international finance, and reluctant to do anything that might spook financial markets. Simultaneously overcoming these fears in multiple countries, each with their own contexts and interests, is a tall order.
The FFD document thus conspicuously avoids the language of a “debtors’ club” or any threat of collective negotiation or default, leading instead with more neutral modes of cooperation like information-sharing and capacity-building. But even tentative steps toward cooperation can have a meaningful impact. Indeed, they have before.
In June 1984, eleven Latin American countries met in Cartagena, Colombia to coordinate their responses to the debt crisis that had by then roiled the region for two years. The resulting Cartagena Consensus was clear that it was not a “debtors’ club,” but a forum for collaboration. The group would meet five times in the years that would follow, developing common positions on the source of the crisis and the terms of its resolution.
The Cartagena Consensus is often held up as a cautionary tale for debtors considering coordination. The Group never became a fully realized “debtors’ club” capable of collective negotiation, and petered out before the crisis was resolved as creditors peeled away desperate debtors with sweetheart deals.
But even the tacit threat that a club could be in formation bore fruit. Principles developed collectively shaped early deals, the concessions from which bolstered the positions of subsequent negotiators, and less confrontational governments benefitted from gains won by the more radical.
As scholar Diana Tussie wrote at the time: “a significant improvement in the cost of the negotiated credit was achieved, spreads were reduced, rescheduling fees were drastically reduced, the cost of the loan was reduced, and the amortization period increased significantly.”
Rhetorically, the Consensus helped recast the crisis as a political one, rooted in global financial inequities and exogenous factors like rising interest rates in advanced economies, rather than a purely technocratic or moralistic question of responsible spending.
Today’s multilateral commitment to form a borrowers’ platform has advantages that Cartagena did not. While the developing world is facing a generalized debt crisis, it is not in the acute situation that beset the Cartagena Consensus, and so has an opportunity to gradually build its infrastructure under less desperate conditions.
The borrowers’ platform is to operate with UN support and a wider range of global participants. And the emergence of major new bilateral creditors, though not without its own challenges, may strengthen debtors’ negotiating hands.
Of course, the global debt challenge cannot be reduced to a zero-sum restructuring negotiation. Substantive reforms are needed to address the many faults in the debt system, from ongoing legislative efforts to combat creditor holdouts in Albany, to the establishment of a permanent multilateral sovereign debt workout mechanism — a top priority of debt relief advocates.
Yet these efforts have repeatedly been blocked by the intransigence of creditors. Movement toward reform will only be strengthened by the coordination of the countries that stand to benefit most.
A promise to establish a borrowers’ platform is far from a fully realized debtors’ club, and farther still from a panacea to the Global South’s ongoing debt crisis. But in a document short on transformative ambition, it is a concrete step toward the rebalancing of unequal power relations — and a sign that debtor countries will not submit themselves to creditor inaction forever.
Michael Galant is Senior Research and Outreach Associate at the Center for Economic and Policy Research (cepr.net) in Washington, DC.
IPS UN Bureau
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Credit: Anthony Kwan/Getty Images via Gallo Images
By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Jul 4 2025 (IPS)
Joshua Wong sits in a maximum-security prison cell, knowing the Hong Kong authorities are determined to silence him forever. On 6 June, police arrived at Stanley Prison bringing fresh charges that could see the high-profile democracy campaigner imprisoned for life. This is the reality of Hong Kong: even when behind bars, activists can be considered too dangerous ever to be freed.
An infamous anniversary is approaching. 30 June will mark five years since the passing of Hong Kong’s draconian national security law. Imposed on the supposedly autonomous territory by the Chinese government, the law made it a crime to call for democracy, leading to numerous jail sentences.
Last year, the Hong Kong authorities gave themselves still more powers to suppress dissent by passing another law, the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance. Already, police have used the new law to arrest over 300 people, including for such trivial offences as wearing T-shirts with protest slogans.
Democracy movement ruthlessly suppressed
The heady days of Hong Kong’s vibrant youth-led democracy movement, which erupted into large-scale protests in 2019, are a distant memory. It’s been so long now that some of those jailed have been freed from prison at the end of their sentences. But the authorities are determined to keep persecuting the most high-profile activists.
Wong’s case exemplifies the authorities’ determination to silence prominent voices. The young activist is the movement’s most famous faces. He’s been repeatedly jailed for protest-related offences going back to 2017, and has now spent over four years in prison either serving sentences or awaiting further trials. He’s now charged with conspiring to collude with foreign forces, for allegedly working with exiled democracy activists to urge international sanctions on China, a crime under the national security law.
Meanwhile, Jimmy Lai’s trial continues. The former media owner used his Apple Daily newspaper to support the democracy movement, until the authorities forced it to close in 2021. Like Wong, Lai has already received several sentences, but his current drawn-out trial is on the more serious charges of colluding with foreign forces and conspiring to publish seditious materials.
Lai, who also holds British citizenship, has been held in solitary confinement since December 2020. He’s 77 years old and in poor health, and his family are concerned that in such conditions he might not withstand the fierce heat of another summer. The authorities clearly intend for him to die in jail.
Tradition of dissent crushed
The Hong Kong of today is unrecognisable from the country once promised. When the UK handed the territory over to China in 1997, it was under a treaty in which the Chinese state committed to maintaining its separate political system for 50 years. This included guarantees to uphold civic freedoms. But China has unilaterally torn up that agreement and is determined to make Hong Kong indistinguishable from the totalitarian mainland.
On top of criminalising thousands of protesters, the authorities have thoroughly suppressed a once vibrant media. Hong Kong now stands at 140 out of 180 countries on Reporters Without Borders’ Press Freedom Index; in 2018, before the current intensive crackdown began, it was in 70th place. Recently, journalists have been subjected to a systematic campaign of anonymous harassment and intimidation. Authorities have started to target journalists and media companies for supposedly random tax audits.
In these conditions, many civil society groups, political parties and media houses have had no choice but to shut down, while international media have been forced to relocate. In April, it was the turn of Hong Kong’s oldest and biggest pro-democracy party, the Democratic Party, to close. Long a moderate voice that was careful not to speak out against China, it had nonetheless recently received warnings from Chinese state officials.
The timing reveals the authorities’ desire for absolute control. The next election for the Legislative Council, Hong Kong’s parliament, is due in December, and in democracies, parties gear up rather than close down ahead of elections. But most Legislative Council seats aren’t directly elected and only pro-China candidates are allowed to stand. With this latest party closure, the authorities are evidently intent on denying even the prospect of token opposition.
In the face of the crackdown, some democracy activists have managed to escape into exile, but there’s no safety there, since China is the world’s number one transnational repressor. In 2023 and 2024, the authorities placed a bounty on the heads of 19 exiled activists, offering rewards for their capture.
Hong Kong authorities have stripped exiles of passports, while police have targeted their families for questioning. May saw a further escalation, when police arrested the father and brother of US-based exile Anna Kwok, one of the 19 with a price on their heads.
Ever-growing control
The Chinese state’s reach now extends to the most trivial aspects of daily life. Pro-China informants report people who fall foul of laws, and there’s seemingly no act of rebellion too small to escape official notice. In June, Hong Kong police warned people not to download a mobile phone game developed in Taiwan on the grounds it was secessionist. Teachers – who must deliver a pro-China curriculum – have been instructed not to attend 4 July events organised by the US consulate, and to discourage students attending. Education minister Christine Choi Yuk-lin recently warned of the dangers of book fairs and other acts of ‘soft resistance’ in schools.
The Chinese state now holds all the cards in Hong Kong. But Hong Kong’s story isn’t just about a small territory’s loss of freedom: it’s a warning to the world about what happens when authoritarianism advances unchecked. As Wong faces the prospect of life imprisonment for the crime of calling for democracy and Lai withers in solitary confinement, the international community must review its commitment to democracy. The very least Hong Kong’s underground and exiled activists deserve is international solidarity and support to ensure their safety against attacks. As their struggle continues, the world shouldn’t look away.
Andrew Firmin is CIVICUS Editor-in-Chief, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.
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