By Shobha Shukla
While governments have committed to deliver on Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, inequalities, injustices and deadly divide between the Global North and Global South nations (and within rich and poor nations) has jeopardised progress on SDG goals and targets – including gender equality and right to health – both of which are fundamental human rights.
“If we do a reality check, in the current times, we are in a dysfunctional international financing architecture – with countries in the Global South facing the brunt. We are increasingly facing challenges to mobilise resources for our own development. Because most of the countries in the Global South are in cycles of perennial debt – which they have to keep servicing to international financial institutions. This results in austerity measures which include countries cutting down on public services, access to health services, education services, social protection services, among others,” said Sai Jyothirmai Racherla, Deputy Executive Director, Asian-Pacific Resource and Research Centre for Women (ARROW).
“While it impacts the general population, marginalised communities, and poor people, the impact on women and girls in all their diversity across the strata is much higher. Data tells us that developing countries are seeing a record high debt servicing costs in 2023. This is straining low- and middle-income economies. This is compounded by a US$ 4 trillion annual investment gap for SDG achievement in developing countries,” she added.
In 2024, official development assistance from 30 DAC nations (developed nations that provide aid to developing countries) declined by 7.1% in real terms – the first drop in five years – reaching only US$ 212.1 billion (0.33% of combined gross national income). UN target for developed countries is to allocate 0.7% of their gross national income as official development assistance but it dipped to less than half to 0.33%.
Poor investment in social sector fails us in economic sector too
“When there are poor social investments in the social sector then it does not contribute to the economic sector. Domestic resource mobilisation for the public sector for social protection, health, and education is less too. With declining official development assistance and perennial debt cycles, the impact becomes even more severe. This is going to impact gender equality and sexual and reproductive health and rights at so many different levels,” said Sai of ARROW.
Sai was delivering her keynote address at SHE & Rights (Sexual Health with Equity & Rights) session on the theme: “Did the 4th International Conference on Financing for Development deliver on gender equality & feminist agenda?”, organised around UN inter-governmental High Level Political Forum (HLPF 2025) and 13th International AIDS Society Conference on HIV Science (IAS 2025). HLPF 2025 will review SDG3 (health and wellbeing), SDG5 (gender equality) among others.
SHE & Rights session was co-hosted by International Conference on Family Planning (ICFP) 2025, Family Planning News Network (FPNN), Global Center for Health Diplomacy and Inclusion (CeHDI), International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), Asian-Pacific Resource and Research Centre for Women (ARROW), Women’s Global Network for Reproductive Rights (WGNRR), Asia Pacific Media Alliance for Health and Development (APCAT Media) and CNS.
Governments did not deliver on feminist agenda but Feminist Forum gives hope
The 4th International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4) of the United Nations concluded a week ago in Seville, Spain. But FfD4 did not achieve its objective of restructuring the global economy and financial system, to benefit all equitably, including women, girls and all gender diverse peoples. FfD4 failed to guarantee long-term, flexible, inclusive, equitable financing for development. FfD4 looked into women and girls as merely ‘economic potentials’ for ‘economic benefits’ without really addressing the fundamental barriers to gender justice, including labour rights, safeguards for corporate abuses and preventing gender-based violence in the workplace.
“Feminist agenda refers to a gender transformative economic system that is based on rights to justice, care, and equality for everyone urgently. This was central to the Political Declaration of Feminist Forum held before the FfD4 began in Seville, Spain. But FfD4 failed to deliver on gender equality and feminist agenda,” said Sai Jyothirmai Racherla of ARROW.
Feminist Forum’s Political Declaration also called for deescalating wars and ending territorial invasions and genocide – “nothing less from this is acceptable,” rightly stressed Sai.
Sai feels that FfD4 conference outcome document was a mix bag, “as it was a diluted version of the vision and ambition of the Action Agenda adopted at 3rd International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD3) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (2015), and also of Monterrey Consensus adopted at the 1st International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD1) in Monterrey, Mexico (2002), as well as Doha Declaration on financing for development (2008). The FfD4 outcome document also compromised the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) 1994 and the Beijing Declaration and its Platform for Action 1995 commitments.”
Empowerment of women and girls, economic value inherent in unpaid care work, and references to eradicating gender-based violence were mentioned in the FfD4 outcome document but the broader and deeper aspects of gender equality or sexual and reproductive health and rights were missing in the FfD4 outcome document.
“From the very beginning, the demand to reform international financing architecture was undeniably strong, to realise gender-just economy in which financing for development will result in equitable outcomes for all, in terms of fair distribution of resources within countries – and in between countries. We need to reform international financing architecture to promote social, economic, and environmental justice and strengthen democracy and multilateralism equitably. This was not achieved at FfD4,” said Sai.
Reality check on gender equality and health
“2 pregnant persons die every minute. 700 women die unnecessarily from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth every day, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia. To reach the global target of less than 70 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, nearly 700,000 maternal deaths need to be prevented between 2024 and 2030,” said Sai.
The current international financial architecture is not working and does not guarantee long-term, flexible, inclusive, equitable financing for development. “We need to restructure global economic governance to centre feminist leadership, Global South parity, and the meaningful leadership of civil society and marginalised communities. This includes democratising decision-making across all the international financial institutions and multilateral development banks, including through the urgent reform of the voting systems of the IMF and the World Bank. This is part of the Political Declaration of Feminist Forum held before FfD4 too,” she added.
In Asia-Pacific, household health expenditures (SDG indicator 3.8.2) remain high, placing families under financial strain and limiting access to essential services. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the percentage of people in South-East Asia spending more than 10% of their total household income on health has increased, rising from 13.1% in 2010 to 16.1% in 2019.
“Global poverty reduction is virtually at a standstill. Around 9% of people worldwide lived in extreme poverty in 2022. While social protection coverage has reached a milestone of covering half the world’s population, low-income countries have shown almost no improvement since 2015 – with coverage rates of 9.7%, with poorest within these countries left behind,” said Sai of ARROW.
Polycrisis
“Global South is also in an age of poly-crisis. For example, the climate crises are becoming real. Just the Asia-Pacific region in the Global South, accounts for 40% of global natural disaster events. These natural disasters further increase the burden of unpaid domestic work for women who have to invest more hours in securing water, food, and energy for cooking and heating the homes. The closing or underfunding of public services such as health centres, schools, and water provision facilities due to debt crises and increasing debt service payments, is further exacerbated in extreme climate events, and natural disasters. Simply put in the context of disasters, the health services are just not accessible for women and girls,” says Sai.
Hope lies in the people and communities
Even if inter-governmental FfD4 disappointed, hope lies in people and communities. “Moving forward, Feminist Forum’s Political Declaration calls for funding and resourcing genuine multi-stakeholder feminist platforms and partnerships with women’s civil society, especially from the Global South. It is important to ensure civil society leadership and engagement in these processes like FfD4. We are also asking for eliminating all economic policy conditionalities that are attached to aid because these conditionalities promote austerity, privatisation and deregulation. We do not want conditionality when it comes to loans. There should be no loans in the first place (for development assistance), rather these should be grants,” said Sai.
“We must reform financial architecture so that it can guarantee long-term flexible, inclusive, and equitable financing for development. We also need to restructure the global economic governance because currently it is very Global North heavy. We need to have Global South parity. We need to include democratisation of the decision-making processes across the international financial institutions and the multilateral development banks,” she added.
“We are not going to stop until we deliver on gender equality. We will continue to do our work to demand for a right-based, environmentally-just, decolonial, intersectional, sustainable, and person-centred economic model. We need such an economic model in current times where care, reparations, redistribution and accountability remain central,” said Sai Jyothirmai Racherla of ARROW.
(The writer is the award-winning founding Managing Editor and Executive Director of Citizen News Service)
